→ー 50 was a 'Visiting Scrum gu ゾ ' our hosts arranged several social events that brought me together with these other Westemers. lslowly discovered that,first, most of them had come わ Japan out of a strong commercialinterest, and with a Westem 旧 e 「 than Japanese outbok. These weren't people who were practising agile. They weren't people who were taking 0 物 e by the hand t0 leam agile. They were selling agile. And they were selling as t00 and methods, rather than as the result of leaming 0 「 diabg. lhad long predicted that this day would come in Japan.I had seen the same thing happen in lsrael several years ago asl tried to support that market in rolling out disciplined Scnum teams that would focus on the buo core Scnum foundations, that are the same that Toyo ね used to re-define TPS in 2001 : peop/e, and Kaizen mind. NOW, Scmm had come far enough to become a lucrative market.l was saddened in talking to these people.l didn't see their eyes shine with the passion Of dOing great things.lt was all about business. At one of these dinners ー was with people om a prominent company vying to get intO the agile space. One Of them, whO wotked at an overseas 0m8 of the proudly said that they were 100 % agile. played inquisitive and asked him 市 he had instead boked at something meaningful like Scrum instead. TO me, agile is 0 可 y a discusslon p せ Om : itis a thin veneer that softuare people layered on top ofthe Scrum practices eight years into development, briefly considered in a coming together of a group of men over a few days in isolation. The power lies not just in self-organization and feedback ー which is what of agile boils down to ー but in the never-ending un-peeling 0f the TOYO ね Way onion, often called "Lean" in the Westem wo 目 d. His answer was instructive: they were 100 % agile because their vice-president personally reviewed every contract they signed. lknew would be a long evening. The dialog that evening was being transcribed fo 「 publication as an "interview with the experts," and indeed 物 e 旧 were a number Of prominent people around the table, including my friend Kawaguchi-san, and a dear, trusted 50

47 Six weeks later in January 2011 , Jeff Sutherland and his entourage would visit Japan fO 「 an event christened lnnovation Sprint 20 . Jeff, Of course, wanted tO meet Nonaka-sensei. The meeting had been arranged by Kenji Hiranbe-san. The vision ofthis meeting had its roots in a discussion bebueen Kenji-san andl several years earlier.l suppose that the entourage, like most Westemers, were drawn to Japan by exotic nature, or maybe by the allure of a historic meeting of celebrities.l think that none of that entourage has since retumed tO serve Japan. But, Of cou e worked the other way, t00 , because Of the intense interest Japanese seem tO have for foreign ideas. By late 2011 the Japanese pattem community started to realize that they could dO more tO build on their own culture and insights tO create a new pattem community. 現場 PLOP started to take shape in the mind ofTakeshi Kakeda-san with the broad support ofthe Japanese community. Here in mid -201 引 still see making strong appearances on Facebook. ー would retum again in January 2012 tO dO a whirlwind Scnum tour through Osaka and TOkyo, spending the time together with my friend Yasunobu-san, whO hosted me. This would SO be the t time lhad the pleasure Of meeting Hosotani-san, whom you probably know you are reading this! Eighteen people came tO a full-day course in TOkYO on Scrum Organizational Pattems, including Miho-san, and a man whose face had become so familiar from many meetings together 物 a 目 began tO feel some coll 回 with him ー Makoto Takaesu. Kakutani-san, Yukei Wachi-san, and Harada-san helped out, coached people in the exercises, and helped with translation where necessary. 2013 Scrum Gathering My dear friend Mih0-san sent me an invitation in May 2012 to speak at the Scrum Gathering in T0kyo, which was t0 take p in January 2013. ー made a slow enjoyable joumey 作 om Denmark tO Japan, stopping in Chicago, San FranciscD, Oahu, and KaWai on the way.ln Oahul met up with 47

46 (from Harada-san,I think) was that 'there is no Kaizen without Hansei. ' Westemets tend to use the word more as a ね deum, with a lot ofenergy and optimism the Japanese way,l would leam, is humility and concem to do the right thing (rather than viewing hansei as punishment). That is the Scrum way. But more deeply, the Japanese "have a deep cultural competence about being in relationship," as B0b StiIger says. This shines through in words like バ and ( " 空気力厩めない " ). BO 物 of these deeply into agile and its notions 0f group identity, Of the importance of knowledge and of anticipation. ltis difficult to express these notions so directly in English because they are not primary concep in most Of its cultures. This is one important signpost of ⅷ 1 ⅵ have such high hopes for agile in Japan. 旧 fact, after 物 class, one of the attendees gave me the highest complimentl think lhave ever received. He to 旧 me: 'You are here to remind us ofwho we a 旧 . " TO me, that is a profound statement, exactly because the deepest parts Of Scrum are those that owe to the Japanese cu 旧 . The ceremonies, the roles, and the artefacts are training wheels to bring people through the gate intO the territony 0f the profound knowledge that was 0n8 the birthright of every Japanese. MOdem times and the creeping Westemization of Japan are every day eroding Japan's f00 物 old on this plateau: a 危 0 物 0 旧 that may be unique in the developed world.l have witnessed the erosion of this footho 旧 even over the fifteen years lhave been coming to Japan. During this visit,l would a 0 ね賑 about how to use organizationalpattems to improve one's Scnum implementation. Organzational Pattems are a key pivot between the pattem world and the agile wo . The pattem community principles ofdignity for pattem au 物 0 ofwholeness and quality, and of pieæmeal growth were an unbelievably natural way to express the mores of the emerging agile movement and its focus on people, of Kaizen mind, and of incrementaland iterative development. 46

45 we still find strange that our ne 対記 00r neighbor Germany opened new d00 for us int0 Japan. lhad a good acquaintance 0f Yasunobu-san much earlier. When ever our paths would cross, he would sacrifice SO much 0f himselfto make my visit a happy one! He worked hard t0 make possible for me t0 reach out t0 the Japanese folks. And he is someone wh0 really understands Scrum in bo 物 a deep way and a practical way— b0th as a practitioner and a teacher.l have leamed much 作 om him and, asl said, we became good 'friends" even beforel got to know Michiaki-san well.l hope that some day we find him teaching Scnum more and more in Japan. The Scrum courses were taught in Japanese through simultaneous translators. This is difficult fO 「 me, as makes it 引間 e more difficult for me tO 'connecf' with the audience. But somehow,it worked.l cou 旧 feel the connection and lbelieve that the people "got に " lhave a sense that Scrum builds naturally on ideals that were probably explicit tO the attendees' parents or grandparents, in a less age, and which still have latent echoes in the hearts and minds Of the fOlks aftending the Scnum class. Jeff Sutherland was very much inspired by Buddhist meditation in the early 1960S , and those roots figure strongly in the origins 0f Scmm. SO my Japanese Scmm course offerings had a much different tone to them than those lteach elsewhere.l に build on cultural concepts 0f not-separateness, and on the notions Of the TOYO ね WO 水 culture with which even everyday Japanese were most 同 Y familiar.l cou 旧 use familiar TPS terms like 無駄 and the more subtle 斑 and 無理 . The wonderfully compressed word バ evokes the potential Of moving intO 用 0 ⅳ ' as a team again, with elements b0th 0f P and dynams. lt's interesting t0 conscious 0f the fact that ⅷ say "kaizen" in English, that it evokes an almost magicaland powefulomen 0f superb excellenæ and attentiveness, while in Japanese it just means "gefting befter. " Such realizations call for ma. 」 or changes in my rhetoric. But most Of these realizations allow me tO tap into the deep but subtle distinctions between European and Japanese culture: coopetition ()t the enterprise level); autonomation versus automation ()s in software testing). One Of my own greatestleamings 45

32 Pattem Languages and on the Nature Of 0 「 de 「 . Linda Rising had a 0 been at MensorePLoP and gave some ね s in the same forum where lpresented back in TOkyo. Pattems were moving ever more in a human direction, bO 物 fO 「 me and for Japan. What had started as a novel way t0 document slightly unconventional technicalsolutions was finding new application in describing the organizationalstructures 0fthe world 0f wo 水 . And a core set 0f people in Japan had started t0 see reflections ofthemselves in the works 0f Christopher AIexander, and his worldview ofwholeness, ofthe natural processes 0f localadaptation 0f piecemealgrowth, and 0f the place 0f feeling in design. Ten-Year Reflections at the Chasm There was a nine-year hiatus before ー would retum tO Japan, in January 2010. The Japanese economy was bad in the 1990S , and though bounæd back somewhat after 2000 , the globalfinancial crisis slowed Japan's in thelatter part Of the decade. 旧 mid -2009 bwo Japanese engineers stumbled across the notes from my "East Meets Wesf' tak at 002K. Their names were Eiiti Hanyuda-san and Hiroshi Nakano-sensei. At this time pattems had again becnme a hOt topic in the Japanese software wo . Excited, these two æntacted my friend Kenji Hiranabe-san whom lhad first met at that event in 2000 」 n KenJi-san wrote t0 me in late August 2009 tO invite me tO give a ten-year anniversary talk in Japan and Takeshi Kakeda-san followed up with a mailin September inviting me t0 Japan f0 「 a ten-year anniversary ね in December. Schedule conflicts caused the date tO pushed t0 the following month. Takeshi-san t00k over the arrangements for the event and, tO increase my appetite fO 「 the visit, said that he would arrange a trip to the famous Eishin Gakuen which Christopher Alexander had built outside TOkyo between 1982 and 1989. 32

. を 26 、。 1999 and to make some of my t meetings with the people 作 om Japan who would play key roles in my support Of the Japanese people. Teny would show up again at PLOP in August 1999 , and then again in 2000. On the way t0 lllinois from Japan he and his team would stop in Oregon and visit the site Of AIexandeds "Oregon Experiment," where they found the pattems still very much alive then. His colleagues would be with him. PLOP 2000 would be my meeting with Y0ichi Hasegawa-san and with Noriko Kanazawa-san, with whom ー would devebp a close friendship and working relationships. "Friend" has a very special meaning in Danish: unlike Americans, who have dozens 0f friends, Danes have just a handful.ln this sense lthink that most 0f my 'friends" are Japanese. Fujino-san so visited in November 1999 in Chicago. He andl didn't get spend much time together butl believe he builtrelationships with Other Of mine. First Voyage My first visit tO Japan happenedlater that year in December when my son Christopher andl together took ou 襾 t travelto Japan.l went tO Japan partly because culture had already shaped me through my reading, but a 0 because Of my fascination with an exotic culture.l was introduced tO Japanese business during alackluster periOd in its ecnnomic devebpment. Japan had seen powetfuland pr0Sperous decades in the 1970S and 1980S , but the stock market crash in 1989 left a more subdued economy afterwards. The decade in the wake ofthe crash were 厄 d 失われた 10 年 , and there is debate about whether they should have been called 失われた 20 年 , as broader intemational malaise set it. Japan groaned through annoying increases in unemployment and reductions in disposable income fomerly spent on expensive whiskies and fancy . At the æporate level, companies like TOYO ね and Sony were facing renewed from overseas. Secure lifetime employment became a thing Of the past. Perhaps with this humbling Of the Japanese economy came a IOSS Of faith in in ツ , 26

friend who was tO write up the interview. There were a number of additional claims made about agile over the Of the evening, none quite as strange as that f0 「 reviewing the contracts, andl carefully responded to each one in a way that showed the lack of agility in each one. The dialog became perhaps after a bit t00 much sake, and at one point this same guy from the other company (and wh0 was not a native Japanese) was yelling at the top 0f his voice, spitting insults across the ね b and violently justifying his position.lt was the standard Westem justifications without an ounce Of Japanese soul. When the interview manuscript arrived for my revew, the words of one of the people at the table that night had been removed. Those were most of the silly claims about agile.lt made the intetview meaningless because half of the diabg was always missing. My dear friend, wh0 was responsible for the intetview, fixed the problem. She put the words back in but ascribed them to her lips instead ofthose Of her ignorant boss.l came in my heatt to painfully understand something ofJapanese culture which before lhad known on レ in my head: the power 0f authority, and the need for falling on one's sword tolet those in power save face. After a discussion between my fnend and her boss, the decision was made not tO publish the intetview. This wouldn't have happened 物 e stakes for Scrum weren't high. And they are. Jeff Sutherland tells me that Nonaka-sensei had asked him in January 2011 ,"Come, help me save Japan. 爿 want to continue to do my part, asl started when my love affair with Japan started in my youth and first blossomed in 1999. 旧 2012 , Christopher Alexander published a book, "Battle," about the construction Of the sch001 complex at Eishin. He describes the "natural" way Of building as 。 WO System A," and the modern, business-oriented school as 'World System B. " These 0 world systems evidenced themsetves in battle at Eishin as was being built. AgiIe in Japan has come to the point where the battle that Alexander fought together with Nakano-sensei back in ? ? ? has now come t0 its legacy in the agile communrty, again in Japan, in 2013. SO will be in Japan as has been elsewhere with Scrum: people

33 AISO, in 2009 , Waseda Unrverslty announced their plans tO host an AsianPLoP in March of 2010 , billed as 'the first Asian conference Of Pattem Languages 0f Programs. 爿 found 0dd 物 a 目 had heard aboutit on レ third-hand, and found it odd that 忙 was being 厄 d the 'flrsf' conference though there had already been one in 1998 and MensorePLOP in 2001 , and found strange that none ofthe organizers Of either ofthose were involved in this one, and found most strange that the venue was in academia.lndeed, much seemed tO have changed in my absence. And this ænference seemed to have 0 用 c 回 connections t0 the HiIIside Group, which by then was running PLoPs that had little of the vision of us originalfounders.ln any case, the pattem community seems tO have split. MOSt 0fthe pattem communlty would find out about myjoumey tO Japan that would take p 唇 in the following December only afterl was gone.lt would another year 0 「 two before Japan would awaken t0 the fact that pattems cou tap deeply int0 their own culture, rather than just refine the Americanization Of what were originally profound Japanese ideas. Anyhow, after a nine-year hiatus,l was coming back tO Japan, and it wouldn't be SO much about pattems as about agile ー - even though the main event that beckoned me was 厄 d the "Alexander-Matsuri. "ln the mean time many other things had happened ー b0 物 in my life and in Japan. Scrum had come tO Japan. Bas V0dde-san ran his in Japan in 2007 in cooperation with Emerson Mills, whO was then at amazon.com/ Emerson would go on tO become the first Japanese-speaking Scrum trainer in Japan. One 0f the early Scrum course students ()t the second in Japan) was Kazumasa Ebata ("EbackY').ln February 2009 , Ebacky and Yasunobu Kawaguchi-san started up a Scrum team at QUICK Corporation and hired Eiichi Hayashi-san as a coach. They would go on t0 s ね the Suku-Suku-Scrum community in April 2009. BO 物 Ebacky and Emerson would prove t0 be powerfulforæs in spreading the word about Scrum in Japan. About the same time Kenji Hiranabe-san and 0 物 e from his company a 0 t00k up the Scrum banner. As for myself, lhad left Bell Labs, started and ended a j0b at a university, s ね and ended another at a hardware desgn and another at a 33

23 EarIy R00 My history with "Far Easf' ideology long predates my first visit わ Japan.ln the 1980S my Bell Labs 0 価 mate ー and, in most respects, my first Sensei ー・ Tom Burrows, got me interested in Buddhism and its integration with the way we think about programming. Tom had been adopting Buddhist ideas t0 his programming environment, called G に」 became a big fan 0f this programming style in the 1980S and wrote many programs in the new languages Tom created. (One 0fthe programs, whichl would write in 1991 , would be the basis for the research that would in tum inspire part 0f Scrum. ) We programmed in a style we called " 加充の方法 ()n Kanji, " 無為自然 " ) : the same kind Of effortlessness with which water "plans"its way down a mountain. Much Of our programming was about creating metaphors that translated time int0 spaæー a view that presages my courtship with the Japanese idealof " 間 . " lfour programs allowed time and space tO play well with each Other, then nature ー desgn ー would find its way tO a beautifuland hamonious ending. These ideas were, Of seeds Of agile. Agile is all about time: about shortintetvals, aboutiteration, about cycles and episodes. But agile is SO all about the relationships between people on the plane 0f the Earth: small teams, pair programming, and 0 物 e 「 spatial configurations. Agile is this time and spaæ together. These basic building bbcks, and the ideas about how t0 unite them, were already there in the programming Tom and ldeveloped. They would unf01d again in the years 0f my pattem experienæ in Japan. And they would t0 their れⅲ on in the unfolding 0f agile in Japan. ー met my greatest sensei, Chris SkellY, in the early 1990S ; he was a long-time student 0f Sufiism and Buddhism, and b0 物 an Aikid0ki and a C + + expert. About the same time, my son Christophefs interest in the culture 0f Japanese video games and Mangalured me int0 leaming more about those aspects 0f Japanese 肝 e. PartlY in response t0 this calling,l t00k up Aikid0 in the mid-1990S. By thenl had probably invested more in understanding Japanese culture than the average American had. Maybe that's not saying much. But these introductions provided first steps toward my understanding Of Japanese culture. 23

38 can SO be somber and reflective when life and relationship call for it. He would be alarge infiuenæ on me over the years. But it is sometimes a struggle leading the Japanese to an understanding of the power oftheir own culture and history. After this visit, lreceived a thoughtful mailfrom Masanari Mot0hashi. Ari-san wrote this わ me: lstudy bOth westem and eastem culture as an amateur, butl feel that almost Japanese dO 猷 know true value of Japanese/eastem culture or yet. We subconsciously believe that we should hesitate/neglect our culture, even though we don ・ t know that we may misunderstand our culture.ln this case, "we" means the standard/stereotype business/academia/govemment people in Japanese including software and infomation technology persons. He felt that the people who attended the Alexander-Matsuri were different. SO there hope.ln June 2010 , lreceived a d 田負 of a pattem paper entitled, "Language Of 倭 . " ColloquiaIIy, " 倭 " translates intO English as "hamony; more literally, itis an ancient fo of 日本 , and might best be translated intO English as "community. " lread 忙 with wonder.lt drNtes t0 the foundations ofthe foms ofcommunltydialogue, employing metaphors from æremonies around shrines in Japanese culture.lt was written by Masanari Motohashi-san about Mikoshi, Yoriai, and Kuuki ー topics that Masanari-san had been meditating about for many months.lt has one Of the best articulations of 守破離 thatl have ever read and clearly articulates not on レ倭 but the elusive concept 0f 場 as well.ln my mind, this paper stands as one ofthe classics Of organizationalpattem literature ー - in fact, of all pattem literature that has emerged 作 om the broader software community. Japan was finding its own roots. 38