#2782

Choosing an agile process - Part 5: Heroes and villains

Processes are essentially sets of guidelines and/or rules. Any system of rules will generate a corresponding set of behaviors, some good some bad. If you tell the line manager at a nail factory that their bonus is based on the tonnage of nails their line produces then you might find they switch to producing huge nails. After all it’s easier to produce a one tonne nail than a tonne of 1″ brads.

One of the discussions we had recently was about about the different behaviors of heroes and villains and how it applied to teams and processes. This is really about the larger issue of how to reward individuals in team based environments.

Peter’s blog post on this is worth a read.