Paved With Good Intentions

A talk about unintended consequences.

The problems remain the same. Legacy systems. Disengaged employees. Defects all around. Long delays getting software released. Being left behind by the competition. But why does everyone run into the same problems? And can they get out?

They say the first rule of holes is to stop digging. There’s a reason we start digging in the first place. We thought it would get us closer to where we needed to be. It just happened to get us stuck at the bottom with very few options of escape.

This talk is all about unintended consequences. The dysfunctional situations we encounter are created because well intentioned actions, intended to fix real problems, have only caused more and deeper problems. We simply didn’t foresee the wider impact.

We can take a page from systems thinking, but how do you know what to look out for? I’ll use familiar, concrete examples, to show what type of impact to look out for and how to see if you are just doing local optimizations. I’ll also provide a simple and quick checklist to help avoid overlooking undesirable impacts. After all, when we know where the holes are dug, we can avoid falling into them.

Transcript

1. Paved with good intentions Wouter Lagerweij @wouterla
3. "Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand." -- Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review
4. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon’s Razor
5. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
7. What can we get wrong? - Impact on the wider system - Impact on different layers of the system - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Stuck on one model - Trauma (lack of psychological safety)
8. What can we get wrong? - Impact on the wider system - Impact on different layers of the system - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Stuck on one model - Trauma (lack of psychological safety)
10. What can we get wrong? - Impact on the wider system - Impact on different layers of the system - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Stuck on one model - Trauma (lack of psychological safety)
12. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair
13. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair
14. What can we get wrong? - Impact on the wider system - Impact on different layers of the system - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Stuck on one model - Trauma (lack of psychological safety)
15. “You must learn to delegate” -- Everyone, all the time
16. “You must learn to delegate” -- Everyone, all the time
17. Our Agile Models • Teams • Flow • WIP • Transparency • Autonomy • Psychological Safety • Small steps • Communication • …
18. What can we get wrong? - Impact on the wider system - Impact on different layers of the system - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Stuck on one model - Trauma (lack of psychological safety)
20. A Checklist - Go wider: explore the system - Go deeper: what aspect are impacted? - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Diversify your models - Lean? Add Agile? - Technical Practices? Add teaming - Autonomy? Add Psychological safety
21. A Checklist - Go wider: explore the system - Go deeper: what aspect are impacted? - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Diversify your models - Lean? Add Agile? - Technical Practices? Add teaming - Autonomy? Add Psychological safety
22. A Checklist - Go wider: explore the system - Go deeper: What aspects are impacted? - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Diversify your models - Lean? Add Agile? - Technical Practices? Add teaming - Autonomy? Add Psychological safety
23. A Checklist - Go wider: explore the system - Go deeper: what aspects are impacted? - Process - Structure - Incentives - People / skills - Strategy - Diversify your models - Lean? Add Agile? - Technical Practices? Add teaming - Autonomy? Add Psychological safety
24. Our Agile Models • Teams • Flow • WIP • Transparency • Autonomy • Psychological Safety • Small steps • Communication • …
25. A Checklist - Diversify your models - Waterfall? - Prince II? - Top down management?
27. Paved with good intentions Wouter Lagerweij @wouterla