Shu Ha Ri and Agile

My martial arts knowledge is at best a little rusty. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen both versions of Karate Kid, I’ve re-enacted the “crane kick” many times and once, I borrowed a book from the library on how to do Jujitsu. Surprisingly it takes more than this to attain your black belt, so here I am a lowly software developer talking about nerdy agile stuff.

Anyway, today during our team’s agile discussions we discussed Shuhari (or Shu Ha Ri), a fundamental principle in Japanese martial arts* and how this can be applied to agile.

*Yeah I know Karate is not Japanese, but there was no Aikido Kid film.

It roughly translates as “to keep, to fall, to break away”.

Shu — To obey
Ha — To Digress
Ri — To Separate

The concept is used in martial arts training. You must pass through all the stages. Firstly learning and following all the rules, without deviation. Secondly, once we have disciplined ourselves to acquire the correct forms, we make innovations. The original forms may be discarded or amended. Finally, in the Ri phase we completely move away from the original forms, creating new forms.

So Martin Fowler, amongst others, has written about this,(it is nothing new - I am very late to the party). The idea being that with agile, we can (and arguably should) go through the same stages.

Shu
We strictly follow the rules of agile. I see that as having all the agile ceremonies, and following the guidelines for these e.g. your stand up follows the pigs and chickens rules, everyone answers the “3 questions”, and it is time-boxed to 15 minutes. This should be done until everyone, and I think the key word here is everyone, is comfortable with those “forms”.

Ha
Now that everyone is comfortable with the basic forms, we can start to tweak/make amendments to them. Looking at the example above, maybe now we look at our stand ups, and change the timing of it, or go through each story rather than each member of the team. Doing this, we can see what works and what doesn’t work — retrospectives would play a big role in this section.

Ri
We have moved away from the “out of the box” structure and mechanisms and we have become the rule

You should step through each phase. I read that it can be thought of as concentric circles, a ripple in a pond — Shu in the centre contained by Ha, both contained by Ri. You can’t or shouldn’t skip out the Shu, and head straight for Ha, and Ri is only after you’ve done Ha.

I’ve given some thought on where I stand in this from a Scrum Master perspective. I know I’m keen on trying to do the basics of agile correctly, I get seriously cranky when others do not share this aim. Having said that I am willing to admit straying into Ha territory with some elements.

Learning the basics and learn how to do them well. Often people are too quick to jump in to bastardized agile processes, or perhaps people new to a team or a company may find themselves suddenly in this environment. Without having the “muscle memory” of the basics it’s easy to drift into bad habits and ineffective processes.

This has struck a chord with me, and I like the fact that really this could be applied to learning any new skill. It is certainly something I’ll keep in mind in future.

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