Agility and Joy: Joshua Kerievsky

YC: All right, wonderful. Well, welcome Joshua to the podcast. How are you?

JK: Great. Thank you so much for having me, Yadi.

YC: Yeah. I just recently read, recommended by one of the co-authors of the Agile Manifesto, John Kern, your book The Joy of Agility. And I've certainly enjoyed it as a person who's, trying to do agile transformations right now in an organization. I truly enjoyed all the items that you cover in the book, and I wanna talk about that. But first, for the audience to get to know you ion terms of why did you decided to dedicate your career to technology and in that particular field?

JK: Well, yeah, I, I kind of fell into it 'cause my father got into software, you know, early on, back in the sixties. And, uh, that's how he supported our family. So, you know, we were introduced to software really early on and, um, became, uh, a big, I mean, I just enjoyed it. Um, and, and I never really lost that love of, of software. So, uh, yeah, it was kind of a natural.

YC: And when it came to agility, how did you became interested setting up, approaching to software and development from an agile approach?

JK: Yeah, I mean, so I'd been programming since the, you know, even late seventies, early eighties. I was a little kid, but I, you know, I was programming quite a bit. And then, um, by the time that, you know, the mid nineties came around, um, and a little bit later we started experimenting with these lighter weight methods, which were different from Waterfall. And it, it was, you know, starting to be loosely called lightweight methods instead of the big heavyweight methods. And that, that eventually became called Agile in 2001. And really, that was what got me so inspired, is that we could do more with less, we could, you know, have a better fitting approach to software development and all the risks involved. And extreme programming was one of the major inspiring, um, processes that came along that really just took on the biggest risks in software development and, and just took 'em on head, head on, like, like, we know what risks there are, and many of them, not all of them, you know, I think Lean Startup came along and other things later that addressed more of the product oriented, uh, risks. However that really inspired me. And I really just got deeply behind this, this agile movement and from the earliest days. Yeah.

YC: And let's dig deeper into the specific things that made it a different from, um, waterfall to a lightweight, uh, approach. What were some of the key differences that, or on your approach that of both methods?

JK: You know, I mean, I had experienced doing big upfront design, you know? I did plenty of, I worked at a bank on Wall Street, and, um, I have to say, you know, we built software and it worked. It wasn't a disaster. It, actually worked. You know, it was, it was a lot of time spent analyzing and coming up with designs and trying to figure out what could go wrong and how could we make the design work. And, uh, but, you know, we hadn't written any code yet. So it was a lot of time really doing that upfront, you know, analysis and design followed eventually by the coding and the testing and processes, like, uh, extreme programming kind of changed that completely. It said, you know, we have to know what we're trying to produce for a business outcome, but let's get started building something sooner and let's evolve it. So evolutionary design was a huge part of this. And, and the, probably the biggest insight there was that you don't always know what your customers want you to build. And sometimes when you don't, it's better to just start building something and keep showing them iterations of it and keep evolving based upon their feedback, rather than trying to get it all upright upfront.

YC: Yeah. And, uh, when it comes to have, or what, I'm sure you have found many naysayers or people that say, oh, this is not gonna work. What has been some of the concerns with taking that particular approach throughout your career?

JK: I mean, everyone is worried all the time, right? People are always, you know, they're worried. Any new idea that comes along, any new different, anything that's different from their experience is almost like a threat. Right? So what I try to do is help people get into a, a sort of experimental mindset, whereas, you know, where you can safely try new things, and you can always go back to the old way, but if you acknowledge that maybe the current way isn't perfect. That it could be better, then wouldn't you want to try a couple of ways of working that could potentially make, make you much more effective? You know, that's the willingness to have an open mindset is, is really critical for trying to adopt new ways of working. So that's, that's where it first begins, is are you even open to like, experimenting and learning

YC: Yeah. And I like, uh, what you address a lot in the book, The Joy of Agility, um, about taking that approach to different areas of life, basically first, why do you decided to write that book?

JK: Yeah. Joy of Agility. Um, I, I really wanted to help the, um, help people understand what agile really means and understand it from the point of view of agility exists in many human endeavors. It's not a software thing. Uh, it, you know, a lot of us are in the tech field, think of it as this tech thing, but if you look back at, you know, other movements and other things that happened in other domains, um, there's a lot of similarities, a lot of you know, common stuff. So really, I started looking at the definition of the word agile. Just the word, the word itself, the word has never been coupled to software, specifically. It's a word agile, to be, uh, characterized by having a quick, resourceful and adaptable, um, character or, or being able to move with quick, easy grace.
These are definitions that are in the dictionary about Agile. So, you know, what I've seen is that there's been a very formulaic framework based sort of rituals and roles approach to learning to be agile. And I found that to be less than, um, effective in terms of becoming agile. It's sort of like, let me just follow the playbook and I'll be agile. Whereas in my experience, it's great to know about practices. It's great to know about processes, even frameworks are fine, but you're guided by the spirit of agility. Like, what does it mean to be agile? And if you understand what it means to be agile, then you can look at certain practices or experiment with things to see, does this make me more agile or not? Does this make me more poised to adapt? Does this make me more resourceful? Does this make me quicker rather than being hasty? Right. And so the book is trying to point that, if you really wanna be agile, here's these mantras that are critical to agility. And I don't care if you're a surgeon, a teacher, a lawyer, a software maker, that's what agility is.

YC: Yeah. I like that very much in the sense of, uh, yes, that's association, um, of agility now with software development. And just thinking that throughout time we as humans have, have had that skillset or the possibility of developing that skill. And you talk about mantras and one thing that stood out from the book, uh, when you mentioned the concept of Wabi Sabi, I think, what, could you explain a little bit about that?

JK: Sure. Uh, I was introduced to that concept by Ward Cunningham, and if you don't know who Ward Cunningham created the Wiki. And so we wouldn't have Wikipedia without Ward. Um, and when I first encountered Ward's Wiki, which was back in the 1990s, um, I was in my apartment in New York City, and, uh, I looked at this website and it had this very kind of faded, grayed out, um, logo for the Wiki website. And I was like, this website's super cool, but man, that, that guy does not know how to make a nice looking graphic <laugh>. Little did I know, you know, he was going for that Wabi-sabi look. And so, as I got to know Ward, um, I had then understood it, the light bulb went off. And, uh, I read Wabi Sabi. Wabi-Sabi is this wonderful book that talks about, you know, imperfections and how the imperfections are actually sought after.
Like, you, you're not trying to make perfection perfect, uh, cutlery or perfect dishes. You know, you're shaping something on a, uh, you know, with, with your hands with clay. And, and it's okay to have a few, you know, uh, minor defects or things like that. Uh, you know, it adds to the charm. So Wabi-Sabi kind of goes along with agile and says, we're not shooting for perfection here. We're shooting to get things done. Get people, you know, using stuff. And if, if refinements are needed, great, we'll add them. But, you know, don't try to make perfection from the beginning 'cause it's too slow, and it's often not even what people want it in the first place.

YC: Yeah. That's great. And embracing that idea of like, Hey, it's okay. It's, it doesn't have to be perfect. It takes, it takes discipline on our end to kind of be, be sure like, okay, we're experimenting, we're releasing, or we're, we're just trying new things. So that's a great concept. And I also, um, in the book you mentioned as well, talk a little bit about organized chaos in terms of agility as organized chaos. That for us who want to be controlling things and making sure things follow certain processes or steps is a little bit, uh, difficult to accept. How would you describe in terms of agility as organized chaos?

JK: Yeah, I mean,  I think that there's, you know, what, what we, what we see is that, um, companies like there, there was a company mentioned, um, in this wonderful Harvard article called the New Product Development Process and so that was why the Birth of Scrum, because in that article, that pivotal article, they mentioned the scrum, metaphor and they mentioned, I think it's a, it's a Japanese company. I don't wanna get the name wrong, but, um, it might be Hitachi. In any event, they would basically give a team a very, uh, challenging goal. Not tell 'em how to do it, but just give them a really challenging goal and say, Hey, however you want to go about it, go for it. But this is what we want to accomplish. And so, you know, that's really letting go of the reigns.
It's, it's giving the empowering people to sort of go after that particular problem and not telling 'em how to do it. You know? So there's a, there's a degree to which you, some people would feel like that's chaotic. They, they shouldn't We give them a process to follow, shouldn't we, you know, <laugh> make sure they're doing exactly how we want it to be done. Uh, now let's talk about, like, I, I've just been reviewing a case study. We're writing, um, there's companies, clients of ours that have to get like, uh, FDA audits. Mm-hmm. They get audited by the FDA in America. Mm-hmm. Now there's other entities that are similar around the world. Okay, well, that's more constraints, right? You can't just let anyone do anything. If they have to follow certain procedures to make sure the FDA is happy, then great. Right? So there's a spectrum of, you know, how much leeway you can give a team, but in general, agile methods tend to delegate more and more of it down to the, to the individuals doing the work.

YC: And embracing organized chaos is, um, certainly the, the concept about losing control. Um, it's certainly a skillset that we wanna develop as well. And you've also, in agility, you've talked about, uh, the testing of ideas, not losing necessarily the control. And in terms of when I hear about Agile usually is, the statement of fail fast soon or fail fast forward, or just the idea of failing. And you mentioned, it is important to fail fast, but don't rush. How, how do you reconcile in terms of like the, the speed with the how do we know we're not necessarily rushing?

JK: Yeah. So like, this is really super important and this, when, when I say mantras that I, you know, you talk about this book and all that. It's like, these, these live with me now every day. Okay. I mean, every day to some, I am thinking about like, am I being quick here or am I hurrying? Whether that's like dashing off an email or finishing a proposal or, or even a, a conversation with someone, you know, in my organization, I'm trying to ask myself, am I being quick or am I hurrying? Because when you hurry and rush, you, you make mistakes. Now, um, some mistakes are costly and some are not costly at all. If I write a bad sentence and then I rewrite it, Hey, big deal. I made some, like, I didn't write the greatest sentence. That's nothing. It's actually good.
It's a good failure. It's a fast failure. I used to like, I like to like write stuff out quickly, get it out, and then I can look at it and go, oh, that's terrible. Let me rewrite that. Right? So that's failing fast, and it's failing safely. There's no risks there when you rush and hurry. However, you can really harm yourself. Uh, in a workshop in Sydney, Australia, I, I asked, a group of people like, you know, what's, what's an example of where found yourself hurrying and rushing, and then you had to pay the, the results, the consequences of that. And one individual said, well, one morning I took my motorcycle out of the garage, and, and then I had to go back in the garage to get something. And I sort of quickly, I rushed in terms of putting the, uh, um, what is it, the, something that holds up the, the, the motorcycle.
Right. Some stoops, some little thing. He kicked it, and, but he didn't kick it all the way down in the right spot. So the the motorcycle fell on his leg. And it broke his leg. And then he spent, he spent about the next 10 years before the, the leg was really back to where it had been. Oh, wow. 10 years for just rushing one morning. Um, that stuck with me quite a bit, that story, you know, and, and I, I am, you know, it's inspired, be quick, but Don't Hurry. Is is completely a mantra that the, the, the, the famous basketball coach John Wooden, used to use every single day, every single day, multiple times a day with his players to have world class, uh, U C L A basketball players. He would teach them the difference between being quick and hurrying, and he'd blow his whistle anytime he caught them hurrying on the basketball court during practice or rushing. He wanted them to play quickly without hesitation. Beautiful quick flow. 
But they weren't reckless, they weren't doing things that were really risky. It was a really well practiced quickness. He would call it quickness, under control.
So that's kind of what we shoot for. And, um, that is a profound influence on my life decisions, all kinds of decisions. Even if I'm backing up in my car and I don't wanna run someone over mm-hmm. Okay. Don't hurry and rush here. Right. Its profound and it, it, it's a part of agility. Being quick is a part of agility. It is not equal to agility. You have to have the other dimensions as well, you know, ease and quick and grace or, or resourcefulness and adaptability go along with quickness. So never mistake agility for quickness. They're not the same thing.
YC: Yeah. Interesting that you mentioned that I'm very important to emphasize, particularly when you, mentioned doing things gracefully as well.

JK: Yes, yes. That word grace is interesting because I, I'm like a, almost like a etymologist at some point. I, I gotta understand this word. What does this word mean? Grace. And there are many definitions, but what I'm interested in is what, what, how it's defined in terms of being, being supple. Like, if you sit in a certain seat that's supple, it'll, it'll take different shapes and it'll accommodate that. And so to be graceful is to be adaptable. You're, you're very quickly adaptable to different situations when you're graceful. So they're very well connected.

YC: Yeah. And what are some of the other mantras that you've, uh, live with every day?

JK: Another one is be poised to adapt. And that is, uh, very, very important. If you're going to be agile, like you, you have to be adaptable. Right. Adaptable is a different word from agile. If you're just adaptable it doesn't necessarily mean you're agile. Because agile adds that element of quickness. That you're, you're able to adapt quickly. Some, some things take a long time to adapt. Yeah. Um, I'm imagine today if blockbusters started streaming, you know, <laugh>, I think. 
It's like, okay, you finally got to it, you adapted. Awesome. Yeah. <laugh>,
It took a while. You're not agile because you would've done that like really quickly after learning about Netflix. Um, so be poised to adapt really means to be ready to be in a state of equilibrium, a state where you're ready to adapt. You're not like caught off guard and have to adapt. You are prepared to adapt. And usually that takes work. Right? That means that you've done the pre-work to be in such a state. That should some change come along. Okay. We can deal with this gracefully. We can, we're poised to adapt. Now, the word poise means to be in a state of equilibrium. And that brings us to another mantra, which is be balanced and graceful.
John Wooden would say, you cannot be quick if you're not in balance. To be in balance means not just physical balance. John Wooden would say you need mental balance, you need emotional balance, you need physical balance. And then we need balance on our team. We need a balance in terms of our offense and our defense. We need a balance in terms of the size of our players, uh, you know, and then take that to business. And it's like, do we have a gender balance on our team? Do we have, uh, a balance in terms of people's backgrounds and cultures? Right. Um, so we're not just homogeneous right. Because we can find better results when we're diverse. Right. I, I grew up in New York City, I'm really accustomed to that, balance, hugely important. And, and really quickness is impossible without balance.
So to be balanced and graceful is a pretty hard, you know, it's a great thing to aim for. These mantras are not easy, like they're Yeah. Balancing. Um, but I, you know, I think about 'em a lot, especially when I'm dealing with people. How can I, if I'm not, if I'm unbalanced, let's say I'm, I'm pissed off or angry about something, and then I'm talking to somebody, let's say a client or at work, I'm probably not gonna be at the top of my game. John Wooden would say to have champions. If you come on the basketball court and you just had a huge fight with someone, you're unbalanced emotionally or mentally, physically, you may be in balance, but you know, you're not balanced. So it, our state of being really impacts our performance. So be balanced and graceful is another really important mantra. Um, there's some others, uh, there's one called Start Minimal and Evolve.
And that goes back to a little bit of what we talked about earlier, which is the Wabi-sabi type thing. The, let's start with something imperfect. Yeah. And let's evolve it over time based upon learning. Uh, one of my favorite mantras in the book is at the end of the book, and it's called Be Readily Resourceful. Okay.
And that means to be, to be resourceful is to be clever and quick at solving problems. Now, to be readily resourceful readily means to do something without hesitation. Okay. So it's not like you have to sit and wait to be resourceful. It's like you are immediately resourceful. And this is of course, like, you know, a superhuman. Uh, these mantras, again, are like, you know, you shoot for them, you'll probably never reach 'em perfectly, but to be readily resourceful means you are without hesitation finding ways to quickly and easily solve problems, that's a tremendous, uh, benefit to us. And it's something that, you know, we shoot for.

YC: Yeah. I love all those mantras that you have and that you mentioned throughout the book in terms of those are things to live for that to help us develop the skill. Um, become certainly is a, always seems like a work in progress as we try to become agile.

JK: That's right.

YC: When it comes to a, in a work environment, uh, as individuals said, we can adopt mantras to approach things, but when it comes to a work environment where you work with a team, uh, and you're trying to instill some of those ideas, what are some of your recommendations for that? 

JK: Well, okay. I neglected to speak about one other mantra in the book, which is from W Edwards Demming. And that is drive out fear. Okay. So if you're working with people in an organization, chances are they're afraid. They're afraid of changes. They're afraid of new things coming along. They're afraid of losing control. Um, and so drive out Fear is an incredible mantra for this because it, it really is focused on how can we create an environment in which people aren't afraid to maybe try a new way, maybe try something not, not be afraid, not like really, truly, um, be maybe excited to, to, to try it rather than afraid that you're, you're imposing something on them or that, you know, and that goes back to that control. Do they have the control to say yes or no to you?
Am I gonna try this or not? You know, I mean, ultimately it is up to them instead of it being forced onto them. Um, so driving out fear really important, I think for, um, helping to, helping to begin, you know, a change in an organization. I think there's a variety of ways to make changes in organizations. There are, let's make little progress. Sometimes Little progress is all you can do. The organization is ginormous and they won't tolerate big changes. So the best you can do is little changes. And that's great. Other times, and it doesn't necessarily relate to the size of the organization, but other times you could put together a bunch of different things and say, why don't we try all of this stuff with a pilot team, instead of a little bit at a time, we're gonna take on like, Hey, 10 new different ways of working, um, from how we do product to how we do planning, to how we do development. All the, there's gonna be changes across all of those dimensions, and we're gonna just try it, and we'll try it for three months and, uh, see how it goes. And if it's a disaster, we won't do it again. But if it works, well, maybe we'll learn something from it. Maybe we can apply it elsewhere. Yeah. Now that's typically, and then I, I wanna make sure that we're not compelling anyone to do that. We're asking them, do you wanna try this?
YC: When I ask in regards to that as well, the, the driving out fear and trying things, um, is there a particular, um, approach that you suggest to that when you find naysayers or, um, people hesitant to just even make the little changes?

JK: Yeah. So sometimes if I could least at least get 'em into like a five day workshop or some relatively large workshop where they can experience it, right. A simulation of it or something that really gets them to experience, you know, what this new world looks like compared to what they're doing today, that can really help, the light bulbs can start to go off. I mean, in the ideal case, you're inspiring people to want to make this change. And, you know, we find that really excellent training can, can help with that by inspiring people, by getting them to, you know, understand, Hey, you know what, now I get it. The way we've been working is leading to a lot of, like, delays and a lot of, uh, defects and a lot of challenges that don't necessarily need to be there if we did it this other way. So, you know, that's, that, that's kind of helping them along in a short amount of time to just at least get the light bulb to go off and, and maybe, you know, get 'em inspired to try something new.

YC: Yeah. That's great. And inspiration, very important. So it kind of, um, as you mentioned, like the light bulb goes off and we can start connecting those ideas to our ownenvironments. Um, before we go, I wanna ask you as well, in terms of, um, what other advice you have for people, any particular resources, recommendations when it comes to just adopting the Agile mindset or the agility as a skill that you mentioned?

JK: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, uh, it's wonderful if you can find a really great agile coach. I I play tennis and I have a coach and I'm, and I've had, you know, coaches throughout my life. 'cause I find that, you know, uh, in Joy of Agility, um, I mentioned this through the story of, um, Atul Gawande. Atul Gawande wrote a numerous books. He's a world famous surgeon. He wrote the Checklist Manifesto. He's written a bunch of other incredible books. And he said at some point in a, in a TED Talk, you know, why is it that just athletes have coaches? Why don't other people have coaches? And he started looking, and it turns out other people do have coaches. You know, uh, uh, the famous violinist, Yak Perlman, turns out his coach is his wife, who also went to Julliard, but decided not to go into performances and instead became his coach.
So she, you know, she's there helping him refine things and looking at his performances and all that. Um, and, and so having a coach is great. I've, I've had tennis coaches for years. They really helped me improve. So, to me, if you can find a wonderful group of coaches or a single coach, whatever it is, you know, find your gurus and, and learn from them. I'd love it if you read Joy of Agility bcause I think that that is a, a book for a lot of people to really understand what Agile means and to perhaps get them outta the thoughts that it's just my technical things or, or to software related. Um, I think LinkedIn, for example, is a great, uh, place to go to ask questions and to learn about agility from so many experts that are out there, and people that have, you know, learned a lot over the years and could share what they've learned. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of, uh, great ways to, to approach this. My friend Jim Highsmith wrote a new book called Wild West to Agile, and Okay. That is, um, a wonderful historical, you know, accounting of how we went from the primitive early days of, of software, you know, to where we are today. Um, so if you're looking at a historical view and wanna see why did Agile come along in the first place, yeah. You know, you'll understand why it came along in the software field.

YC: Interesting. Thank you for all those recommendations. And I Absolutely with LinkedIn, that's how I, connected with you. So it's, uh, um, it's a great resource as well. And, um, in terms of, if people want to find out more about you and highly recommend, I highly recommend the book as well. If just people have questions for you, what's the best way to reach you?

JK: Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm available on our website, industriallogic.com. You can go to the portion of the menu called company. And find me in the, in the bios there. I'm there. And that's an easy way to fill out a form and it'll go to me. That's probably the easiest. But you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm also on, I'm on X, it's hard to call it X, not Twitter. Um, <laugh>. And, uh, I, I'm pretty active on, on LinkedIn though more so than X <laugh> these days.

YC: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Joshua, for your time and your expertise and for being here, uh, with me on the show today.

JK: Thank you, Yadi. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Thank, appreciate you inviting me.