"Shortly", for some definition of "shortly." ;) I am speaking at the NDC conference in Oslo this week, watch for that link. We'll have more posted toward the end of the summer. /\ndy

Sure we can still lose our way. The problem is that the manifesto can easily be mis-interpreted and mis-applied. We see that happen all the time. The folks authoring that "spew" likely think they are, in fact, honoring the manifesto. Alas, they are not.

I think there are certainly similarities, as you'll find in any Lean/Agile approach. But there are some important differences, for instance, the PDCA cycle starts at the wrong place, and uses the wrong words. And unfortunately, as we've discovered, words do make a difference.

Part of GROWS is to involve everyone involved in the effort — especially the executives. They need to know what they're getting, and what's expected of them in return.

I don't think there's a conflict between evidence and intuition; you lead with intuition, but follow up with evidence. Intuition is extremely useful, but far from perfect. In any case, take the idea and try it. Prototype it. Trial it as an experiment with the team (more on that in the next post). Then you begin to get evidence.

No. We will not promote the same old useless pay-a-fee/multiple-choice-test certification garbage that permeates our industry. In the spirit of keeping everything based on outcomes, any sort of certification or rating should be done from real world results. If you think you have a great team, how do your users rate you? Now there are issues with that sort of a system as well, but I think it's a better direction than the old-fashioned, outdated, pass-a-test and you're certified nonsense.

"Is GROWS agile?" I don't think that's actually the key question. The intent is that GROWS is a framework to help you grow and discover what works for you and your organization. We've learned a lot of what can work well from the agile movement, but we've also seen far too much "agile dogma" trump common sense. So what we want to promote with GROWS is a return to self-determination, using what we've learned and valued from the agile movement, in a framework that promotes experimentation to a first-class methodological practice, that's inclusive and offers very concrete steps for beginners to help get them to the point where more abstract values and principles can be applied. We're just starting, so there's a lot to write and discuss and present. But that's our goal, in a nutshell.

Keith, All models are wrong; some may be useful. I suppose it's probably more fair to say that we are "inspired" by the Dreyfus model rather than following it slavishly, based on our experiences and direct observation. And with that in mind, it *has* helped us and has been useful. And yes, I've actually met and spoken with Dr. Benner and others in the nursing field, so I am aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their approach to it. The bottom line is that skill, training, education, intuition, practice, governance — these are all very complex, interrelated issues, parts of which we understand well and parts of which we haven't a clue yet. Any simple model, be it Dreyfus, or Shu-ha-ri, or any of the more academic learning models, is going to be brutally off the mark because it cannot take into account nuances of context and the full range of "yes, but.." that should be addressed. However, you have to start somewhere, no matter how simplified or limited. And it is very possible that our interpretation and use of Dreyfus will evolve over time. In fact, I'm counting on it. Because the major thrust of GROWS is to elevate the idea of the Experiment to a first-class member of the method. It's all an experiment, we get feedback, we adjust, we move on. That's true of your project under GROWS, and it's true of GROWS itself. More on that in the next blog post. /\ndy

We don't own the rights to The Pragmatic Programmer, we wrote that before we started the publishing business, so it's not up to us. You might check with Addison Wesley though.