Oddly Influenced

Open Systems Theory (OST) is an approach to organizational transformation that dates back to the late 1940s. It's been applied a fair amount, but hasn't gotten much mindshare in the software world. It has similarities to Agile, but leans into self-organization in a much more thoroughgoing way.For example, in an OST organization, teams aren't given a product backlog, they create it themselves.if a team decides they need to slow the pace of delivery to learn new things or to spend more time refactoring, their decision is final.pay is based on skills, not productivity, so as to encourage multi-skilled people.team work is organized so that there are career paths within the team, rather than advancement depending on leaving a team and rising up in a hierarchy.OST is even more radical at the levels above the team. Unlike scaled-agile approaches like SAFe or LeSS, OST changes the jobs of the people higher in the org chart just as much – or more? – than people at the leaves of the tree. Specifically, the shift is from order-giving to coordination at different timescales. Individual "leaf" teams are responsible for the short term, the next level up is responsible for the medium term and external partners, and the CxO levels focus on the long term.This episode is an interview with Trond Hjorteland, who – after experience with Agile – did an impressively deep dive into OST.SourcesAs noted in the podcast, there's not much accessible documentation about OST. However, Trond and his merry band of (mostly) Agilists have begun work on a new site. Trond has also written "Thriving with complexity using open sociotechnical systems design", originally published in InfoQ. Trond's blog.Trond is on Mastodon at @trondhjort.Image creditThe image is from the cover of the Marvel Comics graphic novel Captain Marvel, Vol. 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More.

I describe how the Gal Oya irrigation system got better. It's an example that might inspire hope. I also imagine how a software codebase and its team might have a similar improvement.As with earlier episodes, I'm leaning on Elinor Ostrom’s 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, and Erik Nordman’s 2021 book, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action. I also mention James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State, which I discuss starting with episode 17.More about Gal Oya and similar projectsUphoff, N.T. "People's Participation in Water Management: Gal Oya, Sri Lanka". In Public Participation in Development Planning and Management: Cases from Africa and Asia, ed. J.C. Garcia-Samor, 1985Perera, J. "The Gal Oya Farmer Organization Programme: A Learning Process?" In Participatory Management in Sri Lanka's Irrigation Schemes, 1986.Korten, D. "Community Organization and Rural Development:  a Learning Process Approach", Public Administration on Review 40, 1980 (Philippines, Bangladesh)Korten, F. "Building National Capacity to Develop Water Users' Associations: Experience from the Philippines, World Bank working paper 528, 1982Rahman, A. "Some Dimensions of People's Participation in the Bloomni Sena Movement", United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1981 (Nepal)Rabibhadena, A. The Transformation of Tambon Yokkrabat, Changwat Samut Sakorn, Thammasat University, 1980 (Thailand). Refactoring books I have likedMartin Fowler, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999William C. Wake, Refactoring Workbook, 2003Joshua Kerievsky, Refactoring to Patterns, 2004Scott W. Ambler and Pramod J. Sadalage, Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design, 2006The Strangler Fig patternFowler's original blog postA case study I commissioned, way back when. Credits "Agriculture in Extreme Environments - Irrigation channel for wheat fields and date palms" by Richard Allaway is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

A short episode that encourages members of software teams to give Elinor Ostrom's ideas a try, in two ways:1. I'm arranging for Elinor Ostrom's intellectual heirs to provide support.2. Your situation is not worse than those of Sri Lankan farmers in the Gal Oya irrigation system. A commons-style approach helped them, so why couldn't it help you?I'm looking for teams who want to collaborate with Indiana University's Ostrom Workshop, and I intend to provide financing.

Ostrom's core principles for the design of successful commons: how to monitor compliance with rules, how to punish non-compliance, how to resolve disputes, and how to participate in making rules. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, 1990Erik Nordman, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action, 2021"The dirty little secret of contract law" Image of lobster buoys from Flickr user Raging Wire, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

This is the first of two or three episodes that draw on Elinor Ostrom’s 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, and Erik Nordman’s 2021 book, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action. What I hope is that those lessons apply to the problem of keeping codebases from devolving into unworkable piles of crap. Ostrom has nine design principles for designing successful commons governance. I mention them all in this episode, and provide Ostrom's summary below. In the descriptions, "CPR" stands for "Common Pool Resource" (that is, a commons). "Appropriation rules" govern extracting "resource units" from the commons. "Provision rules" govern improvement and maintenance of the commons. I've replaced some of the bolded summaries with my own when Ostrom's had too much jargon.Clearly defined boundaries: Individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself.The rules governing a CPR are strongly influenced by local context: Appropriation rules restricting time, place, technology, and/or quantity of resource units are related to local conditions and to provision rules requiring labor, material, and money.Those affected by rules make them: Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.  Monitoring: Monitors, who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behavior, are accountable to the appropriators or are the appropriators.Graduated sanctions: Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both.Conflict-resolution mechanisms: Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.Minimal recognition of the right to organize: The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities.For CPRs that are parts of larger systems:Nested enterprises: Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.--------In the podcast, I said "There will always be pressure to deliver faster. There’s been a lot written on reducing that pressure, or resisting it. That’s off topic for these episodes, so I’ll put links in the show notes." Well, I thought there were, but I don't have anything to offer you yet.Here's a comment from Sasha Cuerda: "a tactic I have used in the past is ADRs. Basically keep receipts documenting the trade off being made. When my team had a track record of correctly and proactively assessing and documenting risk and those documents kept surfacing in retros tied to those risks materializing, we gained credibility with the non-manager stakeholders impacted by incidents and were able to push back. But def a long game."it helped that we had an already established and blessed practice of using ADRs in other contexts. They weren’t initially seen as “resistance” but as part of established good practice."I did remember a blog post I wrote long ago, warning new agile teams not to deliver too much value too soon before they know how to do it sustainably. "I find myself advising new Agile teams to go slower than they could. Here’s the thing: at the beginning, they’re probably working on a bad code base, and they have yet to learn important rules and habits. They will find it easy to go faster than is compatible with making the code more malleable. [...]"But that's not really the same problem. --------Image of grazing cattle due to Emilian Robert Vicol is licensed under CC BY 2.0 and was obtained from OpenUniverse.org.

My goal is to help you understand what it means when you see a headline like “Scientists find that people on the political right are less open to experience than people on the left.”TL;DR: For practical purposes, it doesn't mean anything. You might guess, from the previous episode, that it's just that personality traits don't predict behavior. That's true, but more interesting things are going on: What does "open to experience" mean, actually? How much less open are conservatives?Key sources:John M. Digman, "Personality Structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model", 1999 Literal Banana (a pseudonym!), "The Ongoing Accomplishment of the Big Five", 2020Literal Banana, "Survey Chicken", 2020Konstantin Löwe, "Is Politics Downstream from Personality? The Five Factor Model’s Effect on Political Orientation in Sweden", 2019Image credit:The scatter plot showing a low-but-significant correlation was generated by Brian Marick in 2011. I don't remember the program I used.

It’s hard to predict how personality traits will affect behavior in new situations.We don’t have a good grasp of the difference between a “new situation” and “a variant of an old situation.”Small differences in the situation (like recent good luck) can make a big difference in how traits like “helpfulness” are expressed. So you'll probably need to try it and see ("probe-sense-response"), rather than assume you can find out enough to predict ("sense-analyze-respond").Summary sources:John M. Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, 2005. (This is focused on questions in the philosophical idea of "virtue ethics". Unless you care about that, this is mostly a place to find primary sources.)Walter Mischel, "Toward an Integrative Science of the Person", 2004Also cited or used:Theodore Newcomb, The consistency of certain extrovert-introvert behavior patterns in 51 problem boys, 1929. (Not available online. Link is to the University of Illinois Library copy. All hail interlibrary loan!)Alice M. Isen and Paula F. Levin, "Effect of feeling good on helping: cookies and kindness", 1972. (The pay phone experiment)John M. Darley and Daniel Batson, "'From Jerusalem to Jericho': A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior", 1973 (the seminarian experiment).John M. Digman, "Personality Structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model", 1999 Walter Mischel, Personality and Assessment, 1968David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, "A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making", Harvard Business Review, 2007. (I used this for quotes and claims about the Cynefin framework, which is pronounced "kuh-NEV-in", as it's a Welsh word.)Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, 1998Miscellaneous: “Always try to get data that’s good enough that you don’t need to do statistics on it.”What 0.14 correlation looks likeCreditsTwo-slot postage stamp vending machine image courtesy the Smithsonian Museum. Public domain.

The key message begins with the observation that categories and concepts have central examples and fuzzy boundaries. The idea that categories are usefully defined by boolean-valued necessary and sufficient conditions is outdated. The stock example is the question: "Is the pope a bachelor?" The answer is, "Well, technically", but there are clearly more central examples that capture more of the concept's connotations. (See Lakoff's 1987 Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Gregory L. Murphy's 2004 The Big Book of Concepts is more exhaustive and covers different theories.)Examples teach you what lays within the (fuzzy) boundary. Counterexamples teach you what lays outside. You need both.Stories stimulate the kind of learning that happens from lived experience and social interaction. These claims are illustrated by the kind of examples, counterexamples, and stories that I think Etienne Wenger should have (but mostly did not) use in his 1998 Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. The episode isn't a comprehensive – or perhaps even accurate – explanation of his theory. Because (I believe) of how the book was written, my understanding of the theory is shaky.I also drew on these writings: Wenger, Snyder, and McDermott, Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge, 2002Cox, Andrew M., "What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works", 2005Etienne Wenger, "Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems: the Career of a Concept", 2010I mentioned Tinderbox, a note-taking app, and Bike, an outliner.I mentioned my habit of writing books that include mistakes that are later corrected. As advertised, the first book I wrote this way is RubyCocoa: Bringing Some Ruby Love to OS X Programming. That's a book about dead technology, and is out of print. Perhaps the best example of this style was the unfinished An Outsider's Guide to Statically Typed Functional Programming, which is free. (The finished part is about Elm, which alas also seems dead.) Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer is an introduction to Clojure, uses something of the include-mistakes style, was pretty successful, but is old enough I've also made it free. The description of the apocryphal story of Saint Thecla is from the Apocrypals podcast. There's more than just man-eating seals.The science fiction story Año Nuevo is by Ray Naylor.----Picture of Magritte's "The Treachery of Images" via Flickr user darryl_mitchel,  under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Jean Lave discusses 'Situated Learning' and 'Legitimate Peripheral Participation.' They explore apprenticeships, storytelling in AA meetings, training methods in professions, and effective learning for newcomers in communities.

Julian E. Orr, Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job, 1996CreditsImage of a person using a copier via Mr. Domingo.