Strength methodology appeared on the project development scene as a rescue from all the inconsistencies and wrong postulates of Agile.
At first, it was just our team, consisted of few intuitive free minds, but what we aimed to achieve is to emit Strength to our colleagues, our growing company, and later the whole developer scene.
But what is Strength methodology? Let’s start with foundations. Strength is natural for humans, it makes better ideas prevail, and it does not exclude humor, which is so important for every work, as is the physical health and clarity of thoughts and words.
When Sebastian and I started the Chaos Taxi, we needed a lot of yelling and laughing. If idea was not interesting, it needed to die off for the sake of better ideas. It is always hard to give up on your idea, but we knew this was not the Fame Methodology that we seek, but Strength! So one must choose the hard way in order for company to upgrade and evolve through the complex ideas and achieve. Several time it so happened that we both thought our own idea is better, and didn’t want to back off. What could we do? We could go our separate ways of course, but it was the pussy way. I punched, broke the table, and he punched me… Long story short, when I woke up, I knew his idea won. Strength would have been with me if I was right. I agreed with his idea, we shook hands and moved on with what’s important. So after that beer, we went back and we were ready to work.
The problem that we found with Agile, is that still 95% of Startups were failing. That was mostly because they did not use Agile methodology in the right way. But what is also the truth is that it is not as intuitive and it has too much blind followers, that are not capable of learning its long list of rules… And accepting rules selectively may provide an inconsistent strategy and tactics which may bring headaches to the employees and, in the end, ruin the idea. Not to mention the product.
Strength keeps it simple. The most important thing is to be happy at work. It builds the product for itself! Chaos Taxi followers just popped out on places where we would not have expected it. We got 4 more people (I am intentionally not calling them employees). Some were very experienced, and others were just funny. Ok, they were also eager to learn and evolve. We had push-up sessions and every push-up was a minute of work you could go earlier home. Most entrepreneurs would say “wtf”, unbeknownst of true wisdom, its effect human beings, not seeing the bigger picture. If a person is strong, healthy and physically active, that person is happy, clear in head and more productive. Plus, that person would be stimulated to have more free time, be better rested, and fulfilled. That builds not the body, but the community, idea and the product. Strength does not waste time only to give percentages of productivity upgrade. Strength gets the job done. That is what other methodologies seek, but not many find.
We do not hate, nor belittle Agile. Like people, some companies are more agile, some are focused on intelligence. We wanted to be strong. What I want to say about the Agile is that it was our greatest inspiration. And like how a human evolved from a monkey-like being, Strength Methodology evolved from Agile, so we respect it, although we’re not living by its principles.
Maybe the most precise point of this article was that there are no better or worse methodologies (of course there are, but give me a second to make a point), but rather methodologies that better suit different people and their mind-sets. So maybe we should try more, not to blindly accept what is popular, but see what fits our style, our problem solving ways and our idea.