Agile Auckland

International Speaker Dave Snowden - Agile sound practice - poor theory

August 30, 2012 · 5:30 PM
Mercure Hotel

Please note the new start time. Dave Snowden will present from 6pm, open from 5.30pm.

When the Agile Manifesto was launched it made a series of radical statements about how things should change. Since then a body of practice (such as SCRUM) has arisen to try and make those principles work in practice. However good principles and practical experience can only take you so far; unless you understand why things work it will be difficult to make them scale, or work when the context of their creation changes.

To take one example. "Self-organisation" is a great idea but its not the same thing as anarchy. Complexity science shows us that self-organisation in nature occurs when some constraint is present, but not when there are no constraints. Add "partially constrained" to "self-organisation" and we have a more useful and adaptive technique.

In addition Agile has yet to penetrate executive decision making and we are still in effect living in a world where executives determine policy, which eventually mutates into requirements at which point Agile techniques come into play. The nature of the world we live in requires a real time interaction between strategy and software development in which both co-evolve. In such an environment technology not only meets business requirements it also helps create them. New micro-narrative approaches to requirements capture and programme monitoring are one of the most exciting emergent opportunities that are starting to open up.

This presentation will look to provide some of the theory with examples of how practice changes. It will describe the Cynefin framework which is currently in use at both board room level for strategy and in software development teams. Participants should leave understanding the basic principles of complexity theory and how they apply to design, requirements capture and evaluation and monitoring.

Level of expertise: There should be something in his talk for everyone

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Stephen Reed

68 people in the room, and only about 8 saw the Gorilla in the ball passing video

1 · August 30
- Peter Sellars
  
  I did....still struggling to understand the real implications of it! I counted the number of passes right too - so was not about losing focus....!
  
  0 · September 6
- Steve Walkley
  
  I agree Peter ... If your only tool is a hammer ... every hinge is a bent nail ... if your only hammer is a sledge hammer ... every nail is a bent nail
  
  0 · September 7
Karen Chance

Thanks to Gillian for arranging last night's talk. Fantastic.

1 · August 31
- Peter Sellars
  
  Second that. Fantastic work Gillian.
  
  0 · September 6
Peter Sellars

This was an engaging and inspirational talk by Dave. It certainly got the brain into gear and challenged the community to rethink practice use - always been a fan of contextulization and adaptation over following any type of process specifically - the more tools in your toolbox the more agile you can be - time to pop off and refresh on the Cynefin framework...

0 · September 6
Shane Hastie

I wrote an InfoQ article about the event:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/...

1 · September 2
Jim Buchan

A thought leader!

0 · August 31
Jim Buchan

Yes, thanks Gillian for the great opportunity to hear David! I have been following David's work on knowledge management and complexity theory from an academic view, for years. I was wondering how he had applied his work, and he made that very clear in his stories last night. I am working on applying distributed cognition theory to the "why" of Agile practices as part of my research at AUT, so it was particularly relevant to me!

0 · August 31
Stephen Reed

Great to see how to use the Cynefin model to focus on the type of work we are dealing with and then this helps us decide what approach to take, be it Agile / waterfall or whatever!

0 · August 31
Carolyn (Sanders) Berridge

I really enjoyed this; particularly, I found the discussion of how humans take mass data and make conclusions quickly quite revealing. I think it will change the way I elicit requirements!

0 · August 31
Jay Jain

Very Entertaining :-)

0 · August 31
Steve Walkley

An Excellent presentation

0 · August 31
Stephen Moir

Very entertaining speaker and amazing ideas.

0 · August 31
Natasha Romoff

Wonderful to be challenged and have so many new ideas jam packed into one session .... wish I could rewind and listen all over again! Marvellous and thanks for getting us such great speakers - very much appreciated!

0 · August 31
Gillian Clark

What a fantastic talk from Dave and a great reminder that we are in a Service relationship business not manufacturing - i.e. we should learn from manufacturing not follow it like a recipe follower

0 · August 31
Bernard O'Leary

If this talk didn't get you thinking, I don't know what would. The concept of "messy coherence" is very nice, it's the way people behave naturally. Dave is a _great _ story teller and clearly a deep thinker. Although there were some aspects of his outlook that I may differ in opinion on, I _thoroughly_ enjoyed this session... - http://www.theinvisiblegorilla....

0 · August 31
A former member

Wow Refreshingly scary! I have not been this challenged in years! I will have to rethink many things.

0 · August 30
Shane Hastie

Great talk, challenging and inspiring.

0 · August 30
Carolyn (Sanders) Berridge

Fiery start to the evening! We might have to start the talk out here on the street corner.

0 · August 30
Stephen Reed

I'm on the way but might be a bit late to greet people as I'm heading in from NS

0 · August 30
Stephen Reed

I love the line "The nature of the world we live in requires a real time interaction between strategy and software development in which both co-evolve." and will be there with rags on :-)

0 · August 7
Gillian Clark

If you want to attend his workshops in Auckland - http://www.assurity.co.nz/commu...

0 · August 7
Gillian Clark

If you are interested in attending his workshops in Auckland http://www.assurity.co.nz/commu...

0 · August 7
Gillian Clark

If you want to see a video of dave discussing the Cynefin frameowrk then this is great http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

0 · August 7