A little knowledge can be dangerous, and can scale dangerously well

For some folks, agile ways of working have a bad reputation. There is hype out there, and expectations from business leaders can be sky high. Also, let’s face it, the profession of scrum master, agile coach or product owner is just like every other that has ever existed, in that a percentage of those involved are just bad at it.
If you’ve ever worked with a team or an organisation that can’t get agile practices right, or that does it in a half-arsed way, then you might be forgiven for thinking agile practices are to blame. However, I believe there is a bias at play in that interpretation, and I also believe that that bias scales very well to form something called a hype cycle.
A bias operating at scale can be a dangerous thing. In this post, I’ll argue that by being aware of it, agile practitioners should be able to help teams and organisations be more grounded in reality. (Don’t believe the hype!)

This post starts with a story. Many years ago, I went to France to study and lucky me, I was stationed in the Champagne region. Woohoo!
Before departing Irish shores, I was full of the special brand of piss and vinegar reserved for the young and the foolish. Fluent in French I was, sure hadn’t I studied it for seven years!
After landing on French soil, I made my way on the train to Reims. So far, so good, confidence brimming. This was a doddle!
Then, the taxi. I needed to give an address of ‘rue Pierre Taittinger 55.” But, much to my — and the taxi driver’s — confusion, I couldn’t make myself understood… Suddenly, my confidence collapsed… for there was no Google Translate in 1997! This was a blocker! I was going to be homeless! Or I’d have to turn around and get back onto a plane home… for shame!
Luckily the taxi driver took my piece of paper from me and read it: “ah, Taittinger!” he exclaimed (saying exactly what I had said previously, but with emphasis on a different syllable. Harrumph!) He promptly drove me to where I needed to go, and I felt like a right lemon.
The point of this story is that, prior to this moment, I was suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. This effect can be summed up with the phrase “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” or when someone has “just enough knowledge to be dangerous”.

With this effect, psychologists can demonstrate that, in general, people tend to overestimate their abilities, even in domains where they are below average.
In addition, the paradox with this effect is that, as people learn more about a particular domain, we tend to lose that confidence. Perhaps we realise the scope of the learning that remains… Then, as our experience and breadth of knowledge grows over time, we steadily regain that confidence once more. However, this effect highlights the fact that it is quite easy to mistake confidence for knowledge.
Imagine a newly minted scrum master, fresh off the 2-day CSM course. Do they have ‘just enough knowledge to be dangerous?’. Well, it depends on the person of course, and the experience that they have accumulated prior to taking the course. However, it is not too difficult to imagine a scenario where the 2-day CSM course might create an agile monster, suffering from over-confidence and an alarming lack of knowledge. Welcome to Mount Stupid!

If you’ve ever learned a foreign language, hopefully you can relate to the Dunning-Kruger effect moment of my story. That moment of helplessness when you are unable to communicate. The stunning awareness of an obvious gap in our vocabulary. The revelation of ignorance, to a stranger or in a public place perhaps. These are abject lessons in humility, and can plunge you into the valley of despair!
Interestingly enough, humility is a wonderful trait for an agile practitioner or a scrum master to have, but that’s by the by.
The wonderful thing about the Dunning-Kruger effect though, is that it scales supremely well. Gartner’s Hype Cycle for application development describes this effect at large. With limited information available, people’s expectations of technology or practices can become entirely ridiculous, and fast!
Gartner believes that these expectations reach a zenith at the wonderfully named ‘peak of inflated expectations’. In 2016, that is exactly where ‘Enterprise class Agile Development’ was perched. Ouch.

However, there is hope. With Gartner’s hype cycle, all we have to do, over time, is carry on building knowledge and expertise, and keep ourselves grounded in reality. Practically, this means journeying out of the ‘trough of disillusionment’ until we eventually reach a ‘plateau of productivity’.
To me, this feels very much Dunning-Kruger at scale.

I believe this is relevant to agile practitioners, because all of us are at some point on our own Dunning-Kruger journey with agile practices, and so are the people we work with. In addition, when we work with a teams or organisations, we have to expect that they are on their own hype cycle when it comes to agile practices. Perhaps they are disillusioned with scrum because of past experiences? Or perhaps they are already productive?
Imagine our newly minted scrum master with just enough knowledge to be dangerous, using scrum or agile practices inappropriately with a team. This could seriously impact that team’s position on the hype cycle when it comes to agile practices, and get them disillusioned pretty quickly.
I believe a scrum master or agile practitioner should be aware of their own learning journey, and also that a little knowledge really can be a dangerous thing.
It’s also up to a scrum master or agile coach to understand where a team or an organisation is on their hype cycle with agile practices, and to understand the context of how they got there. Awareness of this journey, and how it operates at scale, might just help us to learn more, and to help teams emerge from disillusionment with agile.
Did you find this post useful? If so, or if you have any questions, please let me know. It would be great to start a conversation on this topic. Please feel free to respond or comment. Do you have experience with the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Do you think this post was a load of hype?
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