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In reality, that boss probably was just repeating something that he heard - hoping that his boss would like how it sounds. I recall similar parables in early 00's agile. It is a lot easier to say things like this than come up with an actual strategy.

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Folksy management sayings inevitably compel me to innocently ask inconvenient questions.

Because either (a) the person using them really knows their shit and will have a response or (b) they're just full of shit.

Usually the response is either to just double down "this is the most important thing that we do" (with no further explanation), or anger: "Idiot! How can you not possibly know what I mean to be committed like the pig in my story".

The context I have heard the ham and eggs analogy was for certain scrum rituals that were supposed to be for ham people only (ie, excluding people without a stake in the outcome). Someone probably told this boss to butt out of a meeting.

It is all dumb stuff, imo. 00's agile got away with a lot of stupid things - usually with the implicit aim of increasing the number of billable devs (or to sell conference tickets or books. It was almost like, the more absurd, the better. There are still remnants of that but, thankfully, it has mostly disappeared.

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