#Agile #Innovation #MentalModels #FirstPrinciples #ProductDevelopment #AgileHardware #Strategy #LeanStartup #SystemsThinking #Leadership (3/3)

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

The collaboration that isn't

Context: Two teams decide to work together. A shared initiative, a joint project, a problem neither can solve alone. There is enthusiasm on both sides, and a genuine excitement about what they might build together. Everyone has a picture in their head of what that looks like and what they want to get out of it, and everyone assumes the others have the same one. Who owns what, and what success looks like for each of them, is left open. Good intentions and regular syncs will be enough. For a while, they are. Then something goes wrong. Credit lands unevenly. Decisions get made by the louder team. One side feels their contribution has been absorbed rather than shared. Trust erodes quietly. The collaboration continues in name but not in spirit.

OST explains: Two teams are two social systems, each with its own purpose, its own design principle, its own internal logic. The shared purpose is assumed rather than agreed upon. There are two clean ways to work across that boundary. A clear transactional relationship: a contract, explicit deliverables, arm's length. Or deliberately create a new, shared system with a common purpose both sides have actually agreed to, a structure for how the collaboration works and is coordinated, and a design principle governing the joint work. What tends to happen instead is neither. The teams proceed as if goodwill substitutes for structure. The result is laissez-faire more often than not. No clear location of responsibility, no purpose anyone has committed to, no shared system. DP1 (bureaucracy) fills the vacuum, as it always does: the team with more power, more visibility, or a stronger brand quietly starts setting the terms. The other finds itself inside someone else's system without ever agreeing to join it. The same dynamic plays out between companies, just with invoices adding a harder edge to the same underlying confusion. The collaboration was real. The shared system never was.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #systemsThinking

Dear followers and "fellow kids,"

In hopes of landing an interesting and fulfilling gig next, I just wanted to let you know that I'm ready for new assignments. Preferably helping companies with digital transformations that keep people at the centre. My 25 years of experience in the IT industry have taught me one essential thing: efficiency and quality are achieved only when happy people work closely together, within and across teams in the whole enterprise.
#SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #SystemsThinking
More on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/trondhjort_gruppedynamikk-sosioteknisk-saeokkonferansen-activity-7427627571858681856-rVko

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How do you do, fellow kids? (old man with a skateboard, 30 Rock)

It's hard to get architecture changes adopted when our instinct is to explain more. @diana shared how she realized designing experiences, not just explanations, creates breakthroughs for teams to discover insights.
#SoftwareArchitecture #Facilitation #SystemsThinking

Read, watch, or listen: https://virtualddd.com/facilitating-archdes/when-explaining-more-isnt-the-answer/

As I wanted to have a little overview of what the agile community is talking about here on mastodon, I made a little tool. Feedback welcome (i.e. suggestions for hashtags)! Boost also ;)

https://no-bullshit-agile.com/acm/

#scrum #kanban #agile #SystemsThinking #flow

Most organizations get faster and still don’t learn faster because production speed isn’t learning speed.

Today I’m publishing the Work–Feedback Loop (v1.0) - a diagnostic lens for organizational learning capability.

It asks one question: Can real-world effects change future work fast and safely?

Quick check: Which state best describes your system right now — Actionism, Frustration, Stagnation, or Learning?

https://no-bullshit-agile.com/wfl/

#OrganizationalLearning #SystemsThinking #Agile

#Agile

Today I got to use my Flow Physics page in a real meeting — and it did exactly what I built it for: make “flow” tangible.

Instead of debating opinions, we walked through interactive examples (WIP, bottlenecks, Little’s Law, resource vs. flow efficiency) and the system basically explained itself.

If you ever need a fast, visual way to align people on delivery flow, here it is:

https://no-bullshit-agile.de/wip/

#Flow #Kanban #Lean #SystemsThinking #Agile #SoftwareDelivery

Viele Alignment-Meetings sind kein Hebel, sondern ein Symptom.

Wenn Teams sich ständig abstimmen müssen, stimmt oft die Entscheidungsarchitektur nicht.

Natürlich verkürzt gute Facilitation Diskussionen. Aber verkürzt sie auch die Decision Latency im System?

Wo entsteht in eurem Setup wirklich Learning Speed?

#Agile #SystemsThinking

AI is a local optimization. Flow is a system property.

Right now, many organizations are celebrating faster code generation as if it were the same thing as faster value delivery. It isn’t. AI can reduce the time it takes to produce a unit of work. But producing work faster is not the same as moving value through a system faster.

A Thread 🧵

#Flow #SystemsThinking #FlowEconomics #SoftwareEngineering #AI

(1/5)

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Work Feedback Loop

Agility at scale is not about synchronizing frameworks.
It is about managing Nested Loops.

Large organizations don’t learn in a single cycle. They learn through multiple, interconnected feedback loops operating at different speeds and levels of abstraction.

If those loops are not physically coupled, you get what I call:

Disconnected Agility.

https://no-bullshit-agile.com/the-nested-loop.html

A Thread 🧵

#Agile #WorkFeedbackLoop #SystemsThinking #Flow #AgileAtScale (1/7)

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Nested Loop

I've spent 10+ years encouraging ScrumMasters to use #SystemsThinking to understand team challenges. The problem? It's hard to remember all the questions. That's where GenAI actually helps. I built a Claude skill to save some effort: instead of memorizing a framework, you tell the AI your story. It asks the follow-up questions that uncover the deeper issues.
The skill includes Systems Thinking questions and Causal Loop Diagrams

#AIinSoftwareDevelopment #BuildInPublic
https://agilepainrelief.com/blog/genai-systems-thinking-team-problems/