I have their book on my book shelf somewhere. I learned about the White Spaces in the mid-90’s when I was studying Deming and Senge (I believe Rummler and Brache quote Deming).

I completely agree with you that most of the Agile concepts have their origins in older general management practices. Jeff Sutherland has clearly stated this is the case. When I took the CSM course from him, he spent the first half of the first day discussing Theory of Constraints and Lean and how these concepts can be applied to Software Development. My brother, a Six Sigma Black Belt, finds some humor in the “new ideas” being discussed in the Lean Software Development movement (I am at the Lean Kanban conference in Miami this week).

My position is that we need to get better at project management, and produce better project managers faster. So I continue to investigate, teach, and apply project management practices from various origins.

Worth a look to see that the agile suggestions have been around for awhile and developed in other domain outside of software

I wholeheartedly agree with you that taking agile beyond the team is critical to widespread agile adoption. Not only in concept but in terms of practical ‘how-to’ kinds of thinking. Our community needs to give guidance to the enterprise that meets them where they are… rather than where we hope them to be.

The team is the fundamental building block of the agile organization. We deliver the work of the business through teams. How we put those teams together to deliver broad value at the enterprise level is the key.

Great conversations… thanks for your contribution.