PM’s: When in doubt, call Cynefin for backup
“Finishing a battle does not mean you’re done fighting”
Project Management is a battlefield, and the Cynefin framework is your best friend to navigate through it. Derived from the Welsh word for “habitat” and developed almost two decades ago by IBM, this decision-making tool really helps Project Managers devise the best actions and strategy to lead their teams through whatever-might-happen.
Divided into four quadrants or domains (Complex, Complicated, Chaos, Simple) and a center of “Disorder”, this tools aims to help you react and plan actions based on which kind of ground you’re standing on, and to understand where other people might be standing in, and thus, their thought processes.
It will be difficult to explain thoroughly how it works in this short post. This is where the battlefield analogy comes in handy. Imagine that as a PM you’re the commander of a platoon, your team, and that you’re in uncharted territory, trying to figure out what the best strategy and actions are to bring everyone home safe. The way this technique works is that it helps you define in which quadrant you’re currently standing, and how to move to a more comfortable one.
The Complex Domain is the one where you’re not sure which ground you’re standing in, but you’ve got time and resources to get some intelligence about it. There are no right answers until you don’t assess and understand the situation. You’ll perform an inspection and exploration of a particular problem or area, then later adapt what is needed based on your findings. In this quadrant it’s essential to have constant communication and interaction in order to facilitate the exploration, inspection and adaptation to enhance and/or innovate features and/or products.
The Complicated Domain is all about having a range of “right” answers. Actions here usually have a cause-effect relationship, which will demand analysis, assessment, and review from you and some expert’s judgment. “Ma’am let’s contact Captain Harp for help”, “Ma’am I think we need backup from Platoon #5”, “Ma’am let’s do some overtime tonight” are some of the things you’ll hear in this quadrant, and your general objective is to apply the most appropriate practice or decision to move forward your team and reach the mission’s goal.
We could call the Simple Domain a walk in the park. It’s when everything is smooth sailing, and the mission is being executed as expected. Simple Domain means that the assignment is stable because the execution is being followed according to orders and with the best practices in mind. As a commander here your role is to channel the necessary communications to avoid as many impediments as possible and to carefully step towards what the best route seems to be.
Sometimes you gotta be recursive.
The Chaotic Domain means you’re behind enemy lines. Crisis mode is ON and your platoon has to act immediately in order to prevent or stanch the bodies hitting the floor, and to establish back some peace and order for everyone. One of the key elements for this quadrant is how quick you need to be to take decisions and to respond to what may happen. Remember that no man gets left behind and shift gears to move your team/platoon to the Complex Domain, the more stable and closer quadrant.
We now get to the hard part. If you and your team/platoon have no idea about which domain you’re in, or which to apply, then you are in no man’s land, the Disorder domain. Not only is it a scary and dangerous place to be but you’re lost as to how to make sense of your current situation. Perhaps the only way out for you and your platoon is to break down the pie in parts and assign them to other domains, as the objective is to get away from here ASAP.
In conclusion, and on a positive note, all the experiences you acquire can be a recollection of lessons learned and can be put to test in the near future. The reason and instincts developed will help you win upcoming battles. Remember that in the continuous improvement cycles PM’s or Scrum Masters often work with, the learned lessons are applied in each iteration in order to get you to reach your desired goal. No matter the output, whenever you ask yourself “is this battle truly over?” consider that finishing a battle does not mean you’re done fighting. Every day you have to bring your spirit and battle cry to the battlefield: “Oohrah!”.
All images are from the movie Saving Private Ryan (1998).
