从老板的角度看问题（三）——战争游戏与敏捷

战争游戏与敏捷

很多人听说过敏捷。也听说，敏捷不是万金油。每当有人问我：什么样的项目或环境是最适合采用敏捷？下面这个战争游戏的例子能解开疑惑：

1991年的沙漠风暴行动中,美国在科威特击溃了萨达姆的部队。但这是一个传统类型的战争——两方都是有组织全副武装的军队，在一个开放的战场上战斗。沙漠风暴之后,五角大楼确信这种战争模式很快就会过时。一位分析师说:“下一场战争不仅仅是军事对军事。决定成败的因素不是你摧毁多少坦克,沉没多少船只。而是你如何瓦解你的对手的系统。我们必须追求发动战争的能力而不仅仅是战争喷射器威力。军事与经济系统,连接到他们的文化系统和人际关系。我们必须理解所有这些系统之间的联系。“

两个世纪以前,拿破仑写道:“一个将军并非事事都很清楚，清楚自己的敌人和知道敌人在哪。“战争是被迷雾笼罩。

这个千禧年战争游戏的目的是向五角大楼表明，使用最新技术和电脑的好处，那迷雾就会解开。

场景：红队VS蓝队

蓝队,代表了美国和它的盟友,拥有历史上比任何军队更多的知识资源—多个先进电脑系统—1)操作性评估：一个正式的决策工具,将敌人打破分解成一系列的系统——军事、经济、社会和政治;2)基于效果的操作决策工具；3)常用相关操作像片（作物）——实时监控战争态势;4)结合互动规划工具。他们被赋予了前所未有的信息和情报以帮助做决策。

红队是由迈克#领导。迈克有35年的军事经验。在60年代他参加了越南战争。迈克不相信人能解除战争迷雾。他厌恶这些分析，即蓝队的系统决策。

“战役”背景:

第一天~

一个在波斯湾某处的流氓(红队)军事指挥官已经脱离他的政府。在战争中，他扬言要吞没整个地区。他有一个相当大的权力基地，给四个不同的恐怖组织提供赞助。

蓝队派遣几十万大军进入波斯，一个航母舰队停靠在红队家乡近海处。蓝队发出最后通牒，要求迈克投降。蓝队有绝对的信心，因为他们的的ONA矩阵告诉他们红队的弱点在哪里，和红队的选择范围。蓝队摧毁了迈克的微波发射塔，切断了红队卫星通信和手机的光纤线。蓝队就可以监视他的通讯。

“他们说,红色队将会对此感到震惊,”迈克记得。“震惊吗?任何人会知道不要全部指望这些技术。这是一个蓝色队心态。拉登在阿富汗的事情发生后，谁会使用手机和卫星,?我们使用摩托车快递员进行沟通和把消息藏在祈祷。他们说,‘缺少飞行员和塔之间的对话，你怎么让你的飞机从机场起飞?”我说,“还记得二战吗?我们使用的照明系统。”

现在，蓝队觉得敌人就像一本神秘的书。

第二天~

迈克用波斯湾小船追踪入侵的蓝队海军船只。然后，在没有预警的情况下，他用巡航导弹对他们进行了一个小时的轰炸。在红色团队的突然袭击中,16艘美国船只沉没。

迈克说,“因为蓝队使用先发制人战略,所以我必须先攻击。我们做了全面的考虑'：消灭他们的船只需要多少巡航导弹。我们从不同方向进行了简单地分析,从海上和陆地，从空中，从海上。我们的船只大概有他们一半。最后，我们选择了我们想要的航母，最大的巡洋舰和两栖战舰。“

现在你大概可以猜到 ‘战争’的结果。蓝色战队再没有从灾难性破坏中恢复。最后,红队赢了。为什么蓝队,具有所有的复杂的系统,却输了这场“战争”?

- * -

在60年代，当迈克在越南南部担任顾问，他常常听到远处的枪声。他还是战争菜鸟。他首先不是想而是问部队在战场上发生了什么。几周后，他意识在外地的人不会比他更懂得现场的枪声意味着什么。

第二次去越南时,迈克停止了询问。每当他听到枪声,他会等待。“如果他们需要帮助,他们会叫喊,”迈克说,“5分钟后,如果事情已经平息下来,我还是不会做什么。你必须让人们清楚状况和发生了什么。危险的是,他们打电话告诉你所有的事以免受指责。你会按照表面的东西做决定。这很容易造成错误。加上你转移了他们的注意，他们是向上看而不是向下。你妨碍了他们解决问题。”

迈克与率领的红队讲了这堂课。“我首先告诉成员,我们可以听从或者不听从命令,”迈克说。“我的意思是我给出总指导和意图。但战场上，士兵不会依赖上级多而杂的指令。而是依靠自己的主动性和创新性。“

* -

在危急情况下（'战争'），指挥官必须依靠经验和直觉做出决策。回顾然后发现，这是蓝队所犯的错误。在蓝队，他们抓住了形式，矩阵，和计算机程序。这将妨碍指挥官全面地看待问题。
作战演习结束后，五角大楼少将承认，“经营性净评估是一个让我们看到一切了解一切的工具。嗯，很明显它失败了。“

= = =

比喻

一个运行敏捷开发团队就像红队。这是否意味着敏捷能够保证成功?红队总是赢蓝队?显然不是。红队赢的原因是什么?难道红色的团队并没有做任何计划或分析?

在战斗开始前，迈克和他的员工已经做很多准备和分析。发生冲突后,迈克注意不让无关的信息干扰他的团队。会议是简短的。(站立会议?)总部和在野外的指挥官之间的沟通很有限。(简短信息代替长报告。)麦克想创造一种快速认知的环境（敏捷？），赋予团队决策权力。另一方面,蓝队是全盘接收信息。一旦战斗开始,过多信息就成为一种负担。

如果迈克和他的红队不是经验丰富，和没有做好计划和准备,‘战争’的结果可能是不同的。

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＃迈克是不是将军的真实姓名。请参阅M.Gladwell的'眨眼'的完整故事。

War Game and Agile (WAR GAME 与敏捷)

Most people heard about Agile. They also heard that agile is not the rightmedicine for all. When someone asked me what kind of projects or environmentwould be most suitable for adopting agile, I told them this War Game story:[i]

In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the UShad routed the forces of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. But that was a conventionalkind of war – two heavily armed and organized forces meeting and fighting in anopen battlefield. In the wake of Desert Storm, the Pentagon became convincedthat that kind of warfare would soon be an anachronism. One analyst puts it:”The next war is not just going to be military on military. The deciding factoris not going to be how many tanks you destroy, how many ships you sink. Thedecisive factor is how you take apart your adversary’s system. We have to goafter war-making capability instead of just the war –fighting capability. Themilitary is connected to the economic system, which is connected to theircultural system, to their personal relationships. We have to understand thelinks between all those systems. “

Two centuries ago, Napolean wrote: “ Ageneral never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, andnever knows positively where he is.” War was shrouded in fog.

The purpose of this Millennium Challenge(2000) War Game was for the Pentagon to show that , with the full benefit ofthe latest technology and computers, that fog could be lifted.

Scenario- Red Vs Blue:

Blue Team, represents the US and itsallies, was given greater intellectual resources than perhaps any army inhistory – 1) Operational Net Assessment: a formal decision making tool thatbreak the enemy down into a series of systems – military, economic, social andpolitical; 2) Effects-Based Operations; 3) Common Relevant Operational Picture(CROP) – real-time ma of the combat situation; 4) a joint interactive planningtool. They were given an unprecedented amount of information and intelligencefor making decisions.

The Red Team was led by a US general calledMike ^#.Mike had 35 years of military experience. He fought theVietnam war in the 60s. Mike did notbelieve one could lift the fog of war. He hated these analytical , systematicdecision making that the Blue Team would use.

Backgroundof this ‘War’:

A rogue (Red Team) military commander hadbroken away from his government somewhere in the Persian Gulf. He threatened toengulf the entire region in war. He had a considerable power base, and wassponsoring four different terrorist organizations.

Day1:

Blue Team poured tens of thousands oftroops into the Persian Gulf, and parked an aircraft carrier battle group justoffshore the Red Team’s home country. Blue Team issued an ultimatum to Mikedemanding him to surrender. Blue Team had utter confidence because their ONAmatrix told them where read team’s vulnerabilities were, and what Red Team’srange of options was. Blue Team knockedout Mike’s microwave towers and cut his fiber-optics lines on the assumptionthat Read team would now have to use satellite communications and cell phones.Blue Team could then monitor his communications.

“They said that Red Team would be surprisedby that,’ Mike remembers. “ Surprised? Any moderately informed person wouldknow enough not to count on those technologies. That’s a Blue Team mind-set.Who would use cell phones and satellites after what happened to Laden inAfghanistan? We communicated withcouriers on motorcycles, and messageshidden inside prayers. They said, ‘Howdid you get your airplanes off the airfield without the normal chatter betweenpilots and the tower?’ I said, ‘Does anyone remember World War Two? We usedlighting systems.’”

Suddenly the enemy that Blue Team thoughtcould be read like an open book was a bit more mysterious.

Day2:

Mike put a fleet of small boats in thePersian Gulf to track the ships of the invading Blue Team navy. Then, withoutwarning, he bombarded them in an hour-long assault with a fusillade of cruisemissiles. When Red Team’s surprise attack was over, 16 American ships sank.

Mike says, “ Because Blue Team was using apreemption strategy, I struck first. We‘d done all the calculations on how many cruise missiles their ships couldhandle. We simply launched more than that, and from many different directions,from offshore and onshore, from air, from sea. We probably got half of theirships. We picked the ones we wanted – aircraft carrier, the biggest cruisers,and the amphibious ships. “

You can probably guess the result of the‘War’ now. Blue Team never recovered from its catastrophic failure. At the end,Red Team won. Why did Blue Team, withall the sophisticated systems in place, lost this ‘war’?

- * -

In the 60’s, when Mike was serving as an advisor in the SouthVietnam, he would often hear gunfire in the distance. He was then new tocombat. His first thought was always to get on the ratio and ask the troops inthe field what was happening. After several weeks, he realized that the peoplein the field had no more idea than he did about what the gunfire meant.

On his second tour of Vietnam, Mike stopped asking. Whenever heheard gunfire, he would wait. “if theyneeded help, they were going to holler,” Mike says,” and after 5 minutes, ifthings had settled down, I still would not do anything. You have got to letpeople work out the situation and work out what’s happening. The danger incalling is that they will tell you anything to get you off their backs. Youwill act on that and take it at face value. You could make a mistake. Plus youare diverting them. Now they are looking upward instead of downward. You are preventing them from resolving thesituation.”

Mike carried this lesson with him when he led the Red Team. “Thefirst thing I told our staff is that we would be in command and out of control,“ Mike says. “By that I mean I give the overall guidance and intent. But the forces in the field would not dependon intricate orders coming from the top. They were to use their own initiativeand be innovative. “

* -

In critical situations (‘war’), thecommanders have to rely on experienceand instincts to make decisions. Inretrospective, this is exactly the mistake the Blue Team made. In the Blue Team, they got caught up in forms,in matrices, and computer programs. These will prevent the commanders to lookat the problem holistically.

After the War Game was over, the MajorGeneral of Pentagon admitted, “ The Operational Net Assessment was a tool thatwas supposed to allow us to see all, know all. Well, obviously it failed.”

= = =

Theanalogy

Running an Agile development team is likerunning the Red Team. Does it mean Agilewill guarantee success? Will Red Team always win the Blue Team? Obviously not.What makes Red Team win? Is it that Red Team did not do any planning oranalysis?

Mike and his staff did their analysis. Butthey did it first, before the battle started. Once hostilities began, Mike wascareful not to overload his team with irrelevant information. Meetingswere brief. (Standup meetings?) Communication betweenheadquarters and the commanders in the field was limited. (Simple informationradiator instead of long reports.) Mike wanted to create an environment whererapid cognition was possible. Blue Team, on the other hand, was gorging oninformation. Once the shooting started, all that information became a burden.

If Mike and his Red Team were not soexperienced and did not do the planning and preparation well, the outcome ofthe ‘War’ would probably be different.

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[i]# Mike is not the General’s real name. Refer to M.Gladwell’s ‘blink’for the full story.