Cynefin
The single most effective framework I've ever come across for problem analysis. A few hours studying Cynefin enables thinking in new ways about any problem you may face.
Cynefin is a model which describes five categories or domains for problems in general (the fifth and often forgotten is the disorder category in the center that borders to all other). This can be used for complexity analysis in order to pick effective ways of working for dealing with the problem at hand.
In the context of digital transformation you can look at these areas like this:
Simple:
This work should be possible to plan, estimate and hand to a team for execution, if you spend too much time with these problems you are not creating value.
Complicated:
This domain needs more structure, some analysis perhaps specialist competence and likely using some known procedures or established processes to run well.
Complex:
You will have best chance to succeed with an agile team with a wide spectrum of competences. Risk is higher but you can find competitive advantage.
Chaotic:
In this domain you can find innovation if you are not looking for that get out. If you don't know what to do try anything random. In many cases being passive has a very high cost.
Causality
The domains can be split in a right and a left side. On the right side we have the complicated and simple domains that are considered ordered, this means that you can mostly expect that actions leads to outcomes that can be anticipated in some way. The left side is unordered which means that connecting actions to outcomes is much harder or impossible, and a common mistake is to use history to try to draw such conclusions even though outcomes are highly context specific and can often be extremely hard to analyse even with the benefit of hindsight.
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8
Cynefin is a model which describes five categories or domains for problems in general (the fifth and often forgotten is the disorder category in the center that borders to all other). This can be used for complexity analysis in order to pick effective ways of working for dealing with the problem at hand.
Simple:
This work should be possible to plan, estimate and hand to a team for execution, if you spend too much time with these problems you are not creating value.
Complicated:
This domain needs more structure, some analysis perhaps specialist competence and likely using some known procedures or established processes to run well.
Complex:
You will have best chance to succeed with an agile team with a wide spectrum of competences. Risk is higher but you can find competitive advantage.
Chaotic:
In this domain you can find innovation if you are not looking for that get out. If you don't know what to do try anything random. In many cases being passive has a very high cost.
Causality
The domains can be split in a right and a left side. On the right side we have the complicated and simple domains that are considered ordered, this means that you can mostly expect that actions leads to outcomes that can be anticipated in some way. The left side is unordered which means that connecting actions to outcomes is much harder or impossible, and a common mistake is to use history to try to draw such conclusions even though outcomes are highly context specific and can often be extremely hard to analyse even with the benefit of hindsight.
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8
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