Warfighting Book Club – Week One

One of the best books on agile development or business agility is Warfighting, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication #1. It takes a little bit of work to translate from the military domain to the business domain, but it’s worth it, in much the same way that The Art of War is.

I recently led a book club / discussion group on Warfighting for a group of leaders (including both managers and individual contributors) at WP Engine.

I’m posting the leader’s notes and questions for anyone else that would like to lead their own discussion group. If you do, drop me a line and tell me how it went!

(Or, if you’re considering leading one and you’d like some guidance, I’d be happy to help!)

Warfighting Week One Leader’s Notes and Questions

[Page numbers and quotes are taken from Warfighting, MCDP 1, 2019 Edition]

• Sections:  War Defined – Friction – Uncertainty – Fluidity – Disorder – Complexity – The Human Dimension – Violence and Danger – Physical, Moral, and Mental Forces – The Evolution of War – The Science, Art, and Dynamic of War – Conclusion
  • The von Clausewitz quote at the beginning of the chapter (“Everything in war is simple…”) is pretty applicable to software / product development.
• Questions:
  • What does “war” have to do with “software development” or “Agile”?
  • If you substitute “development” in for “war”, what do you think of the intro?  “A common view of development among Corporate Marketing is a necessary base for the development of a cohesive doctrine because our approach to the conduct of development derives from our understanding of the nature of development.”
  • Product development is typically not violent, and the parties involved are not always hostile.  Is there anything from “War Defined” that seems to be applicable to web dev projects?  (“Not an inanimate object to be acted upon…”, bottom of 1-3)
  • “In this dynamic environment of interacting forces, friction abounds.” (1-5)  What types of friction have you / your teams experienced over the past month?
  • What is your response to uncertainty in development projects? 
    • Are development projects uncertain?  How so?  What sources of uncertainty bother you the most?
  • “The occurrences of [development] will not unfold like clockwork.  We cannot hope to impose precise, positive control over events.”  Do you believe that?  Why or why not?
    • What is the alternative?
    • This dovetails with Complexity (1-12), “Efforts to fully centralize [development] operations and to exert complete control by a single decisionmaker are inconsistent with the intrinsically complex and distributed nature of [development].”  How do stakeholders that want to be that “single decisionmaker” respond to finding out they can’t be?
    • There are two common responses to uncertainty, fluidity, and disorder in corporate settings:  impose order, or create systems that can respond to disorder.  What are the trade-offs involved?
  • Most of the parts about violence aren’t terribly applicable to what we do.  We’re not facing physical danger, causing destruction, and needing physical courage.  So, that said, how are things like courage, leadership, unit cohesion, and esprit applicable to development activities?
  • What do development projects depend on most:  science, art, or social dynamics?
    • “We thus conclude that the conduct of [development] is fundamentally a dynamic process of human [interaction] requiring both the knowledge of science and the creativity of art, but driven ultimately by the power of human will.”  Is that a reasonable paraphrase?
  • What else in this chapter resonated with you?