Blog Updates
Livestock Management and Agile - Stop Prodding the Cattle!
Posted on Apr 24, 2009
I just finished listening to an interview with Temple Grandin, an autistic livestock industry consultant and author who holds a PhD in animal science from the University of Illinois. If you haven’t heard of Dr. Grandin before, you’re missing out on a fascinating education about the livestock industry, and interesting comparisons of autistic behaviors with animal behaviors.
In this particular interview, done by Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, Dr. Grandin made several interesting quotes about the livestock industry that made me realize that there are common behaviors shared by the livestock industry and the software development industry. I had some twilight zone moments when I heard her say:
“What I have found is people are much more willing to buy the fancy new system than they are to put in the management that’s required to run things correctly.” Here, she’s talking about how the cattle processing industry is more interested in new slaughterhouse systems instead of focusing on how the cows are managed and handled (for example, reducing or eliminating the use of electric prods and eliminating distractions along the chute). In our industry it’s the same—managers can be more focused on the tools than they are on the people and the interactions (Agile Manifesto).
“Well actually the hourly employees aren’t the ones that are a problem, it’s some of these business manager types.” Well, that gave me a chuckle. She’s referring to how it’s not always the ones working directly with the cattle that manage or handle them improperly. Back to the focus on the tools and the system.
“People get into what we call ‘stovepipes’ and nobody communicates outside their area.” Here Dr. Grandin is talking about how the science journals aren’t really good at sharing information outside their specialty. In this example, she’s talking about studies in neurological journals that have been done proving that mammals have primal emotions like fear, rage, separation anxiety, etc., but that these aren’t shared in veterinary or agriculture journals—or if they are, words like “excitement” or “agitation.” In the software development industry we sometimes work in “silos” of analysis, coding, testing, and production, and communication breaks down as things are passed from one to the other. Again, amazing similarities.
“What had happened is, is they slowly reverted back to those old rough methods, but they didn’t realize it.” Here she’s talking about how she had trained a farm in good livestock handling practices, only to come back a year later to see that they had reverted back to their old methods of using the electric prods again. I see the same thing in my agile coaching! Well, not the cattle prod bit, but you know what I’m saying.
It was neat to hear how a completely different industry has remarkably similar problems.
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