Checklists for transformation

Checklists for transformation
Tom Graves, Tetradian Consulting
IASA ITARC, London, May 2017

Hi.
(Yeah, there’s a lot of hair
gone down the plughole
since I looked like this...)
I’m Tom.

Sales-
pitch!
https://leanpub.com/tb-changes/
Published
today!

That’s enough promo-stuff…
...let’s get on with the show!

This is about
architecture...
...which, by definition,
means it’s also about design...

desired ends
realised ends
architecture
(WHY / WHO)
design
(HOW / WITH-WHAT)

“Architecture represents the
significant design decisions
that shape a system...
– Grady Booch
...where ‘significant’ is measured
by cost of change.”

And it’s about
transformation...
...though note that
change and transformation
are not the same...

...change...
CC-BY-SA david-hilgart via Flickr

...transformation...
CC-BY-ND gregpm via Flickr

Architecture
+ transformation
= big-picture stuff
that’s very expensive to fix
if we get it wrong!

“It ain’t what you don’t know
that gets you into trouble...
(mis)attributed to Mark Twain
...it’s what you know for sure
that just ain’t so.”

Complexity
is the greatest challenge
that we face...
(especially at larger scope and scale)

B17: “too complicated to fly...”
Public domain: USAF via Wikimedia

So how do we deal with
complexity?

One proven
answer...
...the humble
checklist.

B17: “saved by the checklist...”

– step-by-step work-instruction
Three types of checklist:
– normal-checklist
– emergency-checklist

Work-instructions only make sense when everything
is certain; checklists address increasing uncertainty
Work-instructions and checklists

Work-instruction...
Step-by-step, sequential instructions
to do a known, predictable task

Work-instruction: B29 crew-manual
Public domain: USAF via Archive.org

Normal-checklist...
Sets of tests (not always sequential)
to prevent unpredictable outcomes

routine…
© Orange County Flight Center via atulgawande.com

Emergency-checklist...
Sets of actions and tests to try
during unpredictable events

emergency…

Key items
that people
may forget
in panic…
FLY THE
AIRPLANE

Each emergency-checklist
focusses on
things that people forget
when faced with
the Not-known

Transformation too
is full of Not-known...
...might some kind of checklist
also be useful here?

A seven-point checklist
for transformation
‘things that people tend to forget
in the midst of transformation’

A transformation checklist*
1. Story and purpose
2. Scope and stakeholders
3. Context, scale and scaling
4. Full-cycle governance
5. Structural flaws in the context
6. Non-negotiable constraints
7. Resistance to change
*themes to check, to ensure they’ve been properly assessed and included

NOTE:
It’s ‘a checklist’,
not ‘the checklist’...
...adapt and amend it
to whatever you need
for your own context!

#1:
Do we have clarity about what
the aims are for this, and
how we describe those aims?
(use vision/values-mapping etc for this
– example: TED, ‘ideas worth spreading’)
What’s the story here?

Concern: the focus of
interest to everyone in
the shared-enterprise
“Ideas worth
spreading”
CC-BY UK DFID via Flickr

“Ideas worth spreading”
Action: what is
being done to
or with or about
the concern
CC-BY US Army Africa via Flickr

“Ideas worth
spreading”
Qualifier:
the emotive
driver for action
on the concern
CC-BY HDTPCAR via Flickr

“All our problems arise out of
doing the wrong thing righter.
– Russell Ackoff
The more efficient you are
at doing the wrong thing,
the wronger you become.”

#2:
Do we have clarity on scope and
stakeholders?
(typically use holomap to explore at least
three layers outward from nominal context)

“An organisation is bounded by
rules, roles and responsibilities;
an enterprise is bounded by
vision, values and commitments.”
“An organisation is bounded by
rules, roles and responsibilities;
an enterprise is bounded by
vision, values and commitments.”
Tom Graves, Mapping the Enterprise, Tetradian,
2010
Organisation and enterprise
Organisation aligns with structure, enterprise with story.
We need a balance of both for the architecture to work.

If the organisation says it ‘is’ the enterprise,
there’s no shared-story - and often, no story at all.
What’s the scope?

The minimum real enterprise is the supply-chain
- a story of shared interactions and transactions.
What’s the scope?

The organisation and enterprise of the supply-chain take
place within a broader organisation of the market.
What’s the scope?

The market itself exists within a context of ‘intangible’
interactions with the broader shared-enterprise story.
What’s the scope?

The story is not solely at the whole-of-business level
- we can generalise it to any type or level of context
What’s the scope?

Services and their stakeholders

Every service has its own myriad of stakeholders
Who are the stakeholders?

A stakeholder
is anyone
who can wield
a sharp-pointed
stake
in our direction…
CC-BY-NC-SA evilpeacock via Flickr
Who are the stakeholders?
(Hint: there are a lot
more of them than we
might at first think…)

How we relate with
our stakeholders
will determine
which way they’ll point
those sharp-pointed stakes...

#3:
Context, scale and
scaling

#3:
Do we have clarity on the
applicable scale(s), and how we
manage increasing and/or
decreasing scale?
(test at extremes of very-small and very-large
– for example, Agile methods may be great
for prototypes, but poor for large-scale)

(example:Weinberg’s
strawberry-shortcake)

As we increase the scale,
all manner of hidden factors
pop up out of the woodwork...
...prototype-scale is easy,
getting things to work well
at large-scale is hard!

#4:
Do we have clarity about how we
will guide not just initial change,
but the entire life-cycle?
(include commissioning / decommissioning,
development and maintenance of required
skillsets, and more)

How would you plan to
decommission one of these?
HMS Torbay: CC-BY Reading Tom via Flickr

“There are 19 nuclear-powered
submarines stored in ports awaiting
their end, but a lack of money, disposal
sites and radiation experts has caused
lengthy delays.
“MOD chiefs told MPs an underground
dump site was required to store the
nuclear material, which is expected to be
a site in Cheshire, but it will not be
finished for another 23 years.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4095364/Where-Cold-War-workhorses-die-Dismantling-work-set-begin-
seven-decommissioned-Royal-Navy-nuclear-submarines-Rosyth-dockyards.html

How would you plan to
decommission 1,000 of these?
Free-use: University of Tartu, ESTCUBE Team via Wikimedia

“As of 2014, there were about 2,000
commercial and government satellites
orbiting the earth. It is estimated that there
are 600,000 pieces of space junk ranging
from 1 cm to 10 cm, and on average one
satellite is destroyed each year.
“Slight atmospheric drag, lunar perturbation,
and solar wind drag can gradually bring
debris down to lower altitudes where
fragments finally reenter, but this process
can take millennia at very high altitudes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

If we can’t decommission it...
...maybe we shouldn’t build it?

#5:
Structural flaws
in current context

#5:
Do we have clarity on inherent
structural-flaws in the context
that will need to be resolved
for ongoing viability?
(Conway’s Law: take care not to replicate
existing structural-flaws in future designs...)

Millennium Bridge
– lateral resonance
CC-BY-SA Alison M Wheeler via Wikimedia

Millennium Bridge – lateral resonance
CC-BY-SA KlickingKarl via Wikimedia

Structural flaws
may sometimes become visible
only through interaction
with other systems...

#6:
Non-negotiable
constraints

#6:
Do we have clarity on all
constraints that may apply within
the context?
(this applies especially to non-negotiable
constraints, such as those from physics
or limits to scaling)

Tacoma Narrows
– continual wind
Copyright: fair use via Wikimedia

“For a successful technology,
reality must take precedence
over public relations,
for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Richard P Feyman

#7:
Do we have clarity on any
resistance to required change,
underlying drivers to that
resistance, and how to resolve
those factors?
(include vested-interests in maintaining
dysfunctionalities in any current system)

Graphic from Peter Senge et al,
The Dance of Change
(Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1999)
We need
to work with
The Dance
of Change

Fear of change
is all too real… CC-BY Editor B via Flickr

...and likewise vested-interests...
Public domain via WikimediaJoseph Keppler, ‘The Bosses of the Senate’, Puck, 1889

If we fail to identify
and resolve resistance...
...our would-be change
would be going nowhere...

Example 1:
Global web-services

Checklist item #6:
Non-negotiable constraints
(speed of light as
non-negotiable constraint)

Rear-Admiral Grace
Hopper
Public domain: US Navy via Wikimedia

Transmission-time, one-way,
New York - Sydney...
Via dedicated-landline:
~60msec
Via geostationary-satellite link:
~400msec

The moral of this story?
The speed of light is
a non-negotiable constraint...
...number of round-trips
may be more important
than bit-rate

Example 2:
Sustainable
global-economics
(possession-based vs
responsibility-based)

Checklist item #1:
Story and purpose
(How do we best manage
our global home, for everyone?)

The literal meaning of ‘economics’ is
‘the management of the household’
(managing the money is the easy bit…)
CC-BY-NC-ND ukagriculture via Flickr

Checklist item #2:
Scope and stakeholders
(scope is everywhere, everywhen;
stakeholders are everyone)

CC-BY AllBrazilian via Wikimedia
Stakeholders: everyone
(that’s a lot of sharp-pointed stakes…)

Checklist item #3:
Context, scale and scaling
(context is ‘the everything’;
scale is global, for indefinite time)

Global, everything, throughout all time
(not just what we can grab in the now…)
CC-BY h-studio via Flickr

Checklist item #4:
Full-cycle governance
(governance of everything,
everyone, everywhere, everywhen)

All resources, all re-use, all lifecycles
(sustainability, appropriacy, for all time…)
CC-BY-SA umnak via Flickr

Checklist item #5:
Structural-flaws in context
(we’ll explore these together as a set...)
Checklist item #6:
Non-negotiable constraints
Checklist item #7:
Resistance to change

Our current global economics
is a ‘possession-economy’...
...in other words,
a two-year-old’s view
of resource-management...

Possession-economies –
particularly money-based ones –
turn out to be riddled with
inherent structural-flaws

Lifecycle: resource-needs
Consider the typical resource-needs throughout
the various stages of a stereotypic life-sequence.

Lifecycle: resource-availability
Now map the typical resource-availability as ‘ability
to earn’ in a money-based possession-economy.

Lifecycle: a perfect mismatch
The two graphs together show a perfect mismatch –
the worst possible economic system we could devise

In a possession-economy,
resources naturally gravitate
towards wherever
they are least needed

...so-called
‘trickle-down’...
In our upside-
down economic
world…
CC-BY-ND jodcol via Flickr

...so-called
‘trickle-down’...
In our upside-
down economic
world…
...is actually
‘flood-up’.
CC-BY wagnertc via Flickr

A possession-economy
demands a huge infrastructure
to counteract that ‘gravity’,
time-shifting the resources
to when they’re needed...
banks, insurances, mortgages, savings,
loans, pensions, taxes, welfare, aid etc...
(yet we could replace every one of these
with the one phrase “What do you need”...)

Banks, loans, deposits…
…needed only in a possession-economy

Mortgages, savings, trust-funds…

Money-lenders, money-changers…

Taxes, benefits, insurances…

For a possession-economy
to seem to work
it depends on a myth of
infinite growth
(or, to be more honest about it,
it’s a pyramid-game or ‘Ponzi-scheme’...)

...but we can’t have infinite growth
on a finite planet
Public domain: NASA via Flickr
...that’s a non-negotiable constraint

…back in the 1980s, there was
a fudge called ‘deregulation’…
CC-BY-SA DocChewbacca via Flickr
...so the money-system can now
continue its growth towards infinity

…but that means it now assigns
infinite ‘rights’ to finite resources
CC-BY Tjeerd via Flickr
...which, in possession-economics,
still go to where they’re least needed

In short, there is no way to make
a possession-economy
to be sustainable...
...our only option for survival
is a radical transformation
to a responsibility-economy

Facing the real problem
The ultimate basis of all economics
is interlocking mutual responsibilities.
mutual responsibility

Possession is a literally childish overlay
– a dysfunctional distortion overlaid on what works.
personal possession

Yet everything else we know as ‘economics’ is another
overlay built on top of that myth of possession.
personal possession
property-rights etc
barter
currency
debt-based finance
financial-derivatives

Which means, for example, that ‘alternative
currencies’ or ‘go back to barter’ will solve nothing...
personal possession
property-rights etc
barter
currency
debt-based finance
Futzing around
in these areas
will make
no significant
difference,
because…

personal possession
property-rights etc
barter
currency
debt-based finance
Futzing around
in these areas
will make
no significant
difference,
because…
…the real source of
our economics
problems is way
down there…
...because that’s not where the real problems are.

For sustainability, the only way out is to start again,
and rebuild everything from mutual-responsibilities.
personal possession
property-rights etc
barter
currency
debt-based finance
Futzing around
in these areas
will make
no significant
difference,
because…
…the real source of
our economics
problems is way
down there…
…so the only viable
choice is to start
again from here.

So how would you tackle
that transformation?
How would you address
those constraints and flaws?
What checklists
would you need?

How would you resolve
the resistance to that
urgent transformation...?
(because if we don’t manage
to resolve that resistance,
we’re dead...)

To summarise:
(even though we might prefer not to know
some of those all-too-essential facts...)
Checklists help us to find
essential facts that
we might not otherwise know

Checklists help us to
find the right question
In an uncertain world,
finding the right questions
is often more urgent and important
than finding ‘the right answer’

A transformation checklist
1. Story and purpose
2. Scope and stakeholders
3. Context, scale and scaling
4. Full-cycle governance
5. Structural flaws in the context
6. Non-negotiable constraints
7. Resistance to change

Contact: Tom Graves
Company: Tetradian Consulting
Email: tom@tetradian.com
Twitter: @tetradian ( http://twitter.com/tetradian )
Weblog: http://weblog.tetradian.com
Slidedecks: http://www.slideshare.net/tetradian
Publications: http://tetradianbooks.com and http://leanpub.com/u/tetradian
Books: • The enterprise as story: the role of narrative in enterprise-
architecture (2012)
• Mapping the enterprise: modelling the enterprise as
services with the Enterprise Canvas (2010)
• Everyday enterprise-architecture: sensemaking, strategy,
structures and solutions (2010)
• Doing enterprise-architecture: process and practice in the
real enterprise (2009)
Further information:

Checklists for transformation

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