Shu-Ha-Ri is a popular metaphor in Agile Circles.
It’s borrowed from Martial Arts (where it works well) and one way to explain it might be:
- Shu – Follow the rules
- Ha – Break the rules (adapting them to your context)
- Ri – Become the rules
It is most often used as a justification for why beginners should not question their ScrumMaster™ (or process) and simply follow the rules laid down for them by the methodology.
Much like jazz, any given student1 is only permitted to rise to the next level of the process once they’ve conquered the preceding steps. i.e. you don’t earn the right to break the rules until you’ve proved that you can follow the rules.2
What’s this got to do with Best Practice?
The term “Best Practice” tends to mean “Industry Best Practice” – people want to adopt Best Practice because it’s considered as something that has been proven to work elsewhere. i.e. it’s a way to short-cut learning.3
If we say for the moment that we’re talking about authentic Best Practice here, then any deviation from the rules therefore means some kind of sub-optimal performance on the part of the implementers (and should obviously be avoided).
It’s a Good Idea, it’s how Humananity has managed to continue to make technological and societal progress that extends well beyond the confines of the average human lifespan.
The Democratisation of Excellence
There is only one problem. For something to be widely regarded as Best Practice, then it has to be somewhat democratised. By which I mean it needs to be able to be widely implemented.
If something is widely implementable however, it means that it does not, by definition, take advantage of any organisational or personal strengths.
Thus if we return to the martial arts roots of Shu-Ha-Ri – your Kyū level training will teach you how to punch effectively and without breaking your wrists, but it won’t help you take full advantage of the fact that you’ve got shoulders that would put Schwarzenegger to shame.
By Definition, Ha means Abandoning Best Practice
“Ha” means to break the rules.4 This “right” accrues to the martial arts student upon the event that they are able to prove that they can follow the rules without deviation.
(Thus, we can safely assume that the rules are not being broken due to an insufficiency in ability)5
Once so gifted, students will then begin to break (some of) the rules in order to better adapt the techniques to their individual contexts – always in an endevour to produce superior results.6
For these students, Best Practice ceased to be enabling and had become limiting.
Best Practice is a step along the journey, it’s not the destination
There is actually a lot to discuss around Shu-Ha-Ri7, and I know that some people (Adam Yuret comes to mind) dislike the concept simply because it creates an apparent hierachy, encouraging people to self identify as “Ha” or even “Ri” simply because that’s a higher grade.
But the simple point I want to make here – is the surprising position that Best Practice finds itself in.
It’s nothing more than the lid of the Shu-Box.
- Side thought – wouldn’t it be nice if we all regarded ourselves as students of Agile rather than practitioners, masters or gurus? I doubt you could find many Black Belts in Karate who actually regarded themselves as no longer being a student of the art. ↩
- Skipping this step in music is all that separates jazz from punk. ↩
- Afterall, who wants to be learning when they could be doing ↩
- Yes, the ones you just spent at least 5 years learning. ↩
- There is also the presumption that at least some level of understanding has occured. At the very least, once the student is able to revert to “best practice” at any time, they can now judge for themselves as to whether their adaptations are providing superior outcomes or not. Also from my personal experience, truly studying a martial art instils a strong degree of humility. (Contrary to what much of Hollywood might portray) ↩
- As opposed simply for the purposes of saying “Hey look I invented my own Martial Art! It has a different name, an extra few belts and I’m the GrandMaster!” ↩
- I think I have enough Blog Drafts on the topic to fill a book. ↩