Alf Dobbert-Baums: When Management Writes a Book — AI, Strict Process, and the Missing Court System
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"They don't really know — do I need to follow these rules, or are they at my goodwill?" - Alf Dobbert-Baums
The developers and AI are on good terms. Then management decided to extend AI into product management — and the way to do that, of course, was stricter process. Same JIRA boards. Same columns. Same quality gates. Across every product. Management wrote a book and called it "how we develop." Then, in the next breath, said: "but it's not meant to be that strict — you have flexibility." Two messages, opposite directions. The result, Alf describes, is confusion and psychological-safety problems. The teams don't know whether they're playing by the rules or breaking them. They experiment with how far they can bend the book. They fall back on "common sense" and quietly skip what makes no sense. They've collected feedback — structured, organized — but feel they aren't heard. In the conversation, Vasco's framing of the legal system (every set of rules needs a court system to interpret them) led Alf to a real experiment: take the negative rules and reframe them as positive goals. Not "fewer meetings" — "meaningful meetings." Then match feedback to the goal, not the rule. It's an idea Alf came up with mid-conversation, and it's the kind of small frame-shift that can crack open a stuck dialogue with management.
Self-reflection Question: Where in your organization is management asking people to follow rules they haven't defined the goal for — and what would change if you reframed those rules as goals?
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About Alf Dobbert-Baums
Alf lives in Berlin. He studied Theater/Religion at the Freie University Berlin. He is a Systemic Organizational Consultant, a Scrum Master and Agile Coach. He has also been a freelancer for Usability and Requirements Engineering for car manufacturers. At "Verti" he led the agile transformation.
You can link with Alf Dobbert-Baums on LinkedIn.
