You've seen development methods come and go. If it seems like the methods were never good enough, that's because they weren’t. No recipe can be the right one always. But, we don't need to throw our methods away; we need to look beyond them, towards how we think. In this session, you will see how systems thinking tackles the counter-intuitive nature of many challenges. Your existing knowledge of how agile works will be complemented with an understanding of the principles on which it works.

1. Citerus - Tobias Fors, 2011 - tobias.fors@citerus.se, @tofo
Beyond Method
Using Systems Thinking to Deepen Your Mastery of Agile
Tobias Fors, Citerus AB
tobias.fors@citerus.se
@tofo
citerus.se tobiasfors.se scrumtips.se
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2. 1. Why systems thinking?
2. A brief history of thinking
3. Using systems thinking to understand agile
4. Looking forward
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3. !

5. ”Without changing our patterns of thought,
we will not be able to solve the problems we
created with our current pattern of thought.”
– Albert Einstein
Quoted in Ackoff, Recreating the Corporation, Oxford University Press, 1999
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7. A brief history of thinking
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10. A system is …
… a whole consisting of several parts, where:
‣ Each part can affect the whole
‣ The way each part affects the whole depends on
what at least one other part is doing
‣ Each subgroup of parts adheres to 1 and 2
This is Ackoff’s definition

12. Machine Age Thinking: Analysis
1. Identify the parts
2. Try to understand each part
3. Merge into an understanding of the whole

13. Systems Age Thinking: Synthesis
1. Identify the larger whole
2. Understand the larger whole
3. Understand our system based on the role it
plays in the larger whole

15. Att sälja och ta betalt för kunskap, Britt-Marie Ahrnell, Liber, 2002.

16. Using systems thinking
to understand agile
My hypothesis:
Understanding systems ➙
understanding agile ➙
better success rate
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22. !

27. Looking forward
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28. For more, see Ackoff, Idealized Design, Wharton School Publishing, 2006.

31. Thank you!
citerus.se
tobiasfors.se
@tofo
If you want to learn more
Idealized Design, by Russell Ackoff
Re-creating the Corporation, by Russell Ackoff
An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, by Gerald M. Weinberg
Becoming a Technical Leader, by Gerald M. Weinberg
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, by Sam Kaner