Skip to main content

Uncertainty

I recently listened to an interview with Dan North in which he discussed his efforts to encourage organizations embrace uncertainty.  What I took away was the idea is that there are some things that are just unknowable and that building processes that give the appearance of certainty is wasteful and dangerous. For example, elaborate planning processes whether they be in the Agile or Waterfall camp often yield the appearance of predictability, but in reality, major risk factors are often left undiscovered.  Putting more and more effort into refining these processes gives the appearance of improved accuracy, but what we really want is effectiveness. For example, we may spend hours haggling over story card points, when the biggest risk to a project - a key contributor is looking for another job - is left undiscovered and unaccounted for.

As human beings we generally dislike uncertainty.  We rely on our understanding of cause and effect to survive. When primitive cultures didn't understand some natural phenomenon, they would make up explanations to fulfill that need to understand and predict. But I think some of us have higher tolerances for uncertainty than others.  I think that is one aspect of the judging/perception factor of the Myers-Briggs personality type. From Wikipedia, "According to Myers, judging types like to have matters settled. Perceptive types prefer to keep decisions open."

So considering that the world is so inherently unpredictable, it seems that we all, to some degree, prefer self-delusion.

Related Articles: Risk Management Theater

Related Videos: http://vimeo.com/43603453#

P.S.

Fear Leads to Processes
Processes Lead to Hate
Hate Leads to Suffering (& Gantt Charts)

- adapted from Dan North NDC Conference 2012


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Managing for Motivation Not Efficiency

Beginning in the era of the industrial revolution, managers were trained and encouraged to focus on increasing productivity though increased efficiency.  This trend has continued into modern management with techniques such as Total Quality Management that focus on identifying and eliminating waste in a system. It can't be denied that this approach can be very effective when applied to a consistent, repeatable process like a manufacturing assembly line.  However, this focus on efficiency is inappropriate and even detrimental  when applied to creative, problem solving activities like software development, and unfortunately these lessons learned from manufacturing dominate the way software development is organized and managed.  It even influences some of the practices taught under the banner of Agile. This fallacy, that software development can be organized into consistently repeatable processes, was the assumption of the waterfall methodology.  Software developm...
Post a Comment
Read more

20 Reasons Why the Traditional Performance Review For Software Developers is Bad For Business

1. Undermines Teamwork Teamwork suffers when your incentive system primarily recognizes individual achievement. Collaboration is key to producing quality software. 2. Undermines Autonomy & Purpose Feeling like you're performing to get a carrot (raise or promotion) or avoid a stick (termination) undermines an individual's sense of autonomy and purpose which is strongly tied to intrinsically motivated behavior. It is critical to have intrinsically motivated people in creative problem-solving jobs like software development.  (See previous posts) . 3. Damages Trust Between Manager and Subordinate It reinforces the idea that the manager's role is primarily to evaluate and critique. Instead of being on the same team working toward common goals, the performance review clearly places the manager and subordinate in antagonistic roles on opposites sides of the table.  It reinforces the worst boss stereotypes. 4. Not Objective No one has found a good way to quantify a so...
1 comment
Read more