[SIGCIS-Members] [Ext] Re: CfP: „Flexibility“ and „Agility“ Strategies, Practices, and Ambivalences of a Key Concept since the 1980s

[LO*OP CENTER, INC.]

I just happened upon this thread and it has triggered some thoughts about
"workflow". I just read "Prediction Machines" by Agrawal, Gans, & Goldfarb.
They are discussing the introduction of AI-type software and assume that
there is a pre-existing process that will be partially replaced or changed.
Their AI Canvas
<https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TAJ2A4NvMLFi7b0mTvNyL1pMVRy84UhzhgcsXknhR2g/edit#slide=id.p1>
tool
ends with:

"How will this AI impact on the overall workflow?

Explain here how the AI for this task/decision will impact on related tasks
in the overall workflow. Will it cause a staff replacement? Will it involve
staff retraining or job redesign?"


This approach may be useful for large organizations that slide employees in
and out of defined jobs or for established organizations that do the same
process repeatedly. But for startups or innovation oriented groups nobody
really knows how to get to the goal. For myself and for my clients, I keep
running into the problem that there is no well-defined "workflow" to use as
a starting point for the design of a software tool. From one side, the
client has an intuitive notion that automation might help them with their
practice. From the other side the "full stack developer" knows that s/he
can implement from a set of requirements. Sadly nobody wants to do the work
of documenting the workflow so that a coherent requirements document can be
written.


What seems clear to me (and perhaps so obvious to all of you that it
doesn't bear repeating), is that Agile and similar productivity methods are
maximally useful in well-defined, repetitive situations. In new and/or
creative endeavors, trying to follow one of these methods can interfere
with a more playful flow (as compared to a 'workflow'). Trying to implement
the method can actually detract from focus on invention and impede the
'flow' of ideas.


Liza Loop

Vision Keeper, LO*OP Center, Inc. <http://www.loopcenter.org>






On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 12:55 PM Miriam Posner <miriam.posner at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks so much, Mar! I am actually on the list but missed this discussion.
> It's true, I have a piece on Agile coming out in LOGIC any day now,
> focusing on Agile as one in a line of management strategies to corral
> software labor. In my research, the best critique of Agile I discovered is
> Michael Eby's in the *New Left Review: *
> https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/129. There are many, many other
> critiques of Agile out there, but I thought Eby's was the most astute, in
> terms of its political analysis. You might also be interested in dorian
> taylor's "Agile as Trauma": https://doriantaylor.com/agile-as-trauma. Clive
> Thompson's *Coders* also has some useful information about Agile and its
> relationship to continuous deployment.
>
> For the piece, I interviewed quite a number of developers and other
> technical workers, and, looking at my notes, I see that many of them
> independently raised the issue of Agile's resemblance to Taylorism. This is
> perhaps counterintuitive, since Agile explicitly prioritizes workers'
> control over their work, but the developers I spoke to cited the reduction
> of tasks into small units ("user stories"), the universal visibility of
> everyone's progress, and the metrics ("story points") that have steadily
> calcified from worker-generated estimates to vehicles for surveillance
> (e.g., "velocity" dashboards). One developer told me that his
> disillusionment with Agile started when he described to his aunt, a lawyer,
> what happens in daily standup. She was appalled that a highly skilled
> professional was required to account for his every decision in such a
> granular way.
>
> There is much more work to do on Agile, in my opinion. For example, one
> section from my article that got left on the cutting-room floor was about
> the coevolution of Agile/lean methods of software development and the
> just-in-time model of factory production. (T*he Phoenix Project*, from
> 2018, is a weird novel about DevOps [for real] that makes this connection
> startlingly explicit.)
>
> Just some thoughts! Really interesting topic to think about.
>
> Miriam Posner
> Assistant Professor, Information Studies & Digital Humanities
> UCLA
>
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 1:54 PM Mar Hicks <mhicks1 at iit.edu> wrote:
>
>> Seconding Dave’s thoughts here, and I wanted to note that Prof. Miriam
>> Posner of UCLA (who may not be on this list) has a new piece coming out
>> about this in an upcoming LOGIC issue. It’s titled “Agile and the Long
>> Crisis of Software.”
>>
>> Best,
>> MH
>> ______________________
>> Mar Hicks, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of History of Technology
>> Humanities Department
>> Illinois Institute of Technology
>> marhicks.com
>>
>> *Programmed Inequality
>> <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality>: How Britain
>> Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing *(2017)
>> *Your Computer Is On Fire
>> <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-computer-fire> * (2021)
>>
>> On Mar 26, 2022, at 6:57 PM, Dave Foster <dwfoster1 at outlook.com> wrote:
>>
>> 
>> Luke
>>
>> Scrum and agile are absolutely new forms of Taylorism. This was not
>> original intent but it is what they have become in the corporate world, a
>> new universal program management religion that has gone far beyond software
>> development purposes. In school we studied the oldies of Gantt and PERT,
>> then in my working experience I have gone through various fashion waves
>> spanning TQM, Earned Value, Lean/Six Sigma, etc. crazes during their
>> respective heydays and most recently scrum/agile. We have spent a lot of
>> time over the years and continue to spend a good deal of planning time
>> setting up our stories, features, epics, etc. and working the plan.
>> Software development has always been a sub-task so I don't have any direct
>> experience with the comparative value on those types of projects - I've
>> always worked in higher levels of overall systems development where, IMO, a
>> waterfall or whatever is as good as anything else, thought this is heresy
>> in the scrum/agile. I think it is the organizational pressure to institute
>> a consistent framework, which is certainly a fair objective. But to me, the
>> framework has never made any difference - we are fundamentally tracking
>> progress and dollars. Note, my experience has been on technical development
>> projects in the Defense Dept and in private sector consulting.
>>
>> I don't have any specific references in mind. I think that you may find
>> that the primary challenges to the way of scrum & agile come from outside
>> the software development world where, nevertheless, the concepts have been
>> enthusiastically adopted and adapted.
>>
>> Best/Dave
>> Texas Tech University (PhD student) and Accenture AI
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Luke
>> Fernandez <luke.fernandez at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, March 26, 2022 12:44
>> *To:* Schmitt, Martin <martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de>
>> *Cc:* Sigcis <members at sigcis.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [SIGCIS-Members] CfP: „Flexibility“ and „Agility“
>> Strategies, Practices, and Ambivalences of a Key Concept since the 1980s
>>
>> What an interesting conference. And what interesting questions it poses!
>> For example, this one on page 5 of the CFP:
>>
>> "How did agile software development shape the concepts of work and
>> employment?"
>>
>> If anyone from this listserv has some cites that speak to this question
>> I'd be psyched if you shared a few.
>>
>> I make no claims to know anything about this subject apart from recently
>> finishing Cal Newport's *A World Without Email *where he touches on
>> these concerns.  Among other things, Newport wishes for a productivity
>> revolution in knowledge work.  And he thinks that it might happen if we
>> replace email with some of the productivity tools and techniques that are
>> used in software development like kanban boards and scrum and agile work
>> processes.  He insists that this can happen without knowledge work
>> suffering the same forms of
>> regimentation/acceleration/dehumanization/surveillance that happened to
>> many forms of manual labor with the implementation of Taylorism and Fordism
>> (cf. page 119).  But how plausible are Newport's claims?  Are scrum and
>> agile new forms of Taylorism?  Or are they something altogether different?
>> Is it even helpful to view these techniques through the lens of Taylorism?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Luke Fernandez
>> Weber State University
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 8:23 AM Schmitt, Martin <
>> martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de> wrote:
>>
>> Dear SIGCIS,
>>
>> We will host a conference on „Flexibility“ and „Agility“: Strategies,
>> Practices, and Ambivalences of a Key Concept since the 1980s (together with
>> Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF),
>> Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg
>> (HSU), SPP 2267 “The Digitalization of Working Worlds. Conceptualising and
>> Capturing a Systemic Transformation.“). Keynote speaker is Richard Sennett.
>> Date: 17/18 November 2022
>> Location: Darmstadt
>> You will find the call for paper here(
>> https://www.geschichte.tu-darmstadt.de/flexibility
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.geschichte.tu-darmstadt.de/flexibility__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!7sGpzhf1Qw30f4UTimKQ8Tk8T0a9Y0f9OQw6SCuqmqL6IgPuZvKwlO5JU4M29uo$>).
>> Please submit your proposed papers by 30 May 2022.
>>
>>
>> For the SIGCIS community, especially the parts on agility/software
>> programing and digital automation are the most interesting one.
>>
>> Best
>> Martin
>>
>> Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter | Post-Doc | digital enthusiast
>>
>> Technische Universität Darmstadt
>> Institut für Geschichte
>> Fachgebiet Technikgeschichte
>>
>> Mail: martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de
>> Tel: +49  6151-16-57327
>> http://www.computerisierung.com
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.computerisierung.com__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!7sGpzhf1Qw30f4UTimKQ8Tk8T0a9Y0f9OQw6SCuqmqL6IgPuZvKwlO5JphCCEh4$>
>>
>> &
>>
>> Assoziierter Wissenschaftler
>> LEIBNIZ-ZENTRUM FÜR ZEITHISTORISCHE FORSCHUNG | POTSDAM
>>
>> Vice Chair IFIP WG 9.7 „History of computing“
>>
>> Zuletzt erschienen: *Die Digitalisierung der Kreditwirtschaft*. Computereinsatz
>> in den Sparkassen der Bundesrepublik und der DDR 1957-1991, Göttingen:
>> Wallstein-Verlag 2021,
>> https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/9783835333710-die-digitalisierung-der-kreditwirtschaft.html
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/9783835333710-die-digitalisierung-der-kreditwirtschaft.html__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!7sGpzhf1Qw30f4UTimKQ8Tk8T0a9Y0f9OQw6SCuqmqL6IgPuZvKwlO5JLr9b4Jw$>
>>
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-- 
Liza Loop
Executive Director, LO*OP Center, Inc.
Guerneville, CA 95446
www.loopcenter.org
650 619 1099 (between 8 am and 10 pm Pacific time only please)
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