Ben-Hur’s Chariot Race and Software Development

This post was submitted to OpenView Labs by Isaac Shi, CTO of Prognosis Health Information Systems.

Remember the chariot race in the movie Ben-Hur?

It was a memorable scene.  Long before the race, Ben-Hur already has keen eyes for all the fine horses he got from the original owner, he told the Sheik:

“Your horses are very fine, but they’re not a team… you should run the slow horse on the inside where he can steady others in the turns… Aldebaran. I haven’t forgotten you. You are the swiftest (horse), but you must be steady.” Ben-Hur shortened the yoke and put the steady horse on the inside, the swiftest on the outside.

Driving fine horses is different from driving goats.

Judah Ben-Hur was the driver worthy of the fine horses he got, he was able to make the 4 horses run like one. In the end, the Roman general Messala with much better equipment lost to Ben-Hur because his chariot crashed and disintegrated while Ben-Hur arrived at the finish line because his horses running as a team, both fast on the lane and steady at turns.

Driving a software development team is like driving a chariot:

• Fast and steady is the only way to win the race, but the product need to make each turn (release) without crash
• Know your horses; know each developer’s strength, weakness
• Leverage that individual skill set into a team strategy, make them work as one
• Make steady turns, make stable releases

When software company transit from start-up mode to growth mode, it’s especially true, as team grow, it’s more important shorten the yoke (by using Scrum) long yoke keep the horses far apart from each other, only shorten it will make horses work together closely, that’s the very essence of Scrum. You can see Ben-Hur was the original Scrum Master.

You may find that you may have fine developers, but how to align each engineer’s skill strength to overcome the tight turn and avoid the sharp wheel scythes should be the burden of Development Manager. Simply having better equipment and great horses won’t do the job, the world was never lack of good horses, only great drivers. Great drivers make their horses run as one. Pursuit of development speed needs to be balanced with pursuit of product robustness and quality. A balanced approach of speed and quality, a repeatable quality control and release process will win the chariot race of software development.