Release 5: We need Jamie Oliver!

Project methodology and School Dinners have one thing in common: "they have been done a certain way for so many years that it has become a routine for the doers and a cost saving exercise for the deciders...".

For those who do not know who Jamie Oliver is, he is a Chef, and has become famous in the UK through various TV programmes (see http://www.jamieoliver.net/).

His most recent broadcasting venture was to try and change the eating behaviour of young kids at school >> they are served crap, they eat crap, and they only want crap, mainly because that's all they know.

The whole experience lasted a few months but was concentrated for TV into a series of 4 episodes of 1 hour each.

I won't go into more details here. You can read and learn more about it at:
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/J/jamies_school_dinners/

Now, there are 2 things I find really interesting in all this:

1. The effect the "new" food will have on kids in the long run is predicted by nutritionists to be great >> far less health problems when they are adults and a longer life expectancy in general
2. The whole experiment fell right in the middle of the general election campaign, and political parties are now making healthier school dinners for all a KEY SELLING point and differentiating factor of their respective programmes!!!

Jamie Oliver has triggered a change in school dinners in the UK: Kids are happy, dinner ladies are happy, parents are happy, politics are happy (well, the one party that will win the general election based on this will be!!).

What is this post doing in here?

Well, maybe we should consider ourselves as the Jamie Oliver's of XP/Agile. Wherever we go, there are kids to feed, dinner ladies to educate, parents to convince, and politics to please... and looking back at point 1 and 2 above, don't we do what we do in the same context and for the same reasons as Jamie did his stuff?

I believe we are! Now, show me the way to 10 Downing Street ;-)