When I was helping to grow mNectar I was lucky enough to work with Artem Gregoryan. A fine CTO, Artem was very open minded about process, and was very pragmatic, in that he didn’t care what systems I wanted to use, as long as good things got done. I did a lot of web research into “flavors” of agile. I needed a system that was effective with the particular team dynamic of an early stage software startup, where everyone:
- is highly motivated
- is high performing
- is not rigid role oriented
This means process is about organization and mutual understanding, rather than command and control.
After watching hours of YouTube talks on software process, and reading too many “experts”, gurus, organizations and systems’ websites I thought, “I’ll just create my own parody system”. I decided to make a website that masqueraded as a non-profit advancing my process management philosophy, but it would only be a façade. An few slogans and clichés, some links to media about this I like, and an Amazon affiliate link (mostly for the irony of a non-profit with ads). Although I had learned a lot, many of these systems seemed largely hollow, like schemes or cults, not much more than could be summed up in a paragraph of text and a few slogans. I also used the site to play with ideas of camp software design and new technologies in css.
So what is Jiko Kanri, really?
A cultural program for high functioning teams of well motivated professionals, and a system for organizing their work. A set of principles for the system as a whole, and for the two roles (manager and worker) in that system. It’s basically a Kanban style queue model with a lot of Toyota quality focus ideas and some other bits of my personal agendas thrown in. I believed (and still do) that it is possible to organize and lead a team to do their best work, without being rigid and controlling. Jiko Kanri lays this out and forms a short, shallow manifesto of how I’d ideally work. And indeed, I have since been lucky enough to work in places where I’ve been allowed to put many of these ideas into action, to good effect, IMHO. I hope you laugh at it, but laugh because it’s true.
Check out the root page of this website (the one you’re on :P)
For much more, pease enjoy this slide deck, which gets into detail about what I was up to when I created the web site.