Cynefin

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See Wikipedia » Cynefin.

Goal: To find out which projects can and cannot be picked up with agile/lean.

1. Ask participants to generate an exhaustive list of all current and upcoming projects; one project per note.
2. Draw four quadrants and explain the basic categorization (only explain first terms in list below):
   1. lower right—Percievable, Predictable, Repeatable; Known; Lay people with instructions and procedures. Sense Categorize Respond; Best Practices
   2. upper right—Separated in time and space; Potentially knowable; Domain Expert or Subject Matter Expert, Craftspeople; Sense Analyze Respond; Good Practices
   3. upper left—Not repeatable, unique; Retrospectively coherent; Adventurers, Entrepreneurs; Experiment; Probe Sense Respond; Emergent Practices: Ever Evolving Pearl Language
   4. lower left—Not perceivable; Incoherent; Discovery; Act Sense Respond; Novel, Innovative Practices
   5. middle—Disorder
3. Ask everyone to stick their projects in the most appropriate quadrant.
4. Explain more detail about the quadrants: Simple, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, Unordered.
   1. Simple—suited for straightforward project planning.
   2. Complicated—thorough analysis, planning, and moderate agile and lean approach; use good practices and pearl languages.
   3. Complex—suited for experiments with double- and triple-loop learning; read: agile, lean, cooking with principles, play with recipes; use pearl language when appropriate;
   4. Chaotic—suited for a flurry of short, intense experiments, followed by observation and educated guesses for new experiments.
   5. Unordered—leave alone; skip; drop.

Complexity

• Shift from fail safe env to safe to fail experiments; you can't explore what's possible in a complex system until you act in it.
• Parallelism and contradiction are key.
• Human systems are complex adaptive. we co-evolve with the patterns formed so recognize them early.
• Manage the evolutionary capability of the present (complex adaptive) rather than working idealistic future states (systems thinking).
• All symbiosis starts as a parasitic relationship.

Sources

• The IT Risk Manager » Chris Matts » Cynefin as a filter of perception. – Part One of N
• InfoQ » Greg Brougham » Cynefin 101 – An Introduction
• The IT Risk Manager » Chris Matts » Cynefin and the Business Analyst / Product Owner.
• Liz Keogh » Liz Keogh » Estimating Complexity