Learning Agile from Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, a prolific, and perhaps the greatest writer the English language has ever known, wrote 39 plays, over a hundred sonnets, and poems - all in a short timespan of 24 years. Underpinning his creative and productive prowess was a mastery of Agile mechanism, and a far sighted understanding of their strategic implications. In his works, Shakespeare offers us little vignettes to his mastery. It is indeed another remarkable and as yet unexplored dimension to this man's great work that places his genius beyond par in the history of mankind. Today we explore two. 

 

1) Shakespeare had mastered the mechanism of delivery cycles - cleverly interspersing his big master pieces with shorter works - such as sonnets and poems. This approach allowed him to build mental cadence, and while he took a breather from his master plays, his creativity flourished in smaller batch sizes, exploring new material that could spark a new insight for his next major play.

 

2) As he created his master pieces, Shakespeare also managed to keep his creative capacities from being preoccupied with loose ends or lingering presence of personas from characters past. Yes, Shakespeare had mastered the art of minimizing technical debt, and  in Hamlet, Shakespeare alludes to this in Polonius' maxims to his son Laertes prior to his departure to France,

 

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For technical debt  oft loses both agility and micro serviceability,

And remediation dulls the edge of business value