Monday, January 05, 2009

The Agile Rules in HP's Original Garage

According to a recent HP poster, these were the rules in Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard's famous garage:


  • Believe you can change the world.
  • Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
  • Know when to work alone and when to work together.
  • Share tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.
  • No Politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage).
  • The customer defines a job well done.
  • Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
  • Invent different ways of working.
  • Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage.
  • Believe that together we can do anything.
  • Invent.

  • Curiously, it sounds like something the agile guys might have written (had they not written the manifesto). I prefer this wording because of its greater applicability and more dynamic presentation.