Repentance and Agile Development

This post is a little different than some of my previous ones.

I read tonight that Microsoft's latest service pack for Microsoft Office now supports ODF, the format used by OpenOffice and other (especially open-source) word processors. It might seem a little trivial, but this give me several better feelings about the Office strategy. I may be wrong, but I had the sense that MS was fighting ODF (and in a sense, the open-source projects it represents) with their version of OOXML, sort of an XMLified version of their binary formats, and this is the first major step I've seen toward coming back to the table as competitors and not monopolists. The word that came to mind was "repentance." Perhaps not in the moral sense, but in the business sense: a change of strategy.

This lead me to think about my response - positive feelings for this move - and ask "Why does that make me think more highly of MS?" The conclusion I came to is that a company that's willing to repent, to change course, strikes me as one that is able to swallow pride when appropriate and do the right thing.

Which lead me to my second thought - that's what Agile development is all about. It's about being very ready to change course, admitting that we can go in the wrong direction, and making sure we don't let pride, ignorance, or anything else get in the way of doing the right thing.

A fairly well known pastor recently described repentance as a critical part of being a Christian. "Dogs bark; Christians repent." Perhaps repentance is something we're looking for more of as a society - from businesses, teams, and individuals. It's certainly hit me as an unexpected intersection of life and faith.