“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

– George Santayana

The first time I heard this quote was in the early 1990’s. Jello Biafra chanted it three times, like a self-affirming mantra of sorts, during a spoken word show at the Ritz Theater in Ybor City. That show was truly life changing for me in many ways. It happened during the first Gulf War, and as a result of what was said there I resolved to myself that I would never be compelled to take another human life unless it was in self-defense (I claimed for years that I had “registered” as a conscientious objector, but that was untrue. I knew what was required to do so, but never actually went through the steps to make it official). I tore up my draft card during that show, and left the scattered pieces on the floor of the venue. I became more interested in politics, and in particular the people who pointing out just how ridiculous some of the things that went on in the world were. After this performance I expanded my reading to include more than just fantasy and science fiction books, and eventually found myself immersed in the words of people like Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, and Henry Rollins.

It was a hell of a night.

Now it’s about 25 years later. Jerry Brown, the vile enemy of the Dead Kennedy’s song California Uber Alles is now a darling of the Democratic Party.  Jello Biafra is still around and trying to change the world, but these days he looks more like someone’s Dad than a dominant figure in the punk music scene. We long for the days when we thought George W. Bush was the Worst. President. Ever. We carry the wealth of human knowledge around in our pockets and we use it to look at pictures of cats. Then there is me. I’ve worked for 15 years with the same company, working my way up through a non-profit corporate chain to a significant advisory position to the leadership group. I have tattoos, and I still have some “crazy” notions like “killing other people is generally a really bad idea”, but I’m definitely not the same person I was when I was so enamored by the words of Mr. Biafra back in the 90’s, and some of the things that stuck with me that night don’t hold up quite so well in my current way of thinking.

Particularly the admonitions about remembering the past.

Now, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t look to the past in order to recognize patterns that recur in human history. Heck, our current administration is pretty much a text book example of why we should always keep an eye out for another totalitarian government. I’m also not suggesting that experiences in our own personal lives shouldn’t shape our decisions today. They shouldn’t dictate them by any means, but one of the whole points in life is learning from our mistakes.

No, I’m talking – probably unsurprisingly – about living in the past when it comes to your current business decisions.

During a recent meeting amongst some of our mid-level managers, the issue of the lack of project documentation came up. “Back before we made this switch to Agile,” the commentator opined, “we knew exactly what we were getting out of a project because it was in the requirements document. We could go back to that document to make sure we got everything we asked for. And all of those documents were stored on the PMO site, so we could go back and look for them years later so that we could refresh ourselves on why we made the decisions we did in the past.”

I did my best not to run screaming from the room like I’m always tempted to do when someone bemoans the “good old days” of Waterfall development. I took a deep breath and talked to the individual about the values present in the Agile Manifesto, particularly the notion of “Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation.” I talked about the fact that those requirements docs were a double-edged sword, and that they could easily be used against the stakeholder (the nefarious “scope creep” accusations). I emphasized how the stakeholder should be in constant contact with their product owner while a delivery team was working on their product, and how they should be working with the team daily. I extolled the benefits of the Sprint Review and how that feedback loop could prevent the delivery team from wasting time by going too far down a path that is dictated by a rigid requirements document. I said all the things a good Agile Coach should say.

What I didn’t do was express my utter and complete horror at the notion of keeping an archive of documents about past projects.

This is one of the areas where I’m really big on the values from the manifesto. “Working Software over comprehensive documentation.” I get that the manifesto isn’t saying that you shouldn’t document, but for me personally documentation is a monumental waste of time – especially if you’re talking about an environment where everyone is working for the same company. Spending effort creating documents that MIGHT be used by a small group of people is really something I personally take issue with, especially in the world of software development where I’m a proponent and practitioner of self-documenting code.

But more importantly, this is an area in which I feel like it’s important to leave the decisions of the past behind you. My mentor frequently states that “an idea that is good enough will come back in time.” He mentions this in regards to regularly cleaning out the backlog by removing items that have sat around for a while with no action. I look at old documents with a similar eye. Do we really need to spend time going over documents that are years old? Do we need to re-hash old arguments? Do we need to try and remember what the market conditions were at the time that led us to our decisions? Do the rules and regulations that led us to past decisions even exist any more? Have they changed? How much time do we waste digging through archives, planning meetings, and generally getting nothing done when we could turn our ideas over to teams who can produce working solutions?

If your organization is trying to promote a culture where teams can “fail fast,” but you’re still overly concerned with trying to prevent the mistakes of the past, you’re destined to, well, fail. Give your teams the safety to run with ideas, try some small experiments, and learn on their own without burdening them with decisions that are, most likely, irrelevant today. Let them learn on their own. More importantly, open yourself to the possibility that they are going to come up with solutions that are completely different than the ones your organization thought of in the past. Considering how quickly the market is changing these days, that’s much more likely than you might think.