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Wednesday, October 23, 13
Unlike a game of chess or Go, poker is a game of Incomplete information. In chess or Go, you can see the position of every
piece, but in poker, all I can see is whatever cards are visible - the community cards - and how you bet. Do you check? Raise?
fumble your chips? Make a speech (AKA "hollywooding")?
Poker as a game, is really a conversation about incomplete information, a dance between the players, all trying to find each other
inside this fog of uncertainty. Each bet, raise, or call, every new card exposed is a piece of information that refines our
understanding of the situation.
Operating in a world of incomplete information is exactly the situation that Agile attempts to deal with. We can't know all the
variables to begin with, we can only make our best guesses about the over all trajectory or flight path of the project. In the doing
of the thing, we will continue to improve the quality of our information, and we'll adjust.
But be warned -- anytime someone says they have a system, look closely at it before believing them. TDD, BDD, Agile, Service
Oriented Architecture, DCI.. the list goes on and on. Yes, they're good ideas, yes they can solve problems, but take a critical look
at these miracle cures before you blindly accept that they'll make everything rainbows and sparkles.
Back to gambling.. so, if “it all depends”, then is there anything we can definitively say?