Kerry Buckley wrote a great post that made me laugh and think.

When people talk about large organisations making major changes to their core processes or values, sooner or later someone will compare the process to steering a supertanker – if you turn the wheel now, you’ll have travelled quite a distance before there’s any noticable change in course.

This analogy falls down when you’re trying to introduce agile software development. If you want to be agile, a supertanker just won’t do the job any more. It’s time for small teams to jump into the lifeboats and set off in their own directions, leaving the heavy old legacy systems to continue their progress on their predictable course. The lifeboats are far nimbler and can react much quicker to changing conditions.

I rather like the visual of agile teams racing around in swifter craft (though I would perhaps not have chosen the lifeboat, perhaps a hovercraft?) encircling and aiding the larger, more lumbering ships. We have been drawn to work with smaller companies and less entrenched processes because we saw good opportunities to connect and create some early successes. What Kerry’s analogy made me think about, however, is that nimble teams and new perspectives can be welcome in any fleet and that there is opportunity for cooperation and accomplishment in large companies looking to react and perhaps capitalize on speed just like the little guys.