Very thoughtful article Fredrik.

I have great respect for Alistair. What I respect most about him is what you mention: his openness, and willingness to discuss ideas with an open mind.

I met him once too, when he was consulting at the company where I worked, and collaborated with him a little bit.

Alistair struck me as very extroverted, and the viewpoints he advocates strongly reflect that. E.g., HOA has all the things an extrovert needs. It does not have "deep thought". And we know from Alistair's view that the best form of communication is face-to-face conversation, that he feels that is more effective than writing.

Yet for many people, writing is more effective.

As to progress being the speed of communication, consider a case from my history in which a single person single-handedly created an entire product, that then becamse the primary offering of the company. In that case, there was no communication at all. The point there is that individuals can make a huge difference, and if we focus 100% on collaboration, we might create an environment that is difficult for those lone geniuses - people like Linus Torvalds. Reed Hastings recently said that the best programmers are not worth 10 times the average, but rather 1000 times the average.

We need to be inclusive. We need to foster collaboration, in its _many forms_ - talking/listening, writing/reading - and THINKING. People need to be able to focus deeply. And we need to empower people to work individually as well as in groups. People vary in how they contribute best.

Regarding Shu ha ri, that is a powerful model. It is applicable for many things. For structuring a development team I would not use it. I have been on teams that did not use any framework, and to this day, those teams were the most effective ones I have been on. What those teams had was really, really good leadership: leadership that was inquisitive and empowering, yet also decisive.