What Seinfeld Taught Me about Iterative and Incremental - Mike Cohn

I recently received an email from my dear friend, Mike Cohn. You know how much I love to get these emails, Mike. So thanks for sending over. This one was titled, what Seinfeld taught me about iterative and incremental. I thought this was interesting. So let's see where Mike takes it. Agile is both an iterative and incremental process. I've taught this in classes for 25 years, yet I've never felt like I had the right way to explain how they're both different or how they relate. That is until now. I recently watched a documentary comedian about Jerry Seinfeld, deciding to return to the world of standup after ending his long running hit television series. The film shows Seinfeld developing a completely new act. He couldn't rely on jokes from his standup routines from a decade earlier. He begins by performing for just a few minutes at small comedy clubs. After each performance, he refines the wording, sequence, and pacing of his jokes. He's iterating over each joke. As he finds material that works, he adds time to his show. His performance goes from five minutes to 10. He is incrementally building his show. He continues adding increments, new jokes, until he achieves his goal of more than an hour of new material. Refining each joke is iterating. Adding jokes bit by bit until he has a full show is incremental. That's a good example. This example also shows why iterating and incremental aren't very good on their own. Imagine a comedian who only iterates over existing material, but never adds anything new. Or someone who keeps adding new jokes, but never iterates to make sure each one is funny. Another thing the comedian movie teaches is the value of experimenting. When Seinfeld and other comedians profiled in the film perform their shows, their shows contain a mix of material they know will get laughs and some new jokes that they're just trying out. Experimenting is equally important in product development. Teams can experiment with their process or the product by delivering small, partial features to confirm their value before going all in and building an entire system. I knew Agile teams needed to be iterative and incremental, but this documentary taught me comedians needed to also satisfy what they want to succeed at comedy. So what's interesting is this is spot on. So when you start talking about, Mike, the thing I love is when you start talking about the difference between these, they're both absolutely necessary, but could you imagine if we only did one and not the other, that would be a nightmare, right? So if you are iterating, you're doing that piece, but you should be incrementally building your product as well. So incremental is built upon, and I love the way that you worded it here, if I could find it real quick. Okay. So refining each joke is iterating. Absolutely true. Adding jokes bit by bit until there's a full show is incremental because you're incrementally improving, you're adding to, and that makes total sense. And I think that if we looked at the world of work this way, we can make Agile significantly better. So Mike, I never thought I'd say a comedy show or, you know, we'll get this. The irony is killing me, Mike. I'm featuring a comedy show podcast or a podcast from a dear friend who I find very humorous about comedy shows on a podcast called the Daily Standup Podcast. Even though it has nothing to do with comedy, the name speaks for itself, just saying. And I consider myself the CEO, chief edutainment officer of AgileNet. So this all is just in some kind of world, a collision of all things good, right? So Mike, thank you very much for the email. I appreciate it. Keep sending them my way. I will talk about you and talk about your emails until the cows come home and hopefully no cows come home because I'm not on a big enough property right now to support cows. So that's going to do it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have a topic you want us to discuss, or if you want to hear more from Mike and other experts in the industry, let us know. Mike, I also want to extend an open invitation for you here. If you're still listening, join me on a podcast again. I miss having you on. I'd love to have you on as a guest. As always, we encourage you to stay healthy, stay well, and stay agile, my friends. Do take care. We'll talk soon, Mike. Bye now.