Jazz as a Metaphor for Agile Management

Jazz – A Metaphor for Agile Management
Charlie Berg [email_address]
August, '09

The New Business Environment...
“ Under conditions of hypercompetition & creative destruction, the best one can hope for is temporary competitive advantages that, with luck, add up to long-term survival. These temporary advantages emanate from organizations that emphasize innovation, dynamism, and adaptiveness, blended with just enough stability & discipline to keep them from spinning out of control. ” - Lee Dyer/Jeff Ercksen, Cornell Univ. Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies

Why Is Jazz a Useful Metaphor?
Jazz Bands are organizations that are:
Self-organizing
Self-motivated
Studied in their domain
Adept at change
Responsive to environment
Perfect development team model!
Jazz Bands can be viewed as Complex Adaptive Systems

Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)‏
Dynamic network of many agents acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing.
Constant interactions among agents amplify into bifurcations where agents forced to make choices. Feedback from these choices create additional bifurcations, additional choices, etc.
Subtle interplay of cooperation, competition, creation & adaptation

Characteristics of CAS
Self-organizing – no one point of control
Operate at the edge of chaos
System Behavior & Solutions are emergent, not pre-determined
Maps to... " organizations that emphasize innovation, dynamism, and adaptiveness, blended with just enough stability & discipline to keep them from spinning out of control. ”

Jazz Band on the Stand
Jam sessions slightly different (freer) than organized gig
We'll analyze a session
Jam sessions are:
Typically leaderless
Anybody can “call” a tune to play
Assume prior expertise & knowledge of theory, harmony, tunes, aural traditions
Head charts – arrangements are done on the fly

Sidebar – Aural Tradition
A particular musical phrase or snippet that is associated with a particular jazz standard
Ex: Standard bebop intro to All the Things You Are
Created by Dizzy Gillespie (1944 or 1945)‏
Based on Rachmaninoff Prelude in C sharp minor

Sergei Rachmaninoff
1873 – 1942
Emigrated to S. California after Russian Revolution
Virtuoso pianist
Fan of Paul Whiteman (early jazz orchestra)‏

Dizzy Gillespie
1917 – 1993
Compositional father of bebop movement
Introduced AfroCuban music to jazz

Charlie “Bird” Parker
1920 - 1955
Considered (w Diz) father of bebop
Icon of the Bop movement, Beat Generation & post-war African-American literature

Dick Twardzik
1931 – 1955
Studied classical piano & theory
Madame Chaloff & New England Conservatory
May have introduced Schoenberg & Bartok to Bird

Calling a Tune (Step by Step)‏
Somebody (not necessarily the leader) suggests a standard to play
Silence or agreement signify acceptance by the group
Intro, head, location of solos, outro decided
Some member of group
Musicians optionally volunteer to solo or solos decided during playing
Solo order scoped out

Playing the Tune
(Usually) person who called tune counts off
Solos pre-determined, or determined by eye contact/hand signals, or stepping to front of band
Non-soloing horns might collaborate behind soloist for backing harmony parts/shout chorus

Ending the Tune
Hand-signals or shout-out to return to head
Hand-signals to end
Rhythm section or lead horn will provide aural queues for ending

Charlie Christian
One of earliest electric guitarists
Member of late 30s Benny Goodman band & sextet
Early proponent of bop
Died of TB @ 25
This jam session is 1940, waiting for Goodman @ a CBS recording studio
Very difficult key

Ella Fitzgerald with... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WgloYX44F4
Open separate browser window to above URL
Slideshare doesn't support video AND audio tracks!!!
Roy Eldridge (trumpet)‏
Known as influence of Dizzy, Miles
Fierce session competitor
Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (tenor sax)‏
Hard bopper – Basie in the late 40s
Tommy Flanagan (piano)‏
Ella's accompanist
Well known bop pianist

Collaboration in Jam Sessions
Amherst Wilder Foundation's Collaboration Handbook – collaboration is...
Cooperation
Coordination

Cooperation (in Collaboration)‏
Cooperation
Support individual learning goals
Synchronous & asynchronous in member participation
Crowd/organization sourcing to solve individual problem
Akin to rhythm section support of solos (including “comping” & “head charts”)‏

Coordination (in Collaboration)‏
Coordination
Participants work together as a group to achieve a common goal.
Coordination maps to planning in product dev.
Akin to group decisions about tune form (start, end, tune selection, etc.)‏

As Applied to Agile
Scrum – tool for coordination
Not typically used for cooperation, i.e. Group-sourcing design problems
How do we encourage more & faster group interactions to solving real problems?
Mentoring as one methodology for group-sourcing
Akin to buddy-programming
Use of collaboration tools/infrastructure
Other resources/techniques?

Some Conclusions/Ideas
Self-directed teams are solution-enabled
More flexible
More incentive for creativity
Implications on hiring – senior is better
A Common Semiotics important
Support an active, documented oral tradition of semantic short cuts, processes, design tricks, etc.

Some Conclusions/Ideas
Common tools for
Creativity
Self-Management
Solution-finding tools
Collaboration acceleration is key
Coordination is pretty well covered in Agile methodologies – what about cooperation to solve design problems?

The Goal...
How do we get the rate of collaboration in jam session to product development?
Your chorus...fall in!

Allen Eager
1927 – 2003
Polymath
Bebop tenor sax; professional skier, race car driver, and artist; LSD w Timothy Leary
L to r:Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Allen Eager, Kai Winding

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Jazz as a Metaphor for Agile Management

by Charlie Berg on Sep 03, 2009

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