Empiricism
Empiricism is the idea that we learn best from experience and observation. This concept is embodied in many of the principles, ideas, beliefs and practices espoused by anAgileMind. We start our agile journey guided by others but as we experience and observe the reality of our work we will ultimately finesse those ideas and move beyond them. Improvement based on our experience and observation is the basis of Shu-Ha-Ri.
In A Nutshell
The drive for empirically-based improvement is also the drive for a quantitative understanding of our performance.
“...When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind...”
Empiricism is, therefore, the foundation of our Inspect and Adapt behaviours at all levels. It leads us to seek an understanding of our current performance so that we can identify problems and blocks that are limiting that performance. Accurate identification of problems and blocks requires a quantitative analysis of our performance.