I always knew agile was a CIA plant gone ammock. (/s?)<p>The article feels like one of these chain mail jokes rather than a serious article, but anyway.<p>"Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions."<p>That bullet point list more or less describes Scrum.
> Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.<p>> Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.<p>I do both of these things.<p>Do I want to destroy my organisation? No. I want to prevent miscommunication and haste from destroying it.<p>I dislike the popularity of this list for this reason.
I like the idea of this, but many of the list items come off as things the author doesn't like.<p>Lets restate some:
"Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions." -> "Insist on doing everything through 'short-cuts'. Never permit official channels to be taken in order to expedite decisions"<p>"Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible." -> "Insist that things you don't like are irrelevant as frequently as possible."<p>"Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions." -> "Argue that people are being caught up trying to be precise, leading to documents that are lacking precision"<p>"Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products" -> "Insist that products are unimportant and so sloppy work is ok"<p>"Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done." -> "Claim that doing work is the only important thing and that communication is wasteful"<p>"Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right." -> "When you have the right tools and equipment, use them well, but then claim you are just really talented and that a master can work with poor tools."<p>"Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skilful worker." -> "Watch new workers like a hawk and never let them think for themselves."<p>The idea is interesting, the implementation in the article is tepid.
The most effective methodology is to implement one of the loosely agile based methodologies like SAFe Agile. Then hire consultants, none of whom have ever actually managed a software team, to make sure everyone follows the process down to the last letter. This decreases efficiency to the point that the organisation is no long able to do productive work, there is no ROI and the staff are all burned out from spending 20 hours a week in zoom meetings and filling in JIRA tickets.
I’ve definitely seen most of this going on in management teams. Especially the forming of committees as a way of bike shedding. ‘We are clueless about the problem but we do know how to make a list of other clueless people.’
I think the comments here are missing the point.<p>Each of the items on the list are things you or someone else in an organisation does in good faith.<p>That is why these work.<p>When you do them in bad faith, you can stretch the timelines for things significantly while the responsibility for such a delay ends up so diffused among the bureaucracy that no one takes the blame.<p>“It’s just harder to get things done in a big organisation” as they say.<p>If you keep a lookout for these, particularly when they may be not in good faith you can head them off.
A lot of the comments here seem to be about discussing legitimate sabotage of a company. Meanwhile the article seems to mostly be about using common sense to be efficient and how a lot of "best practices" are actually horrible for that. So some satire.<p>The real issue here imo is, power structures. That's societal, and cultural. I sincerely doubt people use these to sabotage anything, infact the people who have control over such things are at the tippy top of an organization or place of governance (laws begat norms). So if that were the case um, you were screwed before you even started by who you listened to and who you worked most closely with. Not by some threat actor... IE we're doing it to ourselves by who and what we reward and it's only an evil plot if it really is being done by government agents or something, in which case we'll, see point #1.
> Don’t order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.<p>Did they also employ these sabotage techniques in Japan?
Goes in a similar direction: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell</a>
I did a lightning talk back at devopsdays Minneapolis in 2016 titled "Updating Classic Workplace Sabotage Techniques" based on the book published on the topic. 5 min video goes through all the techniques:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/t8pSMr5WpWE" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/t8pSMr5WpWE</a><p>My presentation of this was mostly cheeky; I am not usually this sarcastic.
The lack of sources and case studies leaves an interesting possibility open. This document might actually be fiction the opinions of someone who didn't like meetings as opposed to an effective guide.<p>Given that these are all common behaviours in real organisations they probably don't do that much overall damage. You'd do much worse by being effective, getting promoted and then making some really terrible but plausible decision that does decades of damage (like hiring some great marketers and going all-in on a risky venture that sounds good, but with little prospect of success). It doesn't take much effort, but once people are organised around a stupid goal it can take years to unpick.
> Sabotage varies from highly technical "coup de main" acts that require detailed planning and the use of specially trained operative...<p>Interesting that the meaning of "coup de main" here is the complete opposite of how it is actually used in French, where it means "helping hand". Used for informal and occasional situations. An example of a "coup de main" is when a friend gives you a few minutes of his time to help you move a heavy piece of furniture.
Link to the declassified “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” document at the top of this article:<p>“The Art of Simple Sabotage” (2019) <a href="https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage...</a>
The original SSFM, from which the title of this post is derived: <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=750070" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=750070</a>
A lot of theses tactics appear to be used here in the UK with regards to installing cycle infrastructure, low emission zones and liveable neighbourhoods.<p>Just dug out a physical copy that I've got of this - a friend bought it for me a while back.
Now I suspect some managers I know work for CIA.<p>On a more serious note, this is a must read for developers and managers. It clearly identifies the paths that lead to disaster. You can see it as a list of organizational anti-patterns :)
> Amongst its responsibilities was frustrating the German war effort, and to that end, it wrote a short set of “best practices” - the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.<p>I read anything that's referring to Germany or Austria as a group of people close to or on the spectrum. Perhaps this is why the saying exists "it takes one to know one" when thinking of Hans Asperger!<p>And you have to question, are govt budgets a representation of the characteristics of society, ergo are large military budgets reflecting the violent nature of a country?
Or you could just use ISO 9001 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000</a>.
Sure it’s a fine list if your job is to churn out knockoff mobile apps or spam ads everywhere.<p>I myself do not write this kind of software but I work regularly with people who write safety-critical components in things like airplanes, industrial manufacturing systems, and so on. If they decided, for example, they were too good to go through official channels, some very bad things could happen.
Jocko Willink recently talked about this very topic on his podcast: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nU2qkRUk5o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nU2qkRUk5o</a><p>In fact, it kinda reads like someone just took the podcast and wrote a blog post on it. Not a critique, just an observation.
Unironically know someone who deployed these tactics to spin the client in circles and do damage control on a gov project that was extremely doomed to fail. Can’t fail to meet the specified implementation if the client themselves can’t define what the requirements are.
The ebook link on the blog 404s.<p>Updated Project Gutenberg link (multiple formats):<p><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184</a>
"The Happy Worker" is a documentary that mentions exactly this.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzzYGRXfAaI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzzYGRXfAaI</a> (trailer)
It is more effective to change people, not processes. This way organization stays dysfunctional long after you leave.<p>So spread dissent. Destroy fairness, no paid overtimes, everyone gets the same pay. Promote one group over other without merit. Hire most annoying extremists you find. Give leadership to vapid narcisits. One film company is great recent example of this.<p>This is from KGB and CIA manual. They would sponsor and train extremists. Still works long after soviet union is gone.