Last night we were pleased to welcome the Kanban Coaching Exchange for their monthly meetup. The speaker for the evening was Liz Keogh. Liz is always pushing the boundaries of Agile thinking and so we knew we were in for an interesting and thought-provoking presentation. As with all of Liz’s presentations there was a rich mix of information and ideas, so I’ve summarised some of the key points below.
The focus of the presentation was on the Cynefin framework, a practical application of complexity theory, and how we might utilise that to better think about complexity in our own projects. As part of that we would also look at key Agile tools such as Feature Injection, Deliberate Discovery and Real Options to help us understand how we might work to embrace and handle that complexity.
Liz framed the introduction of the Cynefin framework with the notion that all projects have risk. “If a project has no risks, don’t do it”, on the premise that there should always be something new to discover and deliver. That risk can exist in various states, as illustrated by the domains of Cynefin:
Simple (Where things are obvious)
Complicated (Where things are predictable but still require expertise)
Complex (Where out comes emerge and we learn by doing)
Chaotic (A state of accident and emergency)
Disorder (Not knowing what domain dominates)
The characteristics of each domain were discussed along with an illustration of the dynamic relationship between them, for example, the catasrophic boundary between Simple and Chaotic, where complacency can lead to failure.
Different levels of graded complexity were then presented from 5 (nobody has ever done it) through to 1 (Everybody knows how to do it). These were then illustrated in the context of Cynefin, using the framework to understand the domains in which the different risk levels sit, with the most common forms usually sitting across the Complicated and Complex domains. With that in mind Liz then ran us through some key Agile tools which can be used to work with complexity and risk; Feature Injection, Deliberate Discovery and Real Options. These are tools which have been emerging from the world of Behaviour Driven Development in recent years so it was really interesting to see Liz’s latest views on them.
Feature Injection
Feature Injection, in line with emerging practices such as Impact Mapping, is a practice designed to enable us to derive scope from goals, all linked back to an overall vision. This is a practice which I've been trying to use in some of my projects so I thought it was particularly valuable to get a clear summary of the Feature Injection hierarchy:
Vision – The value of the project
Goal – What’s needed to go live
Capabilities – What’s needed to achieve a business outcome
Feature – User interface component which enables a capability
Story – A slice through a feature to enable faster feedback
Scenarios – An example of how the system will be used
Essentially then we can use Feature Injection to break down a project, embrace uncertainty and risk whilst ensuring that we continue to map back to value.
Deliberate Discovery
We then moved onto the importance of discovery within handling risk. The three tenets of Deliberate Discovery were illustrated:
-Assume ignorance – there are things we don’t know
-Assume second order ignorance – there are things we don’t know that we don’t know
-Optimise for discovery
Essentially, when thinking about priorities in a project we can optimise for discovery by taking a risk-driven approach. This can be reflected in backlogs by making them high-level and risk-first.
Real Options
We then briefly looked at Real Options and it’s three tenets:
-Options have value
-Options expire
-Never commit early unless you know why
Understanding the options we have available, the value attached to them and understanding the impact of early commitment is something else we can use to help understand and deal with complexity and risk.
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