For over 20 years I have had a strong interest in martial arts – both the physical and mental aspects of training. Within this I have followed many true advocates of specific styles and technical approaches to the art. None more so than one of the most renowned ‘artists of life’ – Bruce Lee.
His own style Jeet Kune Do – proposed the most efficient, simple and direct approach to any ‘confrontation’ – a punch was a punch – a kick was a kick. Unburdened of fancy ‘dance-like’ moves and the frills of many other styles – his approach was direct, true and simply efficient. LEAN!
As discussed in previous blogs – WOW-elite is fast developing a remote working methodology that facilitates a ‘freedom of expression’ for our development crews in that they are given the space and flexibility to work at their best pace and in THIER best and most inspiring environment – albeit within the scope of our task-driven collaborative project management tool. This allows for focus on the absolute quality of the WORK – the DELIVERABLE – without the unnecessary restraints of social-norm work hours or daily commute or long and bloated meetings. We take a lean, direct, task-led approach – which also means we do not have to pass on overhead costs of office space and expenses to clients.
But more than this is our increasing push towards engaging the most stripped down, simple, lean, user-centric metrics to how we develop applications. By engaging the user-centric principles right at the very start of any project we move forward within the ‘no-brainer’ principle of getting the interface right so you don’t get the software wrong!
Bruce Lee commented: ‘Being wise in Gung Fu does not mean adding more but being able to remove over-sophistication and ornamentation to be simply simple – like a sculptor building a statue, not by adding, but by hacking away the unessential so that truth will be revealed unobstructed’
One could translate the above into a technical application approach: ‘Innovation and creativity is ‘quality-driven’ not ‘quantity-loaded’ and forgoes over-complexity or unwanted functionality to get DIRECTLY to the very point of what the user wants to do SIMPLY – like a sculptor building a statue – a dev crew discards the unessential so that the most efficient user-centric product is delivered’
The guys at 37Signals* engaged this approach in the most inspiring way – and have been instrumental in WOW-elite adopting this within our own methodology.
Mr Lee* just continues to inspire in all manner of professional and personal development – and although our #wowelitecrew may not all be kick-ass ninjas – we are really ‘buzzing’ as we move forward on projects and engage the above principles.
Alan Stuart
37signals: https://basecamp.com/
Books:
‘Remote Working': http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remote-Office-Required-Jason-Fried/dp/0091954673
