Alistair Cockburn organized the 2001 meeting in Snowbird, Utah, where he and 16 others wrote the Agile Manifesto. He later boiled Agile down to four words, the Heart of Agile: collaborate, deliver, reflect, improve. We asked him how Agile and the OODA loop meet.
Alistair’s orientation
Alistair explains what shaped his view of Agile, and what Agile should have become by 2003. He connects Agile to intent in the OODA loop. Keeping things simple matters.
Learning in stages
Alistair walks through Shu Ha Ri, the Japanese stages of mastery, and demo-do-teach, a Western version. He uses the Mann Gulch fire to explain implicit guidance and control.
Coaching and play
We talk about coaching Agile and the importance of play and experiential learning. Reward systems drive behavior. Collaboration sits at the heart of it all. Alistair closes with his thoughts on the OODA loop.
Agility comes from orientation that the whole team shares, and Alistair has spent decades helping teams build it.
Which of the four words, collaborate, deliver, reflect or improve, does your team practice least?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.