Agile Thoughts

Scrum is not some newfangled, flash-in-the pan methodology for software development (it isn’t a methodology at all, but that is off-topic for this blog).  Scrum is a very small part of a greater movement in the business world, and perhaps the world of organizations in general.  We are at the beginning of a true Kuhnian paradigm shift away from a mechanistic way of thinking and towards a human one, a living one.  The theory underlying this world-view is known as Complexity Science, and in particular the study of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).

A book that does an excellent job of discussing this shift of thinking and behaving in the business world, and one I recommend to upper managers and change agents in the organizations I work with, is Surfing the Edge of Chaos, by Pascale, et al.   The authors offer advice to business leaders of how to turn their companies into “agile and adaptable ‘living systems’ that achieve long-term vitality and sustainability in a swiftly evolving environment”.  The book is peppered with real-life examples of major business entities (e.g. Shell and Sears) who have harnessed complex, adaptive behaviors for profit and employee happiness.

One organization recently founded to promote these ideas and practices in the field of healthcare (but since expanded to other fields) is the Plexus Institute.  The words below, extracted from the Plexus Institute’s web site, offer an overview of this new way of being.

” […] Whatever their value in the past, mechanistic principles alone are inadequate for the complexity and change we face today. Clearly, we need a new way of looking at work and organizations of all types.

Such a world-view has in fact emerged; it is known as complexity science. At its core, this intellectual revolution is transforming our understanding of life, its structures, dynamics and its care, while providing new principles for making sense of what is most fundamental in our lives: our relationships with other people and our environment.

Such understandings give us powerful new ways of thinking about and acting on issues which span human concern, from such seemingly disparate domains as ecological preservation, childhood education and executive leadership. As such, it is relevant to everyone. Already, some business, community and government leaders are embracing the ideas emerging from complexity science, but they remain a minority.

[…]  What is complexity science? Very simply, it is science’s most recent attempt to explain how order and novelty emerge in the world. (As such it is the intellectual successor to systems theory and chaos theory.) The traditional view of the natural world was made up of machine-like entities that you could understand by taking them apart and examining the components.

Much has been learned about nature by this approach. But the vast majority of nature is not amenable to being understood in this way, because most of nature is made up of what complexity scientists call non-linear, complex adaptive systems. Such systems are created by a number of diverse and independent agents that are constantly changing and interacting with each other. In complex adaptive systems, a study of the parts surely produces an incomplete understanding of the whole. Examples of these systems include ant colonies, ecosystems, and human organizations.

It’s worth making a distinction here between complex and complicated. An internal combustion engine is complicated, with many different components. But it is not complex because knowing what the parts are and how they function permits you to know what the system as a whole does.

The defining feature of complex adaptive systems is emergence: the order that emerges through the interactions of components in complex systems is “greater than - and different from - the sum of the parts,” to use a familiar phrase. Complex systems therefore have a large degree of unpredictability. But more than that, the emergent collective order in turn influences the behavior, or interactions, of the parts. Feedback loops exist at every level. Such systems are constantly adapting and evolving.

[There are] two important properties of complex systems. First, that complexity arises from a deep simplicity. Second, that the order of the whole system flows from distributed control, that is from interactions among individuals, not from central control. In organizations, one way to think about this phenomenon, called self-organization, is to remember what happens in times of crisis. People take on tasks where they see the need, often breaking the normal rules of operation, often doing things they don’t normally do. People achieve amazing feats, which they often rank among the most rewarding experiences of their work lives. Leaders often find it difficult to give up a measure of control, because it is part of their identity as leaders. But those who do find that their people tap into their latent talent, and do far more than they, or anyone, ever imagined. This is the power of a complexity perspective in organizations.

This perspective does not say that leaders simply have to sit back, give up control, and wait for unpredictable miracles. Instead, it argues that leaders must help create conditions that unleash the talent distributed among their people. It is a model of leader as cultivator rather than controller.

[…]  One final property of complex adaptive systems that is relevant to organizations is as follows: when the interactions among the agents are enhanced, the adaptability and creativity of the system is also enhanced.

In human organizations, this translates to agents being people, and interactions being relationships generated by conversations. Enhancing people’s ability to interact and to develop enhances the adaptability of the organization. Complexity scientists have also observed that a diversity of agents in the system serves to enhance this adaptability and creativity even further. In organizations, this means inviting a diversity of experience and perspectives.”

The full article can be read here: The Plexus Story.

My intention here (using mostly borrowed words) is to show that Scrum is a naturally evolving way of thinking and behaving.  It has a solid theoretical and scientific foundation and is at the cutting edge of current systems thinking.  As such, Scrum needs to be taken very seriously by any software company hoping to stay in business and compete in a world that is changing faster than ever before.  Mechanics cannot keep up; heavy-handed, hierarchical, command-driven organizations are the lumbering dinosaurs of the business world, grinding innovation to a halt.  To thrive today we need the speed of the human mind, the immediacy of eye contact and physical touch, and the creativity of the collaborative spirit, unleashed through trust and self-organization.