Embrace Change...

One of the mantra's of the agile community is to embrace change. Instead of believing that the requirements or customer needs are static while you work a project, you have to assume that the world around us in constant flux. By embracing this concept instead of fighting it, we have a much different outlook on our job.

In line with this, an interesting story was published on Productivity501:

Years ago there was a millionaire who was getting old. He decided he wanted to provide for his heir, but he wanted to protect them from poor investments that would make them lose the fortune he had built up. He had his lawyer draft his will in a way that would provide for his heirs, but only allow his money to be invested in a reliable, solid industry. The industry he chose was electric street cars. Within a generation, his descendants were pumping gasoline at service stations.

The millionaire had good intentions, but he was short-sighted. His basic failure was that he didn’t expect change. He correctly assumed that people would always need cheap transportation. He incorrectly assumed that electric street cars would be around forever.

I guess we should all embrace change!