Value by association
Do you care what label is on your shirt? Or your car? Or your laptop? I bet you do, but why? Is there something substantive underneath the fashion-victim facade or is it just some sort of post-modern tribalism?
A few of us have been debating the death (or otherwise) of agile, and it seems to come down to whether the agile brand has become devalued. I’d like to move the discussion back a decade or so and ask whether there was ever any value to the brand – value to the customer that is. (After all one of the principles in the manifesto states that “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer.”)
I don’t believe that a customer derives any value from a consultant simply because they are ‘agile.’ I don’t believe in ‘value by association.’ I don’t trust brands.
If you want a plumber or lawyer do you seriously just look through the Yellow Pages (or contemporary equivalent)? Really? Don’t you ask friends and family for recommendations first? And if their recommendations are all busy won’t you look for referrals or reviews or some “independent” verification of someone’s suitability for taking your money?
I don’t even think a personal recommendation is enough. Competence needs to be qualified. A family lawyer is not necessarily the right person to use in a patent law suit. Someone who has successfully deployed agile in a small organisation is not qualified to deploy agile at the portfolio level in a multinational (thanks @tastapod).
As well as ‘competence’, we should take into account ‘attitude’ when we choose who to work with. I use ‘competence’ in the sense that someone has the knowledge, skill and experience requisite to perform the task that I need done. […]