Let’s take a look at some well known quotes from the legend that is Bruce Lee:
“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns”
“Obey the principles without being bound by them”
That sounds like Bruce Lee was strongly in favour of responding to change. What about his approach to planning?
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done”
“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at”
That sounds applicable to retrospectives and using empirical evidence to drive decisions. Two quotes this time about using a lean approach:
“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential”
“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be”
Both reflect the Agile manifesto’s principle “Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential”. Then we have:
“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system”
To me, this has very strong echoes of the Agile manifesto’s value “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.
There are many more applicable examples! I’m beginning to wonder if it’s merely a coincidence that the first papers introducing adaptive and incremental software development processes surfaced in the early 1970’s?
Setchu - Agile at Scale 