Wicked problems
At any point there are host of problems that we are aware of. Customer is unhappy about something, Quality problems in pockets, challenges the teams face, finding right people, retaining key people, operations issues. It may feel like sky is about to fall down any moment. I have felt like this time to time when the number of problems to solve are too many and whether everything that was built will crumble.
At a particular time like this, I had turned to Systems Thinking for some clues. What if we could treat organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems? In a nutshell, it is about seeing the whole as not just the sum of parts, cause and effect as not just linear but circular and looking at individuals and interactions to lead to a new character of the organization to emerge. In complex systems (like the human body or economy or environment and in this case an organization), the whole has properties that the individual parts may not have. It may not be a straight line between cause and effect, there may be feedback loops.
Now the kind of problems we face may not be solved with a clean root cause analysis that points to a single cause and fixing that may not turn everything around magically. Customer may be unhappy since the business outcomes are just not realized, despite team having the right intent, putting in the effort and meeting the timelines. Perceptions are reality and in a whole chain of events, different people see different angles. In our quest to find a solution, fingers may be pointed to skill of the team, process followed, mindset or attitude. All of it may have played some part. Team may have had creative suggestions, but when that is not heard they reduce their focus to just execution of what has been told to do and without feedback loops, eventual outcome may be far from ideal.
Wicked Problems are a class of problems which don’t have linear and finite solutions. As we attempt some solutions, the problem space changes. If we attempt to introduce new processes, it brings more rigidity and makes it less agile. If we introduce new metrics, those metrics might get optimized, but the net result may not be significantly different. If we attempt to change the team, it breaks the harmony and takes time to settle into a new rhythm and the resulting team character may be altogether different.
This is a learning journey still, but these might help:-
- First of all, realizing that attempts to simplify such problems to simple cause and effect may not work. This helps us from feeling anxious about not being able to find a smoking gun. There may not be one. It may be a set of root causes and we may have to prioritize.
- At different points of evolution of a team, pressures may be different. At the beginning It is about attracting the right talent, then about giving all of them a sense of purpose and moving in same direction. At another stage it may be finding the right next fitment for key people - shifting the jigsaw puzzle. Gaining some mental clarity on the overall journey (the big picture) and the mission / purpose will be good – as those remain more or less the same even though there is lot of change underneath.
- Now look at the individuals and interactions. Surveys, feedback, lots of conversations.
- Form some hypothesis (not a root cause analysis) about the direction to take
- Attempt micro experiments. It could be introducing new roles, collapsing some roles, defining a new maturity threshold and attempting few teams to get there, fresh look at product prioritization, improving early estimation, ways for gaining more clarity on business outcomes for the entire team.
- New behaviors emerge after some time. It may not be exactly as intended. But it can be steered further.
Agile is an application of Systems Thinking - preferring to focus on individuals and interactions, collaboration, rapid iteration, self organizing, learning and calibrating. Treating our Agile teams as Complex Systems will help to make progress with the wicked problems we face and reduce frustrations when we don’t find straight forward solutions – looking beyond linear root cause analysis to problems, understanding the overall direction and purpose of an organization, attempting micro experiments to steer towards that and learning from feedback loops continuously.