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God is an Agilist or Agile is God-Supported™
I was raised Catholic and sometimes a neuron fires that brings back memories. Hence:
An agile reading of The Creation Story from Genesis (King James Version):
Day 1: God said “Let there be light” and there was light. God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Day 2: God made Heaven.
Day 3: God made dry land, which he called Earth, while He called the waters the Seas. On the land, he created grass, herbs, and fruit trees.
Day 4: God made the Sun to rule the day, the Moon to rule the night, and the stars to accompany the Moon.
Day 5: God created every living creature that moveth. The waters brought them forth and the winged fowl flew above the earth.
Day 6: God created Man (Adam).
Day 7: God took the day off.
Later God let Adam name the animals, but Adam still felt alone.
With this new information [from God’s newest customer], God created Woman from Man.
——————————————–
In hindsight, it seems more obvious now that God did some of his tasks “out of order”. God wasn’t bothered that he created light three days before he created the the source of the light (the sun) or that evening and morning came and went before the sun and moon were there to mark them. God didn’t care that he made plants use sunlight yet there wasn’t a sun yet. Details. And one would think that since man and woman use mostly the same specs and parts that it would have made sense to make them at the same time, but God, the agilest, doesn’t roll that way*.
God’s process didn’t try to take on everything at once. God didn’t try to look too far into the future. He took each part of His project one step at a time and shifted priorities as new requirements were presented such as all the plants dying and Adam wanting someone to be with. God simply enjoyed each part of the project as it was happening, adding features as the “user” required them.It seems to me that God used a fairly agile approach when creating the Earth and He did an alright job, regardless of what we’ve done with His project today.
It may be a stretch, but it’s still fun for a Friday.
* note: sacrilege added by Ben
This entry was posted by Scott Vlaminck on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Agile Processes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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This post strikes a unique balance of being able to potentially piss off Christians (sacrilege) and non-Christians (too God-y) alike. Nice job! ;) ...on December 8th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
I actually think that the plants wouldn’t necessarily start dying without the sun being around. I don’t think photosynthesis was added to plants until AFTER the sun was created - there was no need for it. I didn’t see it in the story definition, so there was no need to create plants that needed the sun.
And “out of order” is something that you have created in your mind. There was no order, but the order that was. Night and day, moon and sun, the two weren’t tied together at first - that too was added later. Just because we cannot really have one without the other now has no bearing on the way it was back then when the project started. Remember, no project will be the same at the end as it was originally imagined.
...on December 8th, 2006 at 5:16 pmGood stuff. This is a very insightful view of an agile process. This sort of anti-linear and detail lacking approach can be seen on most projects today as well as projects from the past during the Great Waterfall (or Sashimi) era of software development. The above mentioned paragon can also be witnessed today in natural processes like adaptation, even if there are details yet to be discovered. Order and laws is dificult paradigm to break free from.
This is also a good reminder that we each see our world based on not only our own experiences, but also based on our trained mind (a.k.a. vocation).
...on December 28th, 2006 at 11:43 pm