Dave Snowden has released an excellent video on complexity and children’s parties ( See it here on Andy Pols’s Blog. Dave’s video inspired this piece which is a compliment to Dave and the video. )

I have two small children who live in a party rich area where the preference is to have a party at a venue rather than risk having your house trashed. This means I have had the opportunity to observe parties run by people who do so on a very regular basis.

Rather than a chaotic, ordered or complex system, the parties I’ve observed are a managed mixture of all three.

There is a four part pattern to most parties.

1. Constrained Chaos.
2. Ordered System.
3. Ordered food and ritual.
4. “Unconstrained” Chaos.

Constrained Chaos

Most parties start with constrained chaos. The children are allowed to play chaotically in a constrained environment. Behaviour like hurting others are reactively managed but the environment tends to provide the limits. In the early days this will be a soft play area and in later years an enclosed field for football or a swimming pool. The key to these constrained areas are easily controlled access points as the perceived risk to the system is unauthorised persons gaining access to the children. Within the constraints, the children can play as they chose, it is constrained chaos. This allows the children to arrive at staggered times without affecting play and also expend as much amount of energy as they chose. There are no rules. Attractors (footballs, water pistol) cause flocking (complex) behaviour.

These would be the boundaries that Dave mentions except that they are hard boundaries.

Ordered System

After a period of time a play coordinator will engage the group of children in a structured activity. This activity will generally take the children from a high energy state to a calm state. This could be “pass the parcel”, “pin the tail on the banker”, “stroke a farm animal”, “play with a parachute”, “painting” or “creative making”. What is common to these activities is that they are coordinated requiring all participants to act collaboratively (parachute) or in sequence (“Pass the parcel”, “Pin the tail”, “Stroke the animal”) or in a fixed place (“painting”, “creative making”). The system of children is effectively ordered during this stage.

Ordered Food and Ritual

The play coordinator leads to the children to an eating space where the children eat a party meal. The children are fairly calm at this point following the activity. After the meal, there is the ritual of the birthday cake and the party bags. By now most parents have started to turn up to collect their children.

Constrained/Unconstrained Chaos

At this point, the play coordinators release the children into the constrained soft play area or to run around a space. After the children have eaten food, it is in interest of the parent to arrive on time to prevent the child running around too much so that they do not up-chuck on the back seat of the new Chelsea Tractor. This means most parents turn up just before the end of the party and make sure energy levels do not rise too high.

I think the parties I observed are different to the Parties Dave mentions in the video.  I think Dave is referring to house parties that a parent organises themselves rather than a Party venue. The difference between the two is that Party Venues have a lot of (Tacit) knowledge about how to structure parties whereas a parent runs a few one-shot experiments. The first few Party Venue parties run were probably experimental, but it is likely the owner studied other venues first. After a while, a pattern for successful parties emerges. Party venues start by creating complex systems using constraints and attractors. They then create ordered systems using strict rules and rituals. Finally, they train parents to turn up on time. Parties are ordered chaos or chaordic systems.

Limits, Boundaries and Constraints

I am unfamiliar with the precise definition of the technical term Boundaries that Dave uses. His use indicates to me that soft boundaries are what I call limits and hard boundaries are what I call constraints.

After Agile 2009 I was lucky enough to spend a morning with Mike Sutton and Lasse Koskela on a Segway Tour of Chicago. The first few minutes of the tour involve training which included for me finding out the limits of the system. I got to feel what the limits felt like and how the Segway behaved if I pushed past the limits. The behaviour of the system changed but in a predictable way. The behaviour on both sides of the limits was different. Not only that, there was a gradual change. As another example, consider a speed limit. Stay below the limit and you’ll never see much of the speed limit system. Go above the limit and the system sends you fines (if you are caught). However the you are not prevented from going above the limit which may be necessary in certain situations.

I went to visit Ola Ellnestam in Stockholm. My bank balance had dropped below my limit and LloydsTSB refused to allow me access to any cash. It was a constraint rather than a limit. There was a hard transition between the two states.

Limits are things we can chose to ignore although the behaviour of the system changes. Constraints are imposed upon us and we have no choice.

Party venues use a mixture of limits (soft boundaries) and constraints (hard boundaries).

I tend to think of limits as rules which may be abided by and constraints as imposed regardless. I am aware that my thinking is not too clear in this space.

An interesting area of thought is the affect of time on limits and constraints. Not just time, but also learning which is what we really mean by time.

Happy Noo Yar

Chris

Disclaimer: this is the only post on this blog that is not uncopyrighted. This single post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License.

I (Chris)  do not often write blog posts these days. I see them as announcements rather than an invitation to a conversation. I prefer the interactive discussion of e:mail groups, or internet magazines like infoq or agile journal which act as on-line conferences.

That said, I feel compelled to announce a new initiative that Eric Willike, Liz Keogh and Jean Tabeka have started called “A Community of Thinkers.”  They first posted their blogs a couple of days ago which can be found here, here and here.

The text is included here with a small adaptation:

I am a member of a community of thinkers.

I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.

I challenge each community in the software industry to:

• reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible;
• provide an excellent experience for its members;
• support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
• exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
• engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
• embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.
• ensure members promote who has influenced them and their perception of the current leaders to prevent any single member becoming a bottleneck to learning.

I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to
exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders.

I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.

Based upon ”A community of thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

When Liz made me aware of its existence I added an extra behaviour of my own.

“Ensure members promote who has influenced them and their perception of the current leaders to prevent any single member them becoming a bottleneck to learning.”

Many of the professional bodies or communities in the software industry are meant to be learning communities. Often an individual or small group of individuals will come up with a new idea or way of doing things. This inspires a new community to form around the idea. The original group become the “leaders” of that community. New members of the community rapidly overtake the ”leaders” in understanding the material, they adapt or modify it to suit their needs. In effect, they become the new leaders of understanding. Being a “leader” in a learning community does not convey any authority or power over the members of that community. It simply means that people outside of the community are more likely to listen to your opinion over that of the true leaders of the community. This has significant commercial implications…. It also causes the resentment of the true leaders of the community, especially if the leader no longer represents the views of the community. The “leaders” continue to present their own material, ignoring the advancements of the community. Others adopt the orthodoxy of the “leadership” for their personal reasons denouncing those most likely to steal their commercial success,  this inevitably leads “The peoples front of Judea” and “The Judean people’s front”. Only the Romans benefit. The “leaders” of the new community often fall victim to the same thinking of their predecessors.

This is why I think “A community of Thinkers” is so important.

Like many in Agile I studied David Anderson’s work on Theory of Constraints, And Mary Poppendieck’s Lean Software Development, and Kent Beck’s Extreme Programming. I still had problems. I looked for other sources of inspiration and tripped over Real Options (which are mentioned in both Kent and Mary’s books). I was motivated to continue my investigation of Real Options by a casual encouragement by Alistair Cockburn (said the Scottish way). When David Anderson presented Kanban at Agile 2007 I saw I worked in a very similar way. Unlike those who inspired me, I am a practitioner. Agile/Lean/Kanban is secondary to me. My job is to delivery business value and these communities provided tools that helped me do it. As a practitioner I discovered problem that I need to solve. I feed these solutions back to the communities. I AM NOT A LEADER AND I RESIST THE NOTION OF BEING ONE.  I would like to think I am a member of ”a community of thinkers”. AND I would like to be respected for the contribution I make to those communities. I would like that community to respect me enough to keep giving me new ideas rather than insist I subscribe to an orthodoxy. I would like the “leaders” of those communities to work with all members of the community. To work with practitioners who are looking to move the community forward as well as newbies who want to pay them money for entry. I like the Kanban community because I feel they are doing a good job of doing that. They exhibit leadership with an absence of leaders.

So what is the difference between Leaders and Leadership?

A leader feels like a commitment (something we only like if we have to):
“Do it this way if you want to be part of my club.”,
“My way or the highway”,
“You’re either with us or against us”

Leadership feels like an option (this is what we like as it allows freedom of choice):
“Here is a way you can do it, it worked for me in a certain context.”,
“You might want to check out X it seems related to what you’re doing.”

Practitioners are always going to gravitate toward leadership. Salesmen will gravitate toward Leaders. I feel the best way I can help others learn is make them aware of my influences.

I used to call this “Followship”. I was very fortunate to encounter Steve “Doc” List who pointed out that what I described was actually “Leadership”. Thank you Steve.

Under creative commons license. blah, blah, See Eric’s post for details.

By Chris Matts and Olav Maassen