There seems to be a tendency in the interpretation of modern agile development methodologies that they can somehow compensate for the developers with all their attitudes, quirks and moods, or that they can be even used to drive structural changes in companies. How do human beings behave when they are confronted with such tools and processes? What about feedback loops and chaos? Social Psychology can tell us a lot on the behavior of human beings in groups, a team of developers that have a common goal being a great example, especially if the members have different mind sets and the task is highly complex. Distributed teams and complex interfaces between parts of a system impose a lot of communication on all team members. Usually, companies try to improve the communication and workflow using a “proven” development methodology, the modern ones being more human centric than the older ones. The result of such transitions is not always the one that was originally intended. Depending on the timing of the change and the project situation, companies can find themselves in a very problematic situation exactly when the development work is in the most critical phase. We take a peek under the hood to discover the reality of group dynamics and feedback loops. We speak about cybernetic systems and chaos. As engineers, we look at the topic with a technical mind set and try to understand what moves the people and whether it is good to impose to them a completely new way of work. We will also consider ways to make such transitions easier and look at how timing can influence behavior.

1. Tools
Homonoids,
An Engineer’s Reality Check
parametric.ch
and Methodologies
Andreas Koschak
INCOSE/IEEE Member
Copyright © 2014 Parametric Engineering GmbH
Published and used by The SSSE and INCOSE with permission
The author or assignee retains the copyright to the materials.

2. Short Summary
Do we need Psychology to cope with
Systems of Systems involving humans?
How far «outside the box» should
Systems Engineers think?
“I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside
the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside
it.”
Terry Pratchett

3. Our Field of Activity
OEM Hardware & Software
Systems
PSoC
Research &
Development
ASIC
Technology
Consulting
FPG
A
ASSP
Focus: Fast Development, Verification and Simplicity, also on System
Level, mostly for industrial applications

4. What we see in our daily Business:
Complexity
Time to Market
No peace of mind
Organizational Change
Worse than before




5. 5
Myth:
«You cannot change the way you work
when you’re in the middle of a project»
You are ALWAYS in the middle of a
project!

6. Increased Complexity - Possible Approaches:
1. Play Dead (=Reduce Functionality)
2. Let somebody «create Processes»
3. Implement fancy new Agile Methodology
4. Get more contractors
5. Replace middle management
6. Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
7. Planned Innovation
8. New Mission Statement!

7. Our main Strategy
You need to pick the PEOPLE up where they are
and actively get THEM to make the change
“To lead the people, walk behind them.” — Lao-Tzu

8. The mechanics of Change
(Management)
Assess
SItuation
Perform
Change
Analyze
Results
Looks easy, right?

9. Don’t forget the homonoid factor
1. They want to be important
2. Some of them are afraid of being fired
3. Some of them probably just don’t like you
4. Some of them are afraid of losing responsability
5. Some of them think they know it better
-> Feedback?

10. Network Elements
ANY Organization
Large Hiercharchy (High Organogram)
Noise
gate
Organizations with stressed management

11. Increased Complexity - Possible Approaches:
1. Play Dead (=Reduce Functionality)
2. Let somebody «create Processes»
3. Implement fancy new Agile Methodology
4. Get more contractors
5. Replace middle management
6. Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
7. «Innovation»
8. New Mission Statement!

12. Agile = Continuous Improvement?
• “Agile” Development Methodologies are in fact processes
• Processes cannot be used to “change things”
• -> Identification of the status quo.
Example:
1. Scrum teams shows that 90% of all estimations of team
X are wrong by over 30%
2. Kanban board shows 30 urgent tasks and 95 urgent bugs

13. Agile Development
• What understanding of “Human mechanics” can help?
• Homeostatis
• Social comparison

14. Cybernetics κυβερνήτης (kybernētēs) "steersman,
governor, pilot, or rudder"

15. Cybernetics κυβερνήτης (kybernētēs) "steersman,
governor, pilot, or rudder"
“Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary[1] approach for exploring regulatory
systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is
relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological,
cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system
being analyzed is involved in a closed signaling loop; that is, where action
by the system generates some change in its environment and that change
is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a
system change, originally referred to as a "circular causal" relationship” -
Wikipedia
Cybernetics was borrowed by Norbert Wiener, in his book
"Cybernetics", to define the study of control and
communication in the animal and the machine

16. Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics (1)
Noise
gate
+
-
Noise
gate
+
-
Change
from outside
Change
from outside
Internal
Situation
Internal
Situation
Unknown Transfer Function
1/s

17. Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics (2)

18. Homeostatis ὅμοιος, "hómoios", "similar",[1] and στάσις,
stásis, "standing still"[

19. Homeostatis ὅμοιος, "hómoios", "similar",[1] and στάσις,
stásis, "standing still"[
“…is the property of a system in which
variables are regulated so that internal
conditions remain stable and relatively
constant. Examples of homeostasis include the
regulation of temperature and the balance
between acidity and alkalinity (pH)” -
Wikipedia
People need security, they act in a way
that their situation does not change

20. Homeostatis
Social Security within the company:
1. My organization is stable
2. My own status within the organization is stable
3. I have the same perception of my social status as the
others (self-perception)
So how that THAT work?:
Assess
SItuation
Perform
Change
Analyze
Results

21. Break through Homeostatis (1)
Lewin’s Change Management Model:
Unfreeze Change Refreeze
Do you really want to freeze that after a change?
Noise
gate
+
-
Change
from outside
Internal
1/s Situation

22. Break through Homeostatis (2)
Insert Noise into the system, check response
Noise
gate
+
-
Internal
Situation
?
Try to find transfer function
«That’s Engineering Stuff!»

23. Break through Homeostatis (3)
INJECTING NOISE should not result in CHAOS!
Noise
gate
+
-
Internal
Situation
?

24. Break through Homeostatis (4)
Most risky way: Structure out of Chaos
CHAOS
Completely uncontrollable?

25. Chaos
You might be able handle chaotic processes if your
focus is correct
Does top management have the right focus?

26. Social Comparison - «why» and «how»

27. Social Comparison - Are we all the same?
Collective Responsability: The same vision?
Management literature warns that it’s important
to have the «right policies»
Reality Check: Usually people have problems
with sharing ownership of what somebody else
has done
Why?

28. Humans compare themselves with others
Mainly two reasons:
1. Improve self-knowledge, self-improvement
and a positive self-perception
2. Comparisons are important to better
communicate and understand informations
correctly
Main point: We want to be consistent
(again, people need security)

29. Consistency in self-perception
Performance
Perceived performance
Actual performance
Gap?
• We need to Identify where we stand
• Maximum?
• Compare with others

30. Humans compare themselves with others
We compare ourselves to colleagues with similiar
standards
Standard Selection:
• Rectification of self-image: Lower Performance
• Self-Improvement: Higher Performance

31. Indicidual and Social Identity
• We compare ourselves to others in the same group
(with similar properties)
• We compare our group to others -> Especially if we
don’t manage to be consistent
• «Our group» needs to be better than «the others»
What does that mean with respect to «cross functional
teams»?
«Theories of social identity» (Tajfel/Turner, 1979)

32. Scrum – Possible Area of Conflict
Shared Values = Shared Responsability?
«If I was responsible alone, I would
do things differently»
«I need to go with the others,
otherwise they might get around
me»
Group Behavior

33. From Analysis to Activity

34. From Analysis to activity (1)
• Social Engineering
• NLP
• ...
Our Approach:
• Systems Engineer helps to analyze
• Management needs to act
• Outside view != Inside view
• Consistent positive/realistic Conditioning

35. From Analysis to activity (2)
Example of unplanned Activity:
Classical Conditioning (Part of NLP Theories)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning

36. From Analysis to activity (3)
Strategies:
• Stay out of Chaos but near by the edge
• Find right amount of «Noise» to have within
system
• Take time to analyze situation and feedback loops
before startign to change it
• Give Credit to individuals
• Take positive influence, consider conditioning
• Provide everybody with suitable «reference
Person»

37. Findings from the above theories
1. Shared Responsybility is no reponsability
2. Development methodology does not imply organizational
improvement
3. Change cannot be just pushed through by «Leader Figures» from
top management
4. Every action results in a reaction
5. Make small steps, in order to have continuous control over the
loop
6. Think like an engineer and try to understand situations before
and while they change

38. Get changes initiated and performed by
your employees while you make sure they
keep their social security
Do that by challenging the team(s) and
paving the way to the desired situation
together with a systems engineer who
represents the link between you and the
technical area

39. Q&A
More Questions: akoschak@parametric.ch
Web-Links:
www.incose.ch
http://agilemanifesto.org/