The contours of belief
A big problem with conveying a statement of belief is that the actual outline of that belief is fractal in nature. For several months I’ve been working on a piece that tries to describe why I think agile software development is bad for everyone involved in it. But that’s not completely accurate–really, I think the agile manifesto is good, but the practices that have grown up around it are poisonous to a business that adopts it. And even then, some agile practices are valuable, and it’s the constellation of ideas that make up scrum that are so toxic.
As I try to get at the details of my position, clearly explaining it becomes much more difficult. If we imagine a constellation of opinions as a physical territory, it falls victim to the coastline paradox. The alternative is to run roughshod over the contours of what I actually think in service of a useful approximation.
But run roughshod I will. I’ve become paralyzed by nuance, and it’s not helping this particular project.