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185 results for “trondhjort”
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Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Analysis paralysis
Context: An agile team is working on a rewrite of an existing legacy solution and feels that its success depends on the function parity it must have with the old one. They therefore end up doing a detailed and extensive analysis to account for as much as possible, even tracking down former developers to get details on some of the more obscure parts. And, even more problematic, they have to figure out which business people own which parts and who all their users are. This drags out in time, and although they have started the work, the extensible analysis prevents them from releasing anything. They are stuck.
OST explains: Agile as a concept is pretty much designed to handle these kinds of situations; at least that is what many may think. It focuses on small increments and puts things in front of the users as soon as possible to tighten the feedback loop, so it makes sense. The thing, though, is that this is not product discovery, as it is an existing product with external product owners and users, both internal and external, and the team has no real product ownership of the app apart from the technical bits. They are not a self-managing product team as a DP2 style should be. Only when they have end-to-end ownership of the whole product, not just a part, can they take full responsibility and accountability so that they can manage it as they please.
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I had a chat with Claude, as one does these days, and asked what a good argument could be made for #OpenSystemsTheory that could catch the ears of top management, and the response was quite nice:
"The single greatest threat to organisational performance isn't market disruption — it's disengagement at the coalface.
When employees lack genuine ownership over their ways of working, discretionary effort evaporates. You haemorrhage top talent, execution suffers, and strategic decisions made in the boardroom become increasingly disconnected from ground-level realities.
Open Systems Theory isn't about flattening hierarchies or diluting accountability — it's about driving organisational effectiveness where it matters most. By embedding structured mechanisms for bottom-up contribution, you unlock richer management information, accelerate stakeholder alignment, and build the organisational agility needed to stay ahead in an increasingly volatile operating environment.
You're not relinquishing control. You're leveraging it more intelligently."
Seems to work on decent training data. Em dash or not.
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Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Forming–storming–norming–performing
Context: When putting together a new team or making big changes to an existing one, many recommend using Tuckman's "forming–storming–norming–performing" model to turn the team into a coherent and well-oiled unit. It begins with Forming (orientation), moves to Storming (conflict), progresses to Norming (cohesion), and ends with Performing (high productivity). Leaders are advised to manage this process closely as progress is not linear; teams may slip back to previous stages if new members join or goals shift. And conflict is regarded as necessary, as the "Storming" phase is essential to growth.
OST explains: Tuckman's model only makes sense in an autocratic bureaucracy, especially those of the Theory X type, and aligns with Taylor's view that people must be managed to perform properly. This is classic DP1 thinking, whereas in the DP2 style, McGregor's Theory Y is the model, which assumes employees are self-motivated, enjoy work, and thrive under trust, empowerment, and autonomy. Grouped into self-managing groups that have designed themselves using Participative Design. No need for either storming or norming; the teams jump right to performing after forming.
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Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
Passivity in team workshops
Context: Workshops are for many a unique opportunity for people to get together and collaboratively work on a problem or a design of something they care about, be it EventStorming, Retrospectives, Design Sprints and such sessions. In larger groups, involving the whole team or even people from different teams, you frequently see people with more formal power join in, be it a team leader, department head, or even a intervening and controlling facilitator, and that often creates an unfortunate dynamic where the participants feel limited and restricted, so much so that many become inactive and passive, and not contributing in a way a way that they could have. Even though they probably really wanted to.
OST explains: This dynamic is very common in autocratic hierarchies, where power over something, be it people directly or even a certain subject like architecture, creates a dynamic where people often submit themselves to that person simply because of their position in the hierarchy. And not because of their expertise or good arguments. These emotional anxieties, often unconscious, can take different forms, in this case a dependency on the leader, but can also be a fight/flight reaction or subgroups forming. These are referred to as Bion's basic assumptions, "bas", and the only way to get rid of them and replace it with real productive work is not having an appointed leader present. Always go for DP2 in workshops, regardless of how you are organised otherwise.
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Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The powerless retrospective
Context: You and your team have decided it's time to do a retrospective prescribed by the Agile methodology you are using. You all see the use of it and contribute with a lot of ideas and concerns about your work. You record them all and have a vote on the most important ones, but soon realise almost all of them are outside of your mandate to change. You note them down and hope the department lead can do something about it, but know that probably nothing will change, and the whole exercise feels like a complete waste.
OST explains: The members of the team come into this believing they are self-managing, at least to a level where they are able to adjust the work to make it better. Even the Agile methodology says so by incorporating the retospective as a recommended element. An essential element in learning is both looking back and improving going forward. The issue here is that the team is not self-managing, in a DP2 structure, as they are not able to change what really matters to them. Most likely, they are in an agile setup where the teams have been given some control, but most still reside in management outside, in the existing bureaucratic DP1 organisation. The retrospective and the learning it ought to provide are mostly ineffective.
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I managed to make a little dent with my series of posts on #SocioTechnical principles of the day, and thought it was due to do something similar, but this time in the context of modern organisations (especially #agile ones) and the modern version of #STS, known as Emery's #OpenSystemsTheory ( #OST). I'll list some systemic problems I have seen in organisations over the years and explain their causes using OST, one each day as I did back then. Probably way too ambitious, but let's see how this goes. Happy to take comments and rebuttals to each one of them, as the point of doing this is to trigger reflections and critical thinking.
Warning: these will probably be a bit more opinionated. 😁Organisational Dysfunction of the Day
The daily status report
Context: Your team is using Scrum and has been taught how important stand-ups are (daily coordination meeting), but it feels like a drag and a complete waste of time. Feels more like reporting to someone, be it the scrum master or the product owner. And you really do not care about what the others are working on, as it has little to no impact on what you're doing.
OST explains: This team is probably not a team at all; it's more like a group of individuals working on different things. They may contribute to the same delivery but have not been able to take control of the work design and the coordination needed to deliver it. This is not a self-managing team, but rather a delivery group assigned specific tasks by a manager, in charge of splitting the work so that all team members are working as effectively as possible. This is pure DP1 and nowhere close to the self-managing teams in DP2.
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@snowded Thank you for an interesting read. As you do into #SocioTechnical here, you seem to only reference the older materials, which were expert driven and more experimental in it's nature. Partly because of the experiments done in the 60s, like in Norway. Emery took this further and developed Open Systems Theory, which is partly covered in the third Tavistock anthology, social-ecology. Core of it is obviously the openness of the system, but especially important is the participative nature of the work design (the joint optimisation) to create the conditions to fulfil the workers psykological job requirements. If you have, how does that fit in with your perspectives? A big ask if you are familiar with it, but would be great to get some ideas.
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New blog post, this time in Norwegian:
Given that your company is serious about people being the core assets and wants their engagement in your vision and goals, sociotechnical system design is the way to go. As a bonus, you'll also get better productivity, quality, and sustainable cost reductions.
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign
https://www.capraconsulting.no/vare-historier/sosioteknisk-systemdesign-for-moderne-bedrifter
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New blog post, this time in Norwegian:
Given that your company is serious about people being the core assets and wants their engagement in your vision and goals, sociotechnical system design is the way to go. As a bonus, you'll also get better productivity, quality, and sustainable cost reductions.
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign
https://www.capraconsulting.no/vare-historier/sosioteknisk-systemdesign-for-moderne-bedrifter
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New blog post, this time in Norwegian:
Given that your company is serious about people being the core assets and wants their engagement in your vision and goals, sociotechnical system design is the way to go. As a bonus, you'll also get better productivity, quality, and sustainable cost reductions.
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign
https://www.capraconsulting.no/vare-historier/sosioteknisk-systemdesign-for-moderne-bedrifter
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New blog post, this time in Norwegian:
Given that your company is serious about people being the core assets and wants their engagement in your vision and goals, sociotechnical system design is the way to go. As a bonus, you'll also get better productivity, quality, and sustainable cost reductions.
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign
https://www.capraconsulting.no/vare-historier/sosioteknisk-systemdesign-for-moderne-bedrifter
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New blog post, this time in Norwegian:
Given that your company is serious about people being the core assets and wants their engagement in your vision and goals, sociotechnical system design is the way to go. As a bonus, you'll also get better productivity, quality, and sustainable cost reductions.
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign
https://www.capraconsulting.no/vare-historier/sosioteknisk-systemdesign-for-moderne-bedrifter
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This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.
<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat> -
This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.
<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat> -
This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.
<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat> -
This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.
<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat> -
This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.
<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat> -
I look forward to returning to Berlin and the wonderful #kanDDDinsky conference this week. It is one of my definitive highlights of the year, and I am really happy to be able to speak there again. This time, I will challenge the approach many companies have to what they regard as self-organisation, like when attempting an agile transformation, like rolling out Team Topologies or similar attempts at "empowerment."
Decades of research in the social sciences have clearly shown how this ought to be done. Unfortunately, most in the IT industry seem to be ignorant of this. Hope to change that. It is surprisingly easy, but it will require systemic changes in thinking. 😊
#systemsThinking #sociotechnical #selfOrganisation #agile #teamTopologies #orgDesign #KanDDDinsky
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I look forward to returning to Berlin and the wonderful #kanDDDinsky conference this week. It is one of my definitive highlights of the year, and I am really happy to be able to speak there again. This time, I will challenge the approach many companies have to what they regard as self-organisation, like when attempting an agile transformation, like rolling out Team Topologies or similar attempts at "empowerment."
Decades of research in the social sciences have clearly shown how this ought to be done. Unfortunately, most in the IT industry seem to be ignorant of this. Hope to change that. It is surprisingly easy, but it will require systemic changes in thinking. 😊
#systemsThinking #sociotechnical #selfOrganisation #agile #teamTopologies #orgDesign #KanDDDinsky
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I look forward to returning to Berlin and the wonderful #kanDDDinsky conference this week. It is one of my definitive highlights of the year, and I am really happy to be able to speak there again. This time, I will challenge the approach many companies have to what they regard as self-organisation, like when attempting an agile transformation, like rolling out Team Topologies or similar attempts at "empowerment."
Decades of research in the social sciences have clearly shown how this ought to be done. Unfortunately, most in the IT industry seem to be ignorant of this. Hope to change that. It is surprisingly easy, but it will require systemic changes in thinking. 😊
#systemsThinking #sociotechnical #selfOrganisation #agile #teamTopologies #orgDesign #KanDDDinsky
-
I look forward to returning to Berlin and the wonderful #kanDDDinsky conference this week. It is one of my definitive highlights of the year, and I am really happy to be able to speak there again. This time, I will challenge the approach many companies have to what they regard as self-organisation, like when attempting an agile transformation, like rolling out Team Topologies or similar attempts at "empowerment."
Decades of research in the social sciences have clearly shown how this ought to be done. Unfortunately, most in the IT industry seem to be ignorant of this. Hope to change that. It is surprisingly easy, but it will require systemic changes in thinking. 😊
#systemsThinking #sociotechnical #selfOrganisation #agile #teamTopologies #orgDesign #KanDDDinsky
-
I look forward to returning to Berlin and the wonderful #kanDDDinsky conference this week. It is one of my definitive highlights of the year, and I am really happy to be able to speak there again. This time, I will challenge the approach many companies have to what they regard as self-organisation, like when attempting an agile transformation, like rolling out Team Topologies or similar attempts at "empowerment."
Decades of research in the social sciences have clearly shown how this ought to be done. Unfortunately, most in the IT industry seem to be ignorant of this. Hope to change that. It is surprisingly easy, but it will require systemic changes in thinking. 😊
#systemsThinking #sociotechnical #selfOrganisation #agile #teamTopologies #orgDesign #KanDDDinsky
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Recording of my intro talk on systems thinking at #JavaZone earlier today. In Norwegian this time. The longer English version will be available from DDD Europe soon, I hope.
https://vimeo.com/1115921379
#systemsThinking #OpenSystemsTheory -
Looking forward to doing my new systems thinking talk again at the #JavaZone conference on Thursday. In Norwegian this time. We'll look at alternatives to the analytical method, to reductionism and determinism that are not well-suited to complex social systems. Harmful even.
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Splitting a domain when you have identified the different purposes is easy, says @ziobrando at @dddeu. 💯
Couldn't agree more! It's the purpose that defines the system, aka it's system principle.
#DDDEU -
Splitting a domain when you have identified the different purposes is easy, says @ziobrando at @dddeu. 💯
Couldn't agree more! It's the purpose that defines the system, aka it's system principle.
#DDDEU -
Splitting a domain when you have identified the different purposes is easy, says @ziobrando at @dddeu. 💯
Couldn't agree more! It's the purpose that defines the system, aka it's system principle.
#DDDEU -
Splitting a domain when you have identified the different purposes is easy, says @ziobrando at @dddeu. 💯
Couldn't agree more! It's the purpose that defines the system, aka it's system principle.
#DDDEU -
Splitting a domain when you have identified the different purposes is easy, says @ziobrando at @dddeu. 💯
Couldn't agree more! It's the purpose that defines the system, aka it's system principle.
#DDDEU -
New blog post:
Given that work also produces people, in addition to products and services, how can we make sure that we create a work environment that makes the world a better place?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/work-produce-people-far-reaching-effects-design-trond-hjorteland-8tm5f
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign