COMPLEXITYCONQUISTADORS

THINGS TO TAKEAWAY

3

The relationship of information and complexity

Cynefin, a model to better understand complexity

What to focus on in your agile process when dealing with complexity

HOW DO YOU DEFINE COMPLEXITY?

A STORY FROM IRAQ

THE CONCEPT OF INFORMATION

HOW I GOT INTERESTED IN ITIf you understand

what you’re doing, you are not learning

anything

What just happened there?

Start up

Start up

Enterprise

Start up

Start up

Enterprise

Start up

The bad lands

Start up

Enterprise

Investigate information from

unexpected sources

Create information that is useful.

Investigate unknowns.Your payoff will be huge

CYNEFIN

Order

Complex Complicated

Chaos SimpleUnOr

der

An Exercise

In your group arrange yourselves by height

 Simple

In your groups arrange yourselves by age and

month of birth

Complicated

Arrange yourselves in a shape that

represents your place of origin

Complex

Arrange yourselves as if you are at a

children’s birthday party, with unlimited

sugar

Chaos

Defined outcome Inspection reveals quality of workExploitation A Focus on Efficiency.

ORDER

Multiple possible solutionsNovel conceptsExplorationDiverse individuals and adaptability

UN-ORDERED

USING AN AGILE TYPE PROCESS AS A RESPONSE TO COMPLEXITY

DEALING WITH COMPLEXITY BY ITERATING

Iterations can help with controlling the amount of information*

Oh BTW “we”

hate iterating

THIS IS ITERATING

THIS IS INCREMENTING

Iterating starts before the iteration, it’s a mindset driven by being comfortable

with complexity

USE THE RETROSPECTIVE AS A MODEL BUILDING OPPORTUNITY

You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to

foolRichard Feynman

NARRATE ME YOUR PROBLEM

USER STORIES

The role of narrative is very important

As a: .... I want:.... So that....

It seems people really struggle at writing

stories

2 theories

Why

Our natural inclination is to solve problems

trying to fit the problem in the little

blocks

Remember the Gorilla?

Everything we do is empirical in nature, but we have a

standard user story format.

What the?

So what should a user story look

like?

Without our user story format we would miss this

awesomeness

Cat user stories

?Questions

@pringlewood

CreditsJabe Bloom @cyetrain

Dave Snowdenwww.cogntive-edge.com

Tim hardfordwww.timharford.com