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