Common Sense is not so Common

‘It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare’ - Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)

Common Sense is a rare commodity, individuals, teams and organisations are often taking paths that counter to your most sensible approach. Individuals appear to be addicted to taking the path least tread, the most difficult path, re-implementing code and impeding other people from taking the most sensible routes.

Agile is supposed to help to clear the path and help people see common sense from nonsense, it’s about balance, quality stepping back and exploring alternatives and other better ways of working and the ability to change direction. People have theorised over the years about what agile means, I think if you step back Agile means taking a Common Sense approach and doing this appropriately with your team for the situation at hand. If we actually replace the word Agile with Common Sense, would the conversations we are having about how we work make more sense?

• Common Sense doesn’t work in this organisation
• We will never adopt Common Sense way of working
• It's Common Sense means to have high level of test automation
• It's Common sense that we can release at any time automatically without risk
• Common Sense Approach will help us understand our customers’ needs
• Common Sense means we talk to each other and our customers
• Its Common Sense to test how are features are being used in production

Or is it? 

Common sense is very context specific what makes sense for one individual will be nonsense for another. What works in one organisation doesn’t in another, what works for one team doesn’t work for another. Being dogmatic about your way of working doesn’t help understand other peoples views of what is common sense. Have you tried being open and discovering what common sense means for the people around you in your specific situation. Why is discovering your own view of common sense so tricky, and what does this do to other peoples view of reality?