Yogi Berra quotes

August 14, 2011

As some of you may know, my sense of humor, such as it is, finds Yogi Berra quotes both entertaining and educational.  I use some of them in my classes. My hope is that the humor allows people to remember things a bit better.  Or in some other magical way, helps learning.

For those who don’t know who Yogi Berra is, he was a famous catcher for the New York Yankees baseball team, and later the manager (head coach) for that team.

Here is an article about him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra

And here is a collection of his quotes:
http://agileconsortium.pbworks.com/w/page/44303643/Yogi%20Berra%20Quotes

A fact checker has not ascertained whether each and every quote is a certified Yogi Berra quote.  But then, as he said “I didn’t really say everything I said.”

I think some of them directly apply to Agile. But you be the judge.

In any case, enjoy.

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Posted in: Agile principles, Yogi Berra
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2 thoughts on “Yogi Berra quotes”

  1. Robert Hoover

    Funny, Joe- I know this is an old post, but I am a big Yankee/Yogi fan and I was thinking of doing an agile presentation and incorporating Yogi Berra quotes, so this struck a chord with me. Here are some I find relevant (I may be butchering a few of these):

    “It ain’t over till it’s over”- applies to you definition of done for story / sprint and being done,done.

    “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” – applies to scrum teams that are “too big”

    “It’s getting late early”- the feeling that the sprint justs started but is coming to a close and not much progress- need to get a consistent sense of urgency evenly throughout the sprint.

    “Can’t anybody here play this game” Ok It’s Casey Stengel but still a great quote and applies to team self organization.

    “You can observe a lot just by watching”- this is exactly what the chickens should be doing, without disrupting the pigs.

    “It’s deja vu all over again” which is what happens when you don’t have good retrospectives 🙂

    “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there,” or “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” Have a good product backlog and release plan.

    “It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.” Make sure one conversation going at a time to ensure proper focus (applies to any ceremony).

    “The future ain’t what is used to be.” Learn to accept uncertainty. If you promise a delivery date, chances are you will be wrong once you get there.

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  2. Joe Little Post author

    Glad you enjoyed them. I like your interpretations. I say about half of the Yogi quotes (if you see my list) apply to agile-scrum. And half do not.

    “Fun is essential.” That’s a Jeff Sutherland quote.

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