Thursday, June 23, 2011

Prodigal Change

One of the things you hear often in Agile transformations (and maybe IT in general) is to embrace change.  Overall, I have witnessed a good deal of acceptance of change throughout IT.  As a matter of fact, change is the reason I went into IT some 30 years ago.  However, when folks refer to embracing change, I believe they have a vision of  prodigal embrace.  If you're not familiar with the parable of the prodigal son and the embrace he receives from his father, here goes....

A man has 2 sons who ask him for their inheritance well before he is to die.  He divides much of his wealth between his two young sons.  The first son stays with him and helps run the farm.  The second son moves away from home and takes up partying as a serious hobby.  Soon he has spent his entire inheritance and has to take up work feeding someone's pigs.  He finally sucks it up and decides to go home and beg his father for mercy.  As his father sees him coming towards the house, he joyously runs out to greet him, says they will have a great party celebrating his return and gives him a huge hug.  You can read more about this at http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestorysummaries/p/prodigalson.htm.

So my parallel to the parable is that management often thinks of embracing change as this prodigal embrace...  We will be joyous, overlooking any past issues, and ready to welcome the new change in with open arms.  The parable about the prodigal son is meant to represent how an all loving God will welcome us if we turn to Him, no matter what things we've done in the past.  I am positive that management does not think of us as an all loving God, so I'm pretty sure the prodigal embrace of change is not meant to be applied to us.  We are humans, we are suspicious, unforgiving, territorial, and changes gives us the heeby jeebies.

We embrace change differently.  While we may take the messed up son back into the house, we will certainly keep an eye on him.  Heck, we may even lay down some ground rules before welcoming them back in the first place.  That doesn't mean we don't welcome the son back, it's just not a prodigal embrace.  If we all keep our expectations realistic, then we will be ready for change (it's coming whether we're ready or not).  Management should expect change to be welcomed in when it has met some of the basic ground rules and it won't be a trusted member of the household until it has proven itself.  i.e. change does not happen overnight.