What Is Different About These Two Bikes?
Monotasking and Additive Versus Subtractive Solutions
- Can you spot the difference between the two bikes?
- What purpose do these bikes have in common?
Multitasking accelerates our eagerness towards additive solutions while monotasking supports subtractive thinking, research shows. This finding matters since adding rigid constraints to a complex system may make the system even more complex.
Subtractive thinking was always emphasized in agile. Simplicity was one of the four values in Kent Beck’s seminal Extreme Programming from the 90s. Further specified as, “the art of maximizing the amount of work not done,” it’s also one of the twelve principles in the Agile Manifesto, from 2001.
Faced with a problem, we may add something or remove something to make it work better. Solving by adding things often suffers from side effects we couldn’t imagine upfront. Especially when things are complex, that is, the relation between cause and effect can be understood only in hindsight.
While adding support wheels helps the child to balance the bike right now, the experience doesn’t resemble balancing a real bike. Removing the pedals often turns out to be more useful. To come up with subtractive solutions like the latter, your…
