it's systems all the way down! - xp2016

@chrisvmcd - it’s systems all the way down!

it’s systems all the way down!

Chris McDermott @chrisvmcd

Lean Agile Coach/Conference Organiser

http://leanagile.scot @LeanAgileScot

5th, 6th & 7th of October 2016

A plan

• Why we work the way we work• Appreciation of a system• A shallow dive into complexity• Thoughts on methods• Guiding principles• Examples of practices

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

What words or phrases spring to mind when you hear the words…

Analysis

Discuss with someone sitting next to you

Synthesis

United 173

Crew Resource Management

US Airways 1549

Why we work the way we work

Chunking

Mechanism

Adam Smith

“Division of labour” - Wealth of Nations - 1776

Fredrick Winslow Taylor

The Principles of Scientific Management - 1911

Alfred P Sloan

Decentralised operations with coordinated control - 1920

Karl Marx

[The worker then becomes] "depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine"

Appreciation of a System

What is a system?

“An interconnected set of elements which is coherently organised in a way that achieves something”

Donnella Meadows

“Meaning exists in the interaction between things, not in the things themselves"

Alicia Juarrero

Interaction

Interdependence

“Each part of the system, when it affects the system, is dependent on its affect for some other partIn other words the parts are interdependent” Russell Ackoff

Defining Properties

“The essential or defining properties of any system are properties of the whole that none of its parts have.”

Russell Ackoff

Feedback

Balancing & Reinforcing

Boundaries

Holistic

“The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately.”

Operation Cat Drop

Fundamental Attribution Error

“We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know.”

Daniell Kahneman

System v Individual95% of the performance of an organisation is attributable to the system (processes, technology, work design, regulations, etc) and 5% are attributable to the individual

W Edwards Deming

GM Freemont

Shallow dive into Complexity

Complicated systems

“[Taylor] has probably had a greater effect on the private and public lives of the men and women of the twentieth century than any other single

Complex systems

“Linearity is seductive"

Dave Snowden

Volunteers

Is software development complex?

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Yogi Berra

Thoughts on methods

Waterfall

• Analytic thinking• Constrains self organisation - governing constraints• Doesn’t appreciate the impact of time• Highly constrained - rigid structure

Purpose

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

Bertrand Russell

A way of working that accepts we can’t know everything in advance and things we do know about might change.

We manage this by intervening in social systems through the use of processes that promote learning which enable organisations to adapt quickly when new information emerges.

Sub-optimisation

“All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.

Taiichi Ohno

Kanban on Systems

Kanban on Emergence

• Start with what you do now• understanding current processes, as actually practiced

• Agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change

• Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally

Kanban on Interactions

“Kanban provides a linear view of your social network” - Jabe Bloom

Kanban on Time

• Knowledge work is perishable

• Establish flow

Kanban on Resilience

• Defer commitment• Create Slack

Holistic Kanban

• Who asks us to do the work? (boundaries)

• What do we do with the work? (interactions, feedback)

• Where does it go when we are done? (boundaries)

Kanban’s Constraints

• Limit work in progress• Make policies explicit• Cadences

@chrisvmcd - it’s systems all the way down

Continuous Delivery

"potentially shippable"... seriously, "do or do not, there's not bloody potentially shippable software"

- Torbjörn Gyllebring

Devops

“There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.”

Peter Drucker

Lean UX

Exploration Exploitation

Complex Complicated

LeanUX

LeanStartup

Kanban

Continuous Delivery

Prince 2 (?)Six Sigma (?)

Principles for managing complex organisations

Situational Awareness

Shared Understanding

Common Purpose

Decentralised Decision Making

Experimentation

“Trust is the metric for the quality of social connection”

Marc Burgauer

Examples of practices

Teamverløtung

Cross functional autonomous teams

Collision space

Community of Practice

Pareto Team Stability

Organisational Split

Anything else you can think of?

• Visualisation• …

Discuss with someone sitting next to you

Thinking in Systems

• Think:• Interactions

• Interdependence

• Feedback

• Temporally

• Holistically

• Resilience

• Emergence

• Purpose

Thank you!

References

Sources“What is the value of Social Capital” - Jabe Bloom : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n4a1VOW7H8

“Culture is the True North - Scaling at Jimdo" - Arne Roock : http://www.infoq.com/articles/scaling-at-jimdo

“Nilan Peiris and the culture of growth at TransferWise” - Boss Level Podcast : http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com/15

Anything from Russell Ackoff https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=russell+ackoff

Jabe Bloom on Systems Thinking http://www.infoq.com/interviews/jabe-bloom-systems-thinking-lean-ux14

John Seddon Keynote Rethinking IT https://vimeo.com/19122939

Images

http://a1.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,h_1200,q_80,w_1200/MTMxMTc0MTUyNTc1OTIwNzcx.jpg

http://bridgeforcefinancial.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BIF-BIF7DanPink976.jpg

http://valao.de/images/cms/jimdo/jimdo-logo.png

http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Angell-Yogi-Berra1-1200-630-23191047.jpg

https://www.flickr.com/photos/27764576@N06/17241876888/in/photostream/

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7e/f9/1b/7ef91b6d360d4a6fd2e338bccde68078.jpg

http://wisedecisions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Fotolia_8284502_M.jpg

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1295422/images/o-SCOTLAND-FANS-WEMBLEY-facebook.jpg

More Images

https://pixabay.com/en/clock-mechanism-hour-s-watch-works-544426/http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8345244ea69e20111688f4568970c-pihttp://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53a4944aecad042a40e04921/daniel-kahneman-investors-need-to-stop-believing-they-can-know-the-future.jpghttp://content9.flixster.com/question/53/76/67/5376679_std.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Fugle,_%C3%B8rns%C3%B8_073.jpghttp://img.gawkerassets.com/img/192pmyvahzkfsjpg/original.jpghttp://5cience.net/userdata/images//275/b3e2b00a.jpghttps://sherhaps.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/16959-helmet_cat.jpghttp://gloriumtech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/coolv-moss-mh-round-2500x1443.jpghttps://www.flickr.com/photos/27764576@N06/16831729184/in/album-72157651963367835/https://www.flickr.com/photos/27764576@N06/14074504295/http://blogs-images.forbes.com/actiontrumpseverything/files/2012/05/47311_Papel-de-Parede-Planeta-Terra_1600x12001.jpghttps://nothinginbiology.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/doc.jpgP[

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