Category Archives: cynefin

The Shallow Dive into Chaos

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Liz

For more on the Chaotic domain and subdomains, read Dave Snowden’s blog post, “…to give birth to a dancing star.” The relationship between separating people that I talk about here, and the Chaotic domain, can be seen in Cynthia Kurtz’s work with … Continue reading →

Posted in complexity, cynefin | 3 Comments

Using Scenarios for Experiment Design

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Liz

In the complex domain, cause and effect are only correlated in retrospect, and we cannot predict outcomes. We can see them and understand them in retrospect, but the complex domain is the domain of discovery and innovation. Expect the unexpected! … Continue reading →

Posted in cynefin, evil hat, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Using BDD as a Sensemaking Technique

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Liz

A while back, I wrote about Cynefin, a framework for making sense of the world, and for approaching different situations and problems depending on how much certainty or uncertainty they have. As a quick summary, Cynefin has five domains: Simple … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, complexity, cynefin | 3 Comments

Disorder, or, How I Got a Black Eye

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Liz

In the Cynefin framework, the Disorder domain is the one in the middle. It’s the state of not knowing what kind of causality exists. Over on the right we have the predictable domains of Simple and Complicated, and on the … Continue reading →

Posted in complexity, cynefin, evil hat, real options, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Capability-based Planning and Lightweight Analysis

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Liz

As a follow-up to my post on estimating complexity, I wanted to share one of the interesting things I’ve been doing with the ideas and the numbers. This is quite long, but it’s turned out to be faintly revolutionary, and … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, capability red, complexity, cynefin | 10 Comments

Estimating Complexity

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Liz

Over the last few years, teaching people the Cynefin framework early on in engagements has really helped me have useful conversations with my clients about when different processes are appropriate. There’s one phrase I use a lot, which is self-evident … Continue reading →

Posted in capability red, complexity, cynefin, evil hat, real options | 29 Comments

The Deliberate Discovery Workshop

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Liz

This is a pretty simple workshop which I ran at Agile 2011 and have run as part of my BDD tutorial since. It usually gets people thinking differently, so I thought I’d share it with you too. Some teams have … Continue reading →

Posted in complexity, cynefin, deliberate discovery, real options | 1 Comment

LSSC 2012

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Liz

A lot of times when I go to conferences, I’ve already got a slew of half-formed ideas and thoughts from the amazing communities with whom I hang out. The conferences have been fantastic for helping me refine and validate those … Continue reading →

Posted in conference, cynefin, deliberate discovery, kanban, lean | 8 Comments

Cynefin for Devs

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Liz

Every now and then, someone comes up with a new way of looking at the world that becomes the next fashionable thing to do. Every time I’ve seen this, there’s usually a space of time in which a lot of … Continue reading →

Posted in complexity, cynefin | 40 Comments

The Real Cost of Change

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Liz

We have a strange desire for control. I was in a planning meeting with my project manager and several of the devs. “What happened?” the project manager said. “Why did this one story take so long?” “There was some functionality … Continue reading →

Posted in breaking models, cynefin, learning, spike and stabilize, testing, uncertainty | 14 Comments