Marching to the Beat of the Same Drummer

I played trombone all through junior and senior high, and as an aspiring band nerd found myself in marching band as well. While we did field marching for fun at football games, it paled in comparison to the very serious level of competition you can find in Drum Corps International and other competitive field marching organizations. A family friend from a few years back was involved in competition and we had the chance to see them perform several times, including in Nationals at TCF Bank Stadium.

This was our second competition we had attended, and this time we sprung for better seats - oddly enough, for sport of this nature, the better seats are actually higher up, and I was amazed at the difference. Closer to the field you can see the details, but as the old saying goes, "you can't see the forest through the trees". From this perspective, individuals are lost but the design and execution of the whole becomes clear. The flash of a single cymbal move is lost, but the synchrony of the squad becomes clear. Excellence in execution is required because errors break the pattern and distract the observer, but execution alone does not make you world class. Instead, it now becomes a competition of choreography and concept where the constantly shifting patterns communicate a story and accomplish a purpose.

There are lots of elements in the performance to appreciate as there is so much going on - the music itself, the color guard with flags and twirling guns, the visual flash of color and - but my mind kept observing a simple yet compelling part of how each routine is choreographed. It seems that the architect of the routine knows that what what will have the most impact is to present a relatively small number of big moments where everything resolves into a sharp image for that "wow" moment - sometimes it is as simple as a single straight line slowly moving forward with all instruments holding a note in unison that sends a shiver down your spine, other times it is a design representative of the theme of the performance and part of telling the story.

But most of the time during the performance itself is actually spent moving between these moments, and during these times, individual execution matters even more. The patterns dissolve into an almost chaotic scramble as different lines shift and merge; each person performs their work to get from here to there but in a way that cooperates with the others in their immediate vicinity. This motion has a beauty of its own, but for the most part it is a building phase that we know must be tolerated as we set up the next impressive moment. I'm sure this is intentional, but often during these transitions the performers are all turned away from you and the music is muted. It's messy and in some ways unsatisfying, yet usually worth the wait when the image suddenly comes into sharp focus and all the instruments turn towards you to appeal for your applause.

Now I know that I have a tendency to see everything in life as analogous to software, but there is an important parallel between what I saw on the field last night and what we do when we are using Agile to build software. It's very easy to get lost in the details of the execution of each sprint, and when you are down there on the field in the team, it takes everything you have just to get from point A to point B. In fact, there is a REALLY important difference between what we do when we make software and what we see on the field - we don't get to practice the same transitions over and over again until they approach perfection. Instead, we get to do them once and to the best of our abilities, and then we move on to the next one. Given this important difference, it's nothing short of miraculous when we do have those sprints where everything comes together well and we have a great sprint review. This is also why I think it is important to tolerate with grace those times when it doesn't quite work. As a coach, what I look for is an honest intent within the team to do better in the future and a honest and healthy spirit of learning from your mistakes.

One final note - in the end, great execution and choreography combine to please the audience, and this is the reason I see so many passionate converts to Agile on the business side. Once they have experienced this level of involvement in the process and they see the product emerge as a progression of steps that are themselves pleasing to witness, they never want to do it any other way. In that sense, perhaps with Agile we nerds and geeks have finally found a way to accomplish what we always wanted - to turn what we do into a form of performance art.