In an age of disruption, increasingly complex and chaotic problems demand emergent or completely novel practices. Decades-old practices no longer work, raising difficult questions about the role of management in a world being disrupted by technology: How do we embrace diversity and inclusion for resilience without sacrificing efficiency or create psychological safety? Navigate external market forces and internal cultural changes? This session will go beyond Agile, DevOps, and Lean IT to share a novel perspective on your roles in in a rapidly changing technological landscape to help you build a future-proof organization.

1. IAN BUCHANAN | DEVELOPER PARTISAN | ATLASSIAN | @DEVPARTISAN
After Agile, DevOps, and Lean IT
modern methodology in the age of disruption

2. Zemeckis 2000. Cast Away

3. Cynefin
(KUN-iv-in)
a sense-making framework
from Welsh for habitat,
the places where we live

4. Problem
domains

5. licensed CC0; pxhere (https://pxhere.com/en/photo/854901)

6. Simple
• Tightly constrained
• No degrees of freedom
• Best practice
sense-categorize-respond

7. Practice
Method
Process
Play

8. licensed CC BY-SA 3.0; wikimedia commons
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OO_Modeling_languages_history.jpg)

9. Complicated
• Governing constraints
• Tightly coupled
• Good practice
sense-analyze-respond

10. We are uncovering better
ways of developing
software by doing it and
helping others do it.
MANIFESTO FOR AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

11. Personal excellence
and integrity
Evolutionary architecture
and iteration
Attention to code
and product quality
Introspection
and adaptation

12. J. Scott Applewhite; Associated Press

13. Complex
• Enabling constraints
• Loosely coupled
• Emergent practice
probe-sense-respond

14. a way of
seeing
things
a way of
doing
something
METHOD METHODOLOGY

16. Ops who think like dev,
Devs who think like ops
JOHN ALLSPAW,
10+ DEPLOYS PER DAY: DEV AND OPS COOPERATION AT FLICKR

18. Lean Product Management
Team experimentation
Working in small batches
Gathering & implementing
customer feedback
Outsourcing
Contractual obligations
Working in large batches
Changes to specifications
are difficult to manage
3.9x
lowperformers
Low performers are
more likely to use functional outsourcing

19. Eric Ries (theleanstartup.com/principles)

20. Chaotic
• Lacking constraint
• De-coupled
• Novel practice
act-sense-respond

21. Chaotic
Complex Complicated
Simple
Cynefin
• Methodology, a way of
seeing things

22. Chaotic
Complex Complicated
Simple
Disorder
• When we don’t know
which domain we’re in.
• What happens if we
blindly apply the rules of
one domain?

23. Atlassian Values
They guide what we do, why we create, and who we hire.
Opencompany,
nobullshit
Buildwithheart
&balance
Bethechange
youseek
Play,
asateam
Don’t#@!%
thecustomer

24. Disruption
• Easy to drift
from simple to chaotic
• Must traverse complex
and complicated to come
back to simple
Chaotic
Complex Complicated
Simple

25. History
• Experience helps us
traverse move from
chaotic back to simple
• History gets encoded in
data, software,
processes, and org
structuresChaotic
Complex Complicated
Simple

26. Efficiency
Resilience

27. Efficiency
Resilience
• Can’t support
the weight of history

28. Efficiency
Resilience
• Can’t support
the weight of history
• Can’t survive
disruption

29. Autocatalysis
• Growth emerges from
the right balance
between 2 extremes
• Emergent properties
Efficiency
Resilience
Grow
th

30. He must, so to speak, throw
away the ladder after he has
climbed up it.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

31. Practical implications
Performance
Efficiency vs resiliency:
opposing tendencies
in the near field;
mutually obligatory
at large scale.

32. Culture
Configurations of
propensities
over
explicit practices
or their attendant tools.
Practical implications
Performance
Efficiency vs resiliency:
opposing tendencies
in the near field;
mutually obligatory
at large scale.

33. Culture
Configurations of
propensities
over
explicit practices
or their attendant tools.
Practical implications
Behavior
Shift away
from “fixed recipes”
(cause -> effect)
to the description of “plays”
(multiple ways -> goal)
Performance
Efficiency vs resiliency:
opposing tendencies
in the near field;
mutually obligatory
at large scale.

34. “Don't just do something, stand there”

35. Thank you!
IAN BUCHANAN | DEVELOPER PARTISAN | ATLASSIAN | @DEVPARTISAN