– “What are you doing?” asked the Cicada.
– “The Queen has asked me to build a new anthill!” replied the Ant.
– “But they already have one there, just a few meters away” offered the Cicada, puzzled.
– “Yes, but it’s getting a bit small, and in winter, with the rain, the things we have collected get wet”

The Cicada, ready to learn from her hard-working friends, decided that it would be a good idea to prepare for the winter. The leaves and sticks she used to build her shelter the previous year were getting dry, and it wouldn’t hurt to have a new home to spend the winter in comfort.

She quickly started to plan the wonderful shelter she would build. Now that she had time she would build it with every possible comfort. She would be the envy of the whole meadow. The stories about her new home would be heard far away, further even than the cypress hedge. It would have spacious windows so the light would flood in, and she would design a clever pulley system that would save her many trips to and from the barn to store what she had collected.

The Ant, however, had a plan. In August she would build the first room, which would be the barn. That way, if the rains started early this season, she and the other ants would have at least some extra space to store their grain. Then she planned the rest of the work according to its importance. If she didn’t have enough time to finish it all by the deadline, she would have built at least the most important parts.

In September she would dig a hole that would later become the hall were the first larvae of the year would live. In October she would build an additional room to increase barn capacity. Lastly, in November she would finish the work by digging a hall where she could grow fungi.

In the meantime, the Cicada was worried about having a dining hall that was big enough, and a structure as solid as necessary to hold everything she had imagined. She would run back and forth looking for the materials she would need to build all the things that she had planned in her head.

In October the first rains came, but the Cicada didn’t even have a basic shelter to take cover in. Also, water ruined some of her first constructions that were halfway built, and she had to start again. Then November came and the weather became really ugly. She had to hurry up and started working from sunrise to sunset.

Those first October rains made the Ant think that something could go wrong, and she decided to test whether the work that was already done would be useful. She started to fill her new barn with grain and soon she noticed that the access hole was too small for big leaves, and that it should be a bit higher if they wanted to avoid water or mud coming through. In order to fix this, they had to stop doing other things.

Winter came early that year, and the Ant realized that she wouldn’t have enough time to build the last room, so in the main anthill they decided that they should open an extra entrance, in case the main one got blocked by a stone or an enemy.

The Cicada, however, was surprised by the bad weather. She didn’t really know what was finished and what wasn’t. Also, what she had considered finished had not been tried out, and now there was no time to improve it. Winter was here and no more work could be done.

In her new shelter, under the leaking roof, the Cicada promised herself that this would never happen again: “Next year I’ll start work even before the Ant,” she said to herself.

You can find texts like this and many other about how to manage agile projects in my book Agile 101: Practical Project Management (available on Amazon).

Translation by Begoña Martínez. You can also find her on her LinkedIn profile. Proofreading by David Nesbitt.