Ching's first narrative work and the origin of his parable approach to teaching complex ideas. Originally published in 2009 on SlideShare, where it was read by approximately 90,000 people for free — an early example of using open distribution to build an audience around ideas rather than behind a paywall.
The story follows Bob Billington, a software professional facing job loss during an economic downturn. The parable teaches Agile principles without using Agile jargon — a deliberate choice that makes the ideas accessible to business stakeholders, managers, and practitioners who might resist or be unfamiliar with the Agile vocabulary. The central question is how to make projects commercially viable, not just technically successful.
The piece is short — a 15-30 minute read — which shapes its ambition. Rather than a full novel treatment, it is a compressed parable in the tradition of business-novel-as-pedagogy, using narrative tension to carry ideas that a list of principles could not. This format prefigures the structure Ching would use in rolling-rocks-downhill, though that later work is substantially more developed.
Rocks Into Gold was later made available on Medium as a series, on Audible, and on Kindle — following the audience Ching had already built through SlideShare. The work belongs to the early-career-and-toc-discovery period, predating Ching's full integration of toc-for-software-development into his narrative approach.
The 90,000 SlideShare readers represent a validation of both the parable format and Ching's instinct that there was a large audience for Agile ideas presented in accessible, story-driven form. This success shaped the writing strategy he pursued through his career, culminating in the more ambitious rolling-rocks-downhill.