Dreaming

If we wanted to have a highly effective software development or knowledge-work organisation, aside from the necessary mindset, what would the-way-the-work-works look like? What would our dream be?

Well, for me it would include certain essential (and therefore, non-negotiable) aspects:

• In-band change (seamless integration of day-to-day management and continuous improvement).
• Covalence (attending to the composite needs of all stakeholders, concurrently).
• Value-driven (deliveries systematically prioritised according to covalent value).
• Smooth, continuous flow (single-piece flow, if this best meets the stakeholders’ needs).
• Maintenance of adequate slack.
• Optimisation of delays and cycle (feedback delay) times.
• The people (front-line, workers) doing the work take all decisions about the work (guided by covalent value and the organisation’s purpose). Cf. Auftragstaktik, Drive
• A pervasive belief that the system (the way the work works) is the overriding determinant of the effectiveness of the organisation. Cf. W E Deming.
• Widespread understanding that collective mindset determines the way the work works.
• An appreciation that product characteristics (look, feel, utility, evocativeness) derive from the way the work works (Conway’s Law).
• Explicit limits on work in progress.
• Key (engineering) information is visible in real-time.
• A multi-skilled (generalising specialist, Cthulhu-shaped) workforce.
• Esprit de corps and a sense of fellowship exists at the organisational level (as opposed to having e.g. standing teams). Cf. The Regiment (British Army).
• Individuals strive for personal fulfilment through e.g. mastery
• Continuous innovation, no only on product and technology, but more importantly in the way the work works and its institutions and other sacred cows.

Ackoff calls this approach – imagining what the ideal future might look like, and working backwards from there to where we are today – “Interactive Planning“.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the above attributes form the core blueprint for FlowChain.

– Bob