Kallokain

Chrononauts V: Taking Flight by Henrik Mårtensson It's early in 2020, and I think it is appropriate to make a personal retrospective of the year that was. I am not quite as certain it is appropriate to publish said retrospective, but then again, if I decide not to publish it, I'll probably never get around to writing it. For me, 2019 has been a very good year, both privately, and at work. Let's get the personal stuff out of the way first. I haven't blogged much in this blog, but that is mainly because I have been busy, with work, and with other things. My hobbies, like digital art, may not seem to have much to do with my work on process and organization improvement, or my forages into Scrummastery, but actually they do. Almost everyone I know who is a really good software developer, or leader, or manager, does have some sort of interest in creative arts. Some play instruments or sing, others write, draw, are into photography, or some other creative activity...

I recently had a cup of coffee with a friend, and the discussion turned to the difference between complicated and complex , and why the difference is important. I have had reason to think about that recently, so I had a couple of examples fresh in my mind, both relating to questionnaires and surveys. As it turns out, many questionnaires you are asked to fill out have a common design mistake: The assumption that the subject under investigation is complicated, rather than complex. It is an easy mistake to make. The result is increased risk that the survey points you in the wrong direction. Let's briefly define what we are talking about before digging in to the meat of the matter: Complicated systems have many parts, but they also have predictable cause and effect relationships. For example, a mechanical watch is complicated. It is also predictable. It runs like...well, it runs like clockwork. Complex systems have parts that can adapt to the behavior of other pa...