Using the viable systems model understand and diagnose issues in Scrum and IT

This article will look at Scrum through the lens of a Systems Thinking approach called the Viable Systems Model. Applied to organisation, the Viable Systems Model often feels like well thought out common sense, so the things VSM says may not be a surprise. What may be a surprise is the diagnostic power the VSM has both within and outside the Scrum team . This power makes the learning curve of the VSM worthwhile.

I’ll start looking at a Scrum team as a viable system and follow up this post with a discussion of the members of the Scrum team as viable systems. Finally in a 3rd post I’ll analyse various IT situations I’ve seen using the same tool. This should show the power of the VSM, and the range of situation it can be used in.

All this analysis is released under a Creative Commons License. It would be great to get feedback from both a VSM and Scrum perspective, more examples, and build up a resource.

Context, context, context

It’s worth noting here that application of Systems Thinking is always contextual. If you have a different context to me we’ll not have the same analysis. I’ll be treating this as a learning opportunity, rather than a quest for an uber-analysis that can can applied in any context. (hint: the Uber-analysis doesn’t exist).

I’m assuming you know Scrum and this article is an introduction to the Viable Systems Model, but it should work the other way. I’ll also show how the VSM can be used to diagnose issues with teams and IT in general, It’s a useful aid for Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches when things aren’t quite working. In fact, an Agile Coach, armed with the VSM and a couple of other people systems tools would be pretty formidable.

This power comes from the ability to name things that may be missing and we’d like to improve.

Having a name for things is vital if we want to talk to other people about them. The VSM helps us do this.

 

Ashby Law of Requisite Variety

The Viable Systems Model is Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety applied to organization design. So I’ll really be looking at Scrum at IT issues using Ashby Law of Requisite Variety.

Rather than introducing the VSM academically (there are lots of academic papers that do that) I’ll use it to talk about Scrum, showing why the parts of Scrum work – and giving some general diagnostic advice when things are not working as expected.

Quick introduction to Viable Systems, and the One Weird Trick

Before I start there are a few thing about the Viable Systems Model that I’ll point out. Firstly the model is recursive. Viable systems contain viable systems. So viable teams make up viable organisation units, that make up viable organizations. Viable organization need to exist in viable sectors of the economy or society. A system exists within its environment, and Scrum teams are no different.

The other cool thing about the VSM is that the things we look for are at each recursion are exactly the same as every other recursion. This One Weird Trick makes the VSM easily applicable to lots of different organizations at different levels. The requirements are numbered System 1 to System 5, and there are purposeful communication channels between various parts of the system. There is also the systems environment that may have more than one element.

These parts of a viable system are called System1 (S1) to System5 (S5) , shown in the diagram below. System S3 gets an extra S3*, just because.

 

 

The VSM just says that the S1to S5 things need to exist. They can be done by the same person or separate people.

Applied to a Scrum team

Scrum, as described in the Scrum Guide is good example of a general way to organize to produce working software in complex situations.
Analysis of a Scrum Team as a Viable System shows what each part of Scrum is doing, and shows where there are assumptions about the sort of problem you are solving that may cause issues, and areas where other skills and approaches may be required.

The Scrum team and its customer

A Scrum teams customers are the people whose needs are met by the software that team writes. This can either be a group outside of the organisation like a small mobile game dev company that releases code straight to paying customers, or a team whose output needs to be integrated with the output of other teams in the organisation to provide value. This is important, but the implications come later.

The communication between the customer and the team is managed by the Product Owner or PO . The PO reduces the variety of requests coming from the customer, to something the team can cope with. In the other direction, the value from the team is increased by the Scrum Master, the Dev Team and the Product Owner putting together Sprint Goals that will meet needs in the best way.

 

 

Of course the developers can talk directly to the customer, but this is in the context of delivering value that has already been discussed and agreed.

Providing value VSM System 1

The parts of a Viable System that provide value to the customer/environment, is called the System 1. In a Scrum team there are 5 +/- 2 parts of this. The System 1’s need their output co-ordinating by a System 2.

The output of the team may need integrating into the output of other teams. These may be financial, marketing, physical product production, legal, regulatory or other Scrum teams. (oooh, maybe even other waterfall teams…) I’ll look at this with the VSM in another post, but for now, assume the Scrum Team provides value to the customer/environment directly.

Co-ordination VSM System 2

Co-ordinating system 1’s into a cohesive output is mainly the job of the Scrum Master. The SM makes sure that the daily standups, retrospecitves, and sprint planning all occur. The Scrum Masters job is also to remove any impediments to the team, reducing the variety of problems they need to deal with.
The team is also expected to self organise to deliver the Sprint Goal. Scrum mandates daily standups where the SM creates a space where it is safe to make mistakes and learn. This skills required to do this are outside the scope of the Scrum guide, but are vital to a well functioning team. System 2 is S2 in the triangle in the following diagram.

Getting resources and managing delivery -VSM Resource Bargain and Audit

VSM requires an organisation to have a resource bargain, where resources (Like a factory, employees and raw materials) are converted into something of value. The bargain (ie 1 factory, 20 people, raw materials) needs to be converted into something useful in a particular timeframe (ie 500 products in a week). This is a performance agreement that needs to be agreed and monitored. Scrums is designed to work in more complex environments that factory, so the resource bargain is more complex.

 

 

A Scrum team creates value with a team of developers, a Scrum Master, a product owner, IT resources and 2-4 weeks of time. This is a resource bargain with the organisation. The team is given resources in return for delivering value and meeting peoples needs. Because of the short sprint cycles, the resource bargain can be reassesed regularly to see if it is delivering what it promised. This is done at the sprint review, where the output of the sprint is delivered to customers.
The VSM says that the System 1’s need a in depth audit – that is carried out at irregular times. The regular Scrum Review is the closest to this audit, although it is not irregular, and it does not bypass the PO and SM. This means certain organisation anti-patterns may not be detected. In VSM this audit is called System 3*. Done without care this audit can break trust, so leaving it out of any model of the organisation can be disastrous.

Managing the Current Operations VSM System 3

This is where the whole of the the current operations are reviewed for effectiveness, so there is the output of all of the previous sprint goals, the current sprint goal, and future goals. There are decisions here made about the whole deliverable of value to the customer, including bug fixes, and any operational resources required.
In VSM this is the System 3. In Scrum the team develops new features. Scrum covers a some of this, but the output of the team may be passed to an operations / devops team. A lot of this is out of scope of Scrum. A Devops team would need to be a Viable System, so could be designed and diagnosed with VSM.

If the output of the Scrum team is integrated with the output of other teams to provide value, then the overall output will be assessed by it’s own System3. ie the performance of the whole product.

Thinking about the Future VSM System 4

The decision to continue developing the software, to stop developing software if progress is too slow, or it’s not providing value needs to be made. The team also needs to look ahead to see what the future may hold, and how the team will continue to be viable.

The Identity of the Team VSM System 5

The identity of the team is its purpose. A Scrum team would align to the values in the Agile Manifeto, and also to the Scrum Guide. Its purpose could be “meeting needs and delivering value using Scrum”. Agendashift  says  “We deliver <what> to >whom> so that <why it matters>”.

The activities it does (S1s) affects its identity more than what the system says its identity is. So if the team isn’t doing Scrum it isn’t a Scrum team. A team can’t just call itself Agile and use the right words. It need to behave in a way congruent with the agile manifesto , and this behaviour is supported by referring to the identity in System 5.

The identity of the team – the decision to use Scrum and be agile is owned both by the actions of the developers and people in the next System level up (if it exists), who have decided that Agile teams are required, and can integrate the work of the Scrum team into a product with value.

In following posts I’ll look at the next recursion up and down from the Scrum, looking at a developer, and the next level up. If you’re a SM or PO I’d be interested in modelling those roles too, but I’d need an expert in these domains to do this properly.

Links to further reading resources TBC

There are some in depth books by Stafford Beer and Patrick Hoverstadt covering the VSM.

I’ve personally found the VSM resources on the web to be generally quite poor.

Here are some good web resources.

Trevor Hilder into to VSM

Tom Graves Pervasives and the VSM algedonic link