Hillel, agile and the importance of golden rules
Every Passover at my Seder table, we tell the story of Rabbi Hillel, who comes up for two reasons. First, he invented the sandwich, which we commemorate by eating bitter herbs with matzoh, and second, for teaching an early version of the golden rule, which, as the story goes he gave in response to a challenge to teach all of the Torah while standing on one leg. His response was “What is hateful to you do not unto others, the rest is explanation, now go and study”. In technology, we have a lot of methodologies and tools to learn, ways of focusing and aligning people and teams, expressing requirements, and systems for bringing all these things together. New ones pop up all the time, and there’s alway someone who just read an article who wants to solve all the teams problems by applying this new magic solution. I have been one of those people for years. Always searching for the better way, looking for better ways of managing and aligning people on technology and product projects - sear