Scrum@Scale & Causal Loops to understand current reality

A facilitation and systemic coaching method (Part II)

Read first: Understanding current reality with Scrum@Scale

I recently wrote up an experiment that my colleagues and I ran, using Scrum@Scale components to help members of an interdependent network of teams to holistically describe and evaluate their current reality. This article continues with the next experiment, designed to take the information and data from the first exercise to provide a greater perspective and insight on their system.

Let’s take a look at an illustrative (and imaginary) example of the output from the last session:

Example output from the workshop

Creating the causal loops

Next, we took these insights and created a series of interconnected causal loops, like the one below. We gave a name to each of these to make it easier to reference during the next group session.

First iteration of the interconnected causal loops diagram

Not all the observations from the first exercise made it into the causal loops. This felt okay, as it acted as a first round of prioritisation around the most meaningful improvement opportunities.

Full disclosure, and I really should cut off my hand in shame for this, we as enterprise agile coaches created the first iteration of this diagram. We then put this in front of the group to inspect, adjust and affirm whether it was coherent with reality. Now ideally participants would construct their own causal loops to better explore their current state reality. Given limited time and mindshare, we opted to forgo teaching the fundamentals of causal loops in order to get to the meat of the conversation. Fortunately, this went reasonably well.

Iterating and simplifying the diagrams

Two key improvements for next time are 1) to separate out the causal loops so that they are easier to reason with, even if this means re-using statements across different loops; and 2) convert the observations into neutral statements as it is easier to then identify a positive or negative causal link. There are quite a few methods for drawing causal loops, I have found the simplest is to just identify negative causal links with an O for opposite.

Separate causal loop exploring Product Vision

We found keeping the red, amber, and green, for the sentiment of the original feedback helpful in identifying what is currently going on in reality. In the example above, there is a reinforcing loop (there are an even number of negative links), so unless there is breaking change the current reality will continue forwards indefinitely.

During inspection of the causal loops the group may wish to add or change to their initial observations. We chose to identify these in grey, as below.

Filling in missing pieces in this second causal loop

Selecting where to focus

Once we had agreed this has coherence with what was happening in the real world, we then asked the group to identify the elements that they felt most important and feasible to address. Helping explore symptom vs root cause is an important aspect of this exercise. These form the basis of the experiments that should now be run.

In the illustrative example below, our fictional group decided that it was important to spend more time bringing people together to talk about the product vision, and to build alignment on the product vision across their Product Owner team.

Example identification for focused improvement

What do you think of this approach? Could you give any feedback for how we could improve and shape this experience for future occasions?