A Few Words on Mismatched Minifigs

My son has taken the head off of every one of his LEGO minifigs. He has rearranged everyone’s hair, given them new pants, and tossed the weapons into a giant pile on his LEGO table. He has no regard for canon. In the story of Star Wars, it’s now Darth who shot first, doing so while wearing an old west sheriff’s hat.

Who does he think he is? Does he have no regard for how things are supposed to be arranged?

I work for a company that is often brought in to handle tangled development problems — tricky implementations that depend on someone else’s strategy. I pour over someone else’s wireframes and content models, and without fail I find something that doesn’t sit right.

Not because it’s wrong. But because it’s not necessarily how I would have done it. I’m quick to judge. I’m quick to compare.

Methodology is sticky in this way. We come up with our own techniques and plans and hold other people accountable to them, despite knowing that methodologies are, at heart, deeply personal. No one works like you do. No one works like I do.

Regardless of what we do, we have one real goal: to provide a valuable solution. How we get to those solutions — how we use the tools and techniques afforded to us, within the timeframes we’re allowed, among the people we trust — is completely interchangeable.

That thing you do isn’t the only way to do it, and neither is the thing I do.

So when my son’s throwing Superman’s hair on Aquaman’s body, I have to remind myself that he’s not trying to prove anything. He has one goal: to have fun playing with LEGO. How he reaches that goal isn’t as important as making sure it’s a success.

Understanding that my son doesn’t need to stay on canon is part of raising a kid.

And understanding that we aren’t tied to any specific methodology is part of learning our craft.