My Agile Bullshit card deck recently arrived.

Today I’m looking at card #1, which says:

That won’t work here, we’re different.

Have you ever said such a thing?

This is a tricky one.

It’s tricky, because while it often is bullshit, as the title of the deck suggests, there’s usually at least a small element of truth to it, as well.

I usually hear this spoken in one of two contexts.

1. The person is just simply uninformed.

   They either don’t truly understand “the thing” they’re saying won’t work, or they haven’t considered the full implications.

   “Continuous Delivery won’t work here…” is one I hear a lot, and makes for a good example.

   Quite often, the person saying this is conflating Continuous Delivery with Continuous Deployment. And there are legitimate reasons not to use Continuous Deployment.

2. There is something unique about their situation.

   “We’re not Google.”

   You’re right, you’re not! (Well, unless you are…)

   The canned solutions we’ve read about often don’t work exactly as advertised.

   But that doesn’t mean the things won’t work here. It often just means that they need to be adapted. Or maybe our assumptions need to be adapted.

   “Continuous Delivery won’t work here because … [insert reasons].”

   I’ve never actually seen a situation where Continuous Delivery wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t be beneficial. It doesn’t always look exactly the same on every team or at every company. But Continuous Delivery, and the rapid feedback that it provides, is possible when writing software for a Mars rover.

What thing would you like to see work for you, but simply won’t “because you’re different”?