Practical Philosophy of Systems

Last time we found that each thing you leave behind needs a decision, an owner, and evidence that it took effect. This month we ask what happens after the owner is assigned and the involved people for the maintenance or follow-up named.

Across past sessions, we have treated behaviour as a given. This month we turn it around. The system also produces behaviour, and some of the behaviour it produces looks like politics.
Most of us have seen a capable colleague stop doing the work and start managing how the work looks. It is tempting to call that a character flaw.

The more useful question is what they are responding to. An owner on paper may have no authority over the backlog, no capacity or skills to fulfil requirements, and no way to settle a clash with other priorities. Some of that coordination is necessary work. Some of it exists only to distribute blame.

The session is about telling the two apart.
To understand this, we will look at: which rules, incentives and reporting lines turn a technical question into a political one?
We’re exploring:

• Think of something you own on paper and have given up on in practice. Who could authorise the change, who would bear its cost, and what would have to be different for acting to be worth it?
• When someone stays silent about a known problem, is it because speaking feels unsafe, or because they have learned it changes nothing?
• A fix often means one team spends its capacity so another benefits. When better evidence does not settle the argument, what does?

Not whether people should take more ownership. What they would need before ownership means anything.

One ask: if your plans change, please update your RSVP, there is a waitlist, and a timely update genuinely gives someone else the chance to join.