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The business fable of The Chicken and the Pig is about commitment to a project or cause. When producing a dish made of ham and eggs, the pig provides the ham which requires his sacrifice and the chicken provides the eggs which are not difficult to produce. Thus the pig is really committed in that dish while the chicken is only involved, yet both are needed to produce the dish.
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Content
The fable of the Chicken and the Pig is used to illustrate the differing levels of project stakeholders involved in a project. The basic fable runs:
Sometimes, the story is presented as a riddle:
Interpretation and lessons
The fable has been used mostly in contexts where a strong team is needed for success, like in sports or in Agile software development.
Agile project management
The fable was referenced to define two types of project members by the scrum agile management system: pigs, who are totally committed to the project and accountable for its outcome, and chickens, who consult on the project and are informed of its progress. This analogy is based upon the pig being able to provide bacon (a sacrificial offering, for which the pig must die in order to provide) versus a chicken which provides eggs (non-sacrificial).
For a Scrum project the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and Development Team are considered as people who are committed to the project while customers and executive management are considered as involved but not committed to the project.
As of 2011, the fable has been removed from the official Scrum process.
Sports
The fable also is used as an analogy for levels of commitment to a game, team etc. For example, variations of this quote have been attributed to football coach Mike Leach who said, on the officials in the 2007 Tech-Texas game in Austin: "It's a little like breakfast; you eat ham and eggs. As coaches and players, we're like the ham. You see, the chicken's involved but the pig's committed. We're like the pig, they're like the chicken. They're involved, but everything we have rides on this."