How to tell if you're in a complex system

 

There is a lot of talk about complexity now in the Agile community. I am not a big fan of sense-making frameworks that talk about simple, chaos, complicated and complex.  But I wrote this post on linkedin (including it here) to let us know when you are in a complex system.

Go through the questions one by one. Give yourself 2 points for each question answered "definitely" and one point when answered "to some extent." At the end we'll total up your score and tell you if you're in a complex system.

1. are you doing knowledge work?
2. are there more than 20 people involved?
3. do you have to interact with people outside of your group for which you have no control?
4. are there many dependencies between the different groups involved?
5. is much of what's happening not visible to people?
6. can small misunderstandings cause big challenges?
7. are you doing something never done before?
8. are you trying to learn how to do what you're doing better?
9. are people's livelihoods at stake based on the success of what they are doing?
10. is it impossible to keep everything that's going on in your head?

Now, total up your answers. If your score is 2 or more you're in a complex system.

The question isn't if you're in a complex system, the question is what are you going to do about it? How are you going to navigate it?

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To learn more about how to deal with complexity, check out Dealing With Complexity by Creating a Bias for Simplicty