me.andering – Willem van den Ende

Ron Jeffries writes on Integrating Agile Methods :

“I could go on. I see much commonality among the Agile methods, and I think there would be more were there not so much advantage — or perceived advantage — to having a brand of one’s own. It would also be helpful if a few of us egomaniacs populating the upper tiers of the Agile thought space were able to follow our own dictates and communicate effectively with each other. ”

I believe branding is overrated. Branding makes me think of what cowboys do with cows – mark them with a hot iron to show which farm owns them. I prefer not to see my clients as cows, and I do not believe people want to be owned by a methodology farm either…
Here’s what Merriam Webster said when I searched for branding:

“One entry found for brand.

Main Entry: ²brand
Function: transitive verb
1 : to mark with a brand
2 : to mark with disapproval : STIGMATIZE
3 : to impress indelibly <brand the lesson on his mind>
- brand·er noun”

Dutch also has the word branding. It means washing, as in waves washing the shore… As far as impact of branding for consultants goes – shores have the tendency to move slowly, even here in Holland where shores tend to wash away sometimes.

(I’m deliberately ignoring the communication remark in Ron’s quote. I’m puzzling on that, I hope you are too).

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 8:49 am and is filed under people & systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.