A Chaordic Perspective


To fully understand ASDEs, we need to understand each of the three components and how they relate to each other. First, Agilists share a view that organizations are chaordic that every organization exhibits properties of both chaos and order that defy management through the use of linear, predictive planning and execution practices. Viewing organizations as chaordic means understanding that the predictability on which traditional project management and development life cycle practices are built is a root cause of dysfunctionality between customer, management, and development organizations. A chaordic perspective impacts both how we respond to change and how we manage project teams and organizations.

In day-to-day project work, a chaordic perspective creates two outcomes that are 180 degrees out of sync with rigorous methodologies.

  • Product goals are achievable, but they are not predictable.

  • Processes can aid consistency, but they are not repeatable.

Although ASDEs involve careful planning, the fundamental assumption remains that plans, in a turbulent environment, are not predictable, at least at the level of project scope, schedule, and cost. Plans are hypotheses to be tested rather than predictions to be realized. However, the product goals of the business are achievable, in large part because agile people adapt. They can "adapt" to an articulated vision and a schedule, scope, or cost goal through trade-offs in the other two dimensions. Second, although process can aid people in working together, in volatile environments the idea of driving out process variation through measurement and correction statistical process control becomes an unworkable hypothesis. Changes that are the result of knowledge gained during the project, knowledge not discernable early in the project, require processes that can respond to change, not ones that attempt to eliminate it.

Peter Senge uses the term "mental model" to identify the perspective or set of assumptions, stories, and beliefs that each of us carries in our mind that provides a context for thinking [Senge1990]. In organizations, the collective set of mental models defines an overall cultural context. Companies that are heavily sales oriented differ from those that are heavily engineering oriented. Companies whose driving strategy is customer intimacy differ from those whose driving force is product innovation. Companies whose mental model includes linearity, cause and effect, hierarchy, predictability, and control operate very differently from those whose mental model includes collaborative networks, emergence, decentralization of power, and acceptance of unpredictability. One is Newtonian; the other, chaordic.



Extreme Programming Perspectives
Extreme Programming Perspectives
ISBN: 0201770059
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 445

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