Cynefin & Software Testing

Making sense of your situation

Dave Snowden

Liz Keogh

Image courtesy of Cognitive Edge

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Man

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Lead

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Cont

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Crea

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Expl

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Expl

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Dynamics

Image courtesy of Cognitive Edge

Cliff of Complacency

Image courtesy of Cognitive Edge

Testing (execution)

Cause & effect relationship is obvious

Categorise

Execution of automated checksObvious

ComplicatedCause & effect relationship separated over space & time

Analyse

Manually executing scripts

No cause & effect relationships perceivable

Act

3rd party outages e.g. GitHubChaos

ComplexCause & effect relationship only

coherent in retrospect

Probe

Exploring with test charters

Bugs

Cause & effect relationship is obvious

Categorise

There is no submit buttonObvious

ComplicatedCause & effect relationship separated over space & time

Analyse

Clicking the button opens the wrong page

No cause & effect relationships perceivable

Act

Clicking the button randomly deletes the Customers account

ComplexCause & effect relationship only

coherent in retrospect

Probe

Clicking the button crashes the site after 30 minutes

1. Just about everyone in the world has done this

2. Lots of people have done this, including someone on our team

3. Someone in our company has done this, or we have access to expertise

4. Someone in the world did this, but not in our organisation (and probably at a competitor)

5. Nobody in the world has ever done this before

Estimating Complexity

Courtesy of Liz Keogh

Estimating Complexity

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2

1

Trying things out

Breaking things down

Image Courtesy of Liz Keogh

Image courtesy of Cognitive Edge

Your Turn…• Silently write up a couple of stickies of work related situations, past

or present

• Place stickies in relevant domain on blank Cynefin framework

• Each group member tells the story of one of their stickies to the rest of the group, explaining reasons for the position of the stickie

• Discuss the situations - dis/agree with position? Any similar experiences in the group?

• Ideas for moving stickie into another domain

Domain AttributesObvious Complicated Complex Chaos

Cause & Effect relationship

Obvious Separated over space & time

Only coherent in retrospect

None perceivable

Practice Best Good Emergent Novel

Constraints Tight Light Enabling Lacking

Focus Categorise Analyse Probe Act

Rumsfeld Known knowns

Known unknowns

Unknown Unknowns

Unknowable unknowns

Doing the work Exploit Explore

Control Creativity

Management Leadership

Dynamics

Image courtesy of Cognitive Edge

Wrap Up

• Identify which domain your situation is in and act accordingly

• Ideas for moving your situation include:– Seek expertise (e.g. to move from Complex to Complicated

domain)– Question the system constraints (including the original

requirements)– Split the problem into parts so that it can be divided

between different domains as applicable• Clockwise movement through the framework is not the

only dynamic

Resources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin• http://

www.duncannisbet.co.uk/cynefin-in-software-testing• http://www.duncannisbet.co.uk/cynefin-software-bugs• http://lizkeogh.com/2013/07/21/estimating-complexity/• http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/perspectives-on-cynefin/• http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/some-thinking-about-dec

isions/• http://

paul4innovating.com/2014/06/19/the-use-of-the-cynefin-model-for-innovation/