A Holistic View of Complex Systems and Organizational Change

One of the most misunderstood concepts in the agile community, complexity is often used to explain why we can’t predict anything or why there are no rules we can follow. Ironically, it is exactly this attitude that allows complexity to work against us. Al Shalloway discusses the true nature of complex systems, why we must deal with them in a holistic manner, and ways to evaluate structural and organizational changes to manage this complexity. Unfortunately, most agile implementations take an incremental, piecemeal approach to change, ignoring complexity. Although this approach causes problems that are attributed to the fact that we have a complex system, in reality these challenges are due to the way we are dealing with the pieces individually. Al describes the patterns of effective organizational change management and explains how understanding the true nature of complex systems can be used to lead organizational change―particularly at scale.