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


Time


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


NUMMI


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


Agile

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.


Scrum


Sub-optimisation


Lean

“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

http://leanagile.scot/speaker/torbjorn-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

BDD

Continuous Delivery

Scrum

Prince 2 (?)Six Sigma (?)


Principles for managing complex organisations


Situational Awareness


Shared Understanding


Common Purpose


Decentralised Decision Making


Experimentation


Trust

“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[

https://pixabay.com/en/clock-mechanism-hour-s-watch-works-544426/

http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8345244ea69e20111688f4568970c-pi

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53a4944aecad042a40e04921/daniel-kahneman-investors-need-to-stop-believing-they-can-know-the-future.jpg

http://content9.flixster.com/question/53/76/67/5376679_std.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Fugle,_%C3%B8rns%C3%B8_073.jpg

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/192pmyvahzkfsjpg/original.jpg

http://5cience.net/userdata/images//275/b3e2b00a.jpg

https://sherhaps.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/16959-helmet_cat.jpg

http://gloriumtech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/coolv-moss-mh-round-2500x1443.jpg

https://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.jpg

it's systems all the way down! - xp2016

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