Appreciation for a System
Oxford Definition
System
NOUN
1. A set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole.
The successful 1995 Boeing 777 was built under the new development program literally dubbed as “Working Together”. Regardless of the name choice, it was named that way for practical reasons: quality and agility. Any product, software or not, is not built by people working in a vacuum. It requires coordination and cooperation between the elements of the organization. To achieve a certain degree of agility, quality or any output parameter that the organization set out to do, it becomes a (seemingly) simple matter of optimization of the way we organize work as a complex whole system. That means no part (people, machinery, division, team, etc) of the system should compete with other parts to advance its own agenda without considering the impact on the overall system. However as a system grows larger, this principle is lost in the midst of the dreaded sub-optimization of segregated and specialized work.
Even though the nature of a software creation process differs significantly with those on the factory assembly line, most of the early software development model copied processes established in manufacturing. However, unlike manufacturing that processes material inventory into tangible goods, software development processes a different kind of inventory: information. Not only the information that the software produced but also the information passed between the people that are part of the system. Most of the early software development model relied on documents and handoffs to move this inventory around within the system. As software and the organization became more complex, the incumbent process introduced and developed even more complex steps and metrics. The complexity of the process increased exponentially and quickly became an organizational burden.
Scrum is geared to answer that very organizational challenge. The recommendation to make the Scrum Team be empowered, cross-functional and small is an attempt to address the efficiency issue of the information movement inside the team as a system.
The essence of Scrum is a small team of people. The individual team is highly flexible and adaptive. These strengths continue operating in single, several, many, and networks of teams that develop, release, operate and sustain the work and work products of thousands of people. They collaborate and interoperate through sophisticated development architectures and target release environments. — Scrum Guide 2017
Ideally, inside this proposed system, the information flow should be moving at speed without degrading its quality. Having a rich composition of skillset within the Scrum Team also will greatly enrich the information quality, thus enables the system to process it further downstream. All of the challenges that Scrum tried to answer gave an implicit hint on what the true nature of the system that would suit the best for software development creation: a system where collaboration should become the primary modus operandi where information as its inventory may flow seamlessly inside the system.
A system is not the sum of the behavior of its parts, but the product of their interaction — Russel. L. Ackoff (1994)
Deming argued that the deep understanding of the nature of a system can only be acquired from outside of the system. It means our attitude toward a system will be significantly different when we observe it from the outside. If we put our shoes in that direction, we will naturally inquire about its purpose and identity. By then, we will appreciate and understand the intricacy of the relationship between its components. In the absence of the explicit description of its purpose, the system’s component will decay, discarded or repurposed by natural selection.
Even though it isn’t stated explicitly, one of the particular events in Scrum can elicit and improve the understanding of our system.
The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint. — Scrum Guide 2017
During Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team are given a dedicated period to do a self-inspection. Inward journey is one of the paths available to the Scrum Team to observe itself from the outside. Self-analysis is a common technique used by athletes to reduce their error rate when performing. By watching the video of themselves in the previous match or practice, the athlete will do the correction by identifying waste and nonoptimal movement and do motor imagery of the desired one.
Accountability is the attribute of the system’s authority. During Deming’s period, the system authority usually falls into the business decision maker that sits in the management office. Deming heavily criticized them due to the irresponsible behavior that placed accountability to the people inside the system. During his time, people inside the system had little to no direct influence on the system’s outlook, let alone to improve it, yet be held accountable for the result of whatever the system allowed them to. Empowerment and self-organization is the missing key to answer Deming’s criticism, which Scrum recommends to be present in the Scrum Team. Without those two, it’s not sensible to place accountability to the Scrum Team for the success or failure of the endeavor.
The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team. Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team. The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity. The Scrum Team has proven itself to be increasingly effective for all the earlier stated uses, and any complex work. — Scrum Guide 2017
Scrum offers a more substantial underlying as a process framework. The system should flexible enough to define its own process inside the overarching value and guiding boundaries defined by Scrum. When the Scrum practitioners understand the nature of the system they operate on, the kind of process they need will emerge and become obvious to their context. The system will do its best to find that best suited its identity and purpose on top of Scrum as its underlying.
In summary, a system that comprises of both people and machine that sets out to create software faces the challenge of optimizing the quality and speed of the information passed throughout its streamline. The information will, in turn, be used to produce a software product that matched or exceed the expectation of the consumer customer and bring value to the organization.
