Talking to ... Jeff Sutherland (Audio)

Looking at many contemporary institutions, we can't help thinking
Modernity's secret goal lies in its organizational
irresponsibility. In the shadows, however, a revolution has
occurred where the individual doesn’t have to function as a cog
in the Wheelwork of a Machine. Instead, they’re given the freedom
to work in small, highly agile groups responsible for the
efficiency and quality of their product. Inspired by the novel
Toyota Production System of Teamwork (TPS) that Japanese engineer
Taiichi Ohno developed on the car manufacturer's factory floors,
this movement found its spirtitus rector in Jeff Sutherland - a
thinker whose Agile Manifesto (co-authored with Ken Schwaber in
2001) has promulgated this project management’s style in all
areas of life. And if you consider Sutherland is advocating a
method without methodology that’s essentially a staged form of
chaos, you immediately sense a highly unconventional spirit at
work here.


As a West Point graduate, Jeff Sutherland was deployed flying
reconnaissance over enemy territory in the Vietnam War – missions
that often cost his fellow pilots their lives. Then, as a young
statistician in Radiology, he was asked to apply his knowledge in
cancer cell research, where his expertise unexpectedly catapulted
the Stanford assistant professor into the financial industry.
Here he experienced the problems of a strictly top-down,
hierarchical management style and developed his idea of Scrum.
That is small groups of people who, like a deeply attuned Rugby
team, work out their interactions with each another - and in the
form of blind agreement – develop a step-by-step efficiency that
puts to shame everything designed to date. In this respect, it’s
no coincidence this idea has found its way into the modern
working world after becoming the startup world's undisputed
paradigm. And that’s precisely what an energetic 82-year-old Jeff
Sutherland tells us in his interview with Ex nihilo - the story
of a revolution set on a permanent course.


Life is What Happens To You While You’re Busy Making
Other Plans (John Lennon)


In German:


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