Devops for Growth

Une polarité est un set d’opposés qui ne peut fonctionner correctement de manière indépendante.

Les 2 côtés de la polarité étant interdépendants, on ne peut pas choisir l’un comme une “solution” et négliger l’autre.

– Barry Johnson

Le verbe associé est important car il permet de bien comprendre la différence de mode opératoire :

On cherche à faire disparaître le problème en lui trouvant une solution, généralement par de l’analyse méticuleuse.
On cherche à moduler le problème en observant les effets de la polarité sélectionnée à un instant t et en acceptant de basculer sur l’autre selon le contexte.

Ainsi, on peut dire que l’objectif du Polarity Management est :

Obtenir le meilleur de chaque opposé en limitant les inconvénients de chacun.

A quick recap before we go any further: the essence of Cynefin is that it helps you work out which domains you're in and which methods or tools work best there. For instance, process re-engineering may work wonders in the obvious domain but will be a horrendous fit for the others. In a complicated domain, you may want to use an audit, and call in the experts. A complex system on the other hand, could benefit from social network stimulation, using self-organizing teams and a reward framework. And when there’s chaos, acting as quickly as you can and then learning from what went right and wrong could save the day.

For those people who love their frameworks and matrices (you know who you are), I’ll just casually drop the Rumsfeld matrix here as well (Which is related to the Johari window but I won’t post that here as there ought to be limits to the amount of frameworks or matrices used in one piece), which might be a help in estimating the uncertainty of some of your projects. Dave and I did not talk about that in the interview, but it could be useful for those who are intrigued by the concept of ‘knowing what you don’t know’ he did refer to (ie known unknowns):

Then I translate the Cynefin model slightly differently:

Complex: The “team members” are autonomously interacting together and co-create together a new “emerging” solution. Ex. Building on the top of each one’s idea.
Complicated: all participants are interacting together to analyse something to collect “good practices” or to validate an outcome.
Simple: The information shared from the “top” is evident for all participants in the system and doesn’t need to be discussed. Ex. Fire alarm = get out.
Chaos: nobody is interacting, and all the people are working in their area.

Picture this context

Single team Scrum is in use by many teams of different initiatives

Having genuinely tried, some teams are unable to use Scrum, as they cannot deliver potentially releasable value in 30 days or less. Even 90 days might be a struggle.

OK, one might say “can” and “cannot” are just opinions/attitudes.

In a scaling context, some patterns can deal with the kind of Scrum that does not yet deliver value per team from a Scrum Sprint.

The teams in this context are operating deeply in the complex space with more unknown than known.

Maybe in some cases, the team members’ belief systems are closer to Kanban.

And, maybe the teams have non-software knowledge work

The Stacey complexity model explains, that each task can be put in one of the 4 categories: simple, complicated, complex, anarchy.

I've been a passionate Scrum practitioner since over a decade and I really value it. Scrum is the most used agile framework and it is well documented in the Scrum Guide. To avoid confusion with "Scrum", "Scrum X" is an evolution of the framework to support agile behaviour in a complex adaptive system that supports…

Real network models are new modes, not modifications of the old ones, and cooperation is how work gets done. Some examples:

Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same “horizontal” position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role [wikipedia].

Chaordic refers to a system of governance that blends characteristics of chaos and order. The term was coined by Dee Hock the founder and former CEO of the VISA credit card association [wikipedia].

Combine the TIMN perspective with the Cynefin framework, and I created this table, looking at how work gets done:

I've been working on this interpretation of the Cynefin (kun-ev'in) sense-making and decision-making framework for months. This combines 4 sources; Cynthia Kurtz and Dave Snowden (2003), Dave Snowden and Mary Boone (2007), Dave Snowden blogging (2006) and Joachim Sturmberg and Carmel Martin (2008). See here for some of the Snowden references. I started this after…

Cynefin a été developpe par D. Snowden et Mary E. Bone et fut sujet d´une publication dans HBR en 2007 sous le titre “A leader´s framework for decision making”. En janvier 2011, j´ai eu la chance de…

Implementing Lean is a journey witch encourters several pitfalls related to changing paradigms. Lean aim is linking the Product to the Market and change your s…

Aujourd’hui, notre société se complexifie de manière exponentielle. Les technologies se développent, les connaissances ne cessent de s’accumuler, l’environneme…

La différence avec une matrice 2×2 classique est qu’avec ce modèle, les données précèdent la catégorisation. Dans une matrice SWOT ou une matrice d’Eisenhower par exemple, il suffit de mettre les données dans la bonne case et on obtient une réponse rapide. Si ces matrices sont très utiles pour l’exploitation, elles perdent leur valeur pour l’exploration, ou lors des périodes de changement.

Dans le modèle Cynefin, ce sont les données qui définissent la situation dans laquelle on se trouve, et donc les comportements à adopter. Dans un monde irrationnel et imprévisible, ce modèle est particulièrement utile.

Kanban the Flow Strategy™ provides the basic structure for Kanban, which the reader can augment using models such as Evidence Based Management, Cynefin Sense-Making, Theory of Constraints, and scaling/descaling.
We have our quirks, and we consider some things as optional that maybe you thought were mandatory.

Download the Guide for Kanban – the Flow Strategy™ here.

Speaking about projects in an agile context is always funny. In January, I had a conversation with my friends Mike and Michael in Vienna, and when addressed the point of project management, they began getting very emotional. In their positions as agile trainers, there is no project management in Agile. My perspective was precisely on…