On 28th December 1978, United Airlines flight 173 took off from JFK airport bound for Portland Oregon. Flight 173 was a DC8 long range airliner, 10 years old, recently overhauled & in the prime of its flying life. Shortly before it was due to land a warning light went off suggesting an issue with the landing gear, an issue that did not exist. After delaying landing and carrying out extensive checks flight 173 declared it's intention to land, however it never made it. Five minutes out from Portland International Airfield the plane ran out of fuel and crash landed with 10 fatalities and 24 serious injuries. What had happened to cause the crash was not a mechanical fault, or lack of sufficient fuel to make the journey but quite simply an organisational one. After an air crash investigation it was declared that the accident was caused by "a breakdown in cockpit management and teamwork". Fast forward to January 15th 2009 and US Airways Flight 1549 lands successfully on the Hudson river after multiple bird strikes caused all engines to fail. No lives were lost and the entire crew were awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. The difference, after the disaster of Flight 173 all flight crew now have to go through "Charm School", extensive training on how to work as a team. Compare this to the world of software development. We have all of the tools and technology at our finger tips to be able to deliver to our customers high quality software that meets their needs to almost anywhere in the world within hours or minutes of the work being declared complete but in many cases we still don't. And along the way it's often a painful experience as we strive to meet artificial deadlines while navigating company politics! In this talk we'll explore why our organisations are structured in such a way that makes them ineffective. We'll look at what it takes to design more effective orgs... and we'll ask the question why hasn't Agile solved these problems for us already.

1. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no
longer the problem

2. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Chris McDermott
@chrisvmcd
Coach/Conference Organiser
http://leanagile.scot
@LeanAgileScot
5th, 6th & 7th of October 2016

3. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
United 173

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Crew Resource Management

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US Airways 1549

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Our tech stack is no longer the problem!

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Agile-Asshatery
“Agile : doing the wrong thing faster”
John Seddon

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Double loop learning

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Chunking

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Mechanism

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Adam Smith
“Division of labour” -
Wealth of Nations - 1776

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Fredrick Winslow Taylor
The Principles of Scientific
Management - 1911

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Alfred P Sloan
Decentralised operations with
coordinated control - 1920

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Karl Marx
[The worker then
becomes] "depressed
spiritually and
physically to the
condition of a
machine"

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Mental models
1. Appreciation of a system
2. Understanding of Complexity Theory
3. Thoughts on people
4. Thoughts on groups

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Step 1: Appreciation of a System

17. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
What is a system?
“An interconnected set of elements
which is coherently organised in a
way that achieves something”
Donnella Meadows

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“Meaning exists in the
interaction between things,
not in the things themselves"
Alicia Juarrero
Interaction & Interdependence

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Feedback

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Balancing & Reinforcing

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Time

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Boundaries

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Holistic
“The systems approach
to problems focuses on
systems taken as a
whole, not on their parts
taken separately.”
Russell Ackoff

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Operation Cat Drop

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Fundamental
Attribution Error
“We're blind to our blindness.We
have very little idea of how little we
know.We're not designed to know
how little we know.”
Daniell Kahneman

26. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
System v Individual
95% of the
performance of an
organisation is
attributable to the
system (processes,
technology, work
design, regulations,
etc) and 5% are
attributable to the
individual
W Edwards Deming

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GM Freemont

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NUMMI

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Step 2: Understanding of Complexity

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Complicated systems
“[Taylor] has probably had a
greater effect on the private
and public lives of the men
and women of the twentieth
century than any other
single individual.”
Jeremy Rifkin

31. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Complex systems
“Linearity is seductive"
Dave Snowden

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Volunteers

33. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Is software development complex?
“It's tough to make predictions,
especially about the future.”
Yogi Berra

34. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Step 3: Thoughts on people

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Knowledge Work

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Motivation
“When the reward is the activity
itself--deepening learning, delighting
customers, doing one's best--there
are no shortcuts.”
Dan Pink - Drive

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Step 4: Thoughts on groups

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Tribes

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Dunbar Number

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Principles for managing complex organisations

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Situational Awareness

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Shared Understanding

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Common Purpose

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Decentralised Decision Making

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Experimentation

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Trust
“Trust is the metric for the quality of social connection”
Marc Burgauer

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Battle of Trafalgar

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Examples of practices for complex organisations

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Teamverløtung

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Cross functional autonomous teams

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Collision space

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Community of Practice

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Pareto Team Stability

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Organisational Split

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Anything else you can think of?
• Visualisation
• Hack days
• Three Amigos
• …

56. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Complicated

57. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Complex

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In Summary…
Software development, in an organisation, is a complex social activity.To get the
best results in this environment we might want to consider:
• developing situational awareness;
• creating shared understanding;
• engendering a common purpose;
• distributing decision making to those with the best information;
• experimenting with new ideas and ways of working;
• underpinned by trust.

59. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Thank you!

60. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Sources
“What is the value of Social Capital” - Jabe Bloom : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n4a1VOW7H8
“Culture is theTrue North - Scaling at Jimdo" - Arne Roock : http://www.infoq.com/articles/scaling-at-jimdo
“Nilan Peiris and the culture of growth atTransferWise” - Boss Level Podcast : http://www.bosslevelpodcast.com/15

61. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
Images
http://a1.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,h_1200,q_80,w_1200/MTMxMTc0MTUyNTc1OTIwNzcx.jpg
http://bridgeforcefinancial.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BIF-BIF7DanPink976.jpg
http://valao.de/images/cms/jimdo/jimdo-logo.png
http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Angell-Yogi-Berra1-1200-630-23191047.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27764576@N06/17241876888/in/photostream/
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7e/f9/1b/7ef91b6d360d4a6fd2e338bccde68078.jpg
http://wisedecisions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Fotolia_8284502_M.jpg
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1295422/images/o-SCOTLAND-FANS-WEMBLEY-facebook.jpg

62. @chrisvmcd - ladies and gentlemen, the plane is no longer the problem
More Images
https://pixabay.com/en/clock-mechanism-hour-s-watch-works-544426/
http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8345244ea69e20111688f4568970c-pi
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53a4944aecad042a40e04921/daniel-kahneman-investors-need-to-stop-believing-they-can-know-the-
future.jpg
http://content9.flixster.com/question/53/76/67/5376679_std.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Fugle,_%C3%B8rns%C3%B8_073.jpg
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/192pmyvahzkfsjpg/original.jpg
http://5cience.net/userdata/images//275/b3e2b00a.jpg
https://sherhaps.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/16959-helmet_cat.jpg
http://gloriumtech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/coolv-moss-mh-round-2500x1443.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27764576@N06/16831729184/in/album-72157651963367835/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27764576@N06/14074504295/
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/actiontrumpseverything/files/2012/05/47311_Papel-de-Parede-Planeta-Terra_1600x12001.jpg
https://nothinginbiology.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/doc.jpgP[