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Culture & Methods

Navigating Complex Interpersonal Relationships: Co-Creating Deliberate Workplace Connection

As an employee or leader, you are in a relationship with each other and with the organization. You face the tension of traditional ways of working vs new ways of working in the call for more work-from-home policies, and more work/life balance. This article outlines the mindset and actions that can be taken to better navigate complex relationships leading to a more humanistic way of working.

Jessica Katz
on Dec 05, 2023
Culture & Methods

Great Leaders Manage Complexity with Self-Awareness and Context Awareness

People's perception and expectations on leadership requires a leader to understand their own contextual significance which makes it difficult to become an appreciated leader. Also trivialisation many times unknowingly stands in the way of progress in complex situations. This article explores specific traits that distinguish people who repeatedly provide appreciated and appropriate leadership.

Martin Wasielewski
on Dec 06, 2022
Culture & Methods

Reducing Cognitive Load in Agile DevOps Teams Using Team Topologies

In this article we will be sharing our experience from 12 months of adopting certain management and organisational insights from the book Team Topologies. It explores how we identified areas of responsibility and assigned those into mostly customer-facing domains which could be given to our teams. It shows how an inverse Conway manoeuvre can be used to improve the architecture.

Burak Cetin Graham Uphill
on May 11, 2022
Culture & Methods

Using Emergence and Scaffolding to Address Complexity in Product Development

The use of scaffolding and emergence has utility in delivery, supporting the bootstrapping of knowledge and close collaboration with the customer which in turn supports a more organic approach to delivery. Their use is poorly understood but they can be used as part of existing agile practices by tweaking them, avoiding the need for wholesale change

Greg Brougham
on Mar 03, 2022
Culture & Methods

Thriving in the Complexity of Software Development Using Open Sociotechnical Systems Design

The amazing progress made in technology has led to blindly following the technical imperative at the cost of the social and human dimension. Social sciences can help us create a work environment where people feel more at home and proud of what they produce. An organisation designed using open sociotechnical systems theory will be a more humane one where people are more engaged.

Trond Hjorteland
on Nov 11, 2021
Culture & Methods

Building Reliable Software Systems with Chaos Engineering

Advances in large-scale, distributed software systems are changing the game for software engineering. As an industry, we are quick to adopt practices that improve flexibility and improve feature velocity. If we can move quickly, can we do so without breaking things? Chaos Engineering practices can be used to navigate complexity and build more reliable systems.

Ben Linders Casey Rosenthal
on Jun 08, 2021
Culture & Methods

Ethical Decisions in a Wicked World: the Role of Technologists, Entrepreneurs, and Organizations

Wherever role you are playing - consumer, employee, entrepreneur, manager - the purpose of a business is to serve society. Organizations need to seek win-win solutions, consider sustainability and ethics in all phases, and learn how to scan and deal with unintended consequences of each intervention. This article brings concepts and ideas to spark initial action for wicked problems using ethics.

Claudia Melo
on May 24, 2021
Culture & Methods

The Flow System: Leadership for Solving Complex Problems

The Flow System elevates Lean Thinking in an age of complexity by combining complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science into the Triple Helix of Flow, which organizations can use to become more innovative, adaptive, and resilient. This second article on The Flow System dives into the three helixes of complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science.

Ben Linders John Turner Nigel Thurlow Brian Rivera
on May 14, 2021
Culture & Methods

Practical Applications of Complexity Theory in Software and Digital Products Development

What if we start a new conversation about complexity, also engaging a completely different crowd - the hands-on practitioners, the problem solvers, the tinkerers? What if we approach that conversation in another way? This article is guided by two new radical ideas; the first idea is on the theory and practice of complexity, and the second idea is on the human element in complexity theory.

Luca Minudel
on Apr 01, 2021
Culture & Methods

Cynefin Applied: Adapting to Changing Contexts

The book Cynefin: Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of our World by Dave Snowden describes the Cynefin framework and explores how it has developed over the years. It also provides stories where people who have applied Cynefin share their experiences.

Ben Linders Sonja Blignaut Zhen Goh Dave Snowden
on Feb 03, 2021
Culture & Methods

Do You Think Like a Lawyer, a Scientist, or an Engineer?

Law, science, and engineering offer three distinct approaches to logical thinking. Each is important in different circumstances, and in practice, we can use all three. How much understanding and control do you have of a situation? Do you simply need to follow the rules? Are you operating in a world of uncertainty and volatility? Or are you building and defining the rules as you go along?

Andrew Davis
on Dec 22, 2020
Culture & Methods

The Complexity of Product Management and Product Ownership

Doug Talbot discusses the confusion surrounding Product Ownership / Product Management. He provides some advice on tackling the complexity of creating your own contextualised and personalised product value stream for your organisation or team and using systems thinking and Cynefin for complexity.

Douglas Talbot
on Dec 04, 2020