Good to be reminded of this. Here in the UK we’ve been lucky enough to benefit from David Snowden’s presence. A number of folks in the agile community here and elsewhere – Joseph Pelrine, Steve Freeman, Rachel Davies amongst them – were Cynefin-accredited early on, and have been using these ideas effectively in practice and teaching for a number of years.

It’s important to remember, though, that this is just one model of sensemaking or situational awareness – there are many many others. Sometimes they simply recast things in different ways – you can take your pick, for example, between probe/sense/respond and Scrum’s empirical process control; sometimes they come at things from enough of a different angle to add a new dimension to your understanding (like the work of Ralph Stacey or Karl Weick).

As technologists we’re regularly beguiled by models (particularly when they use ego-boosting geek words like “chaos” and “complexity” ).

Agreed, too, that retrospective-by-recipe is a surefire way to guarantee that a team won’t get value out of the practice. It’s the most fragile of the agile practices, it depends more than any on a level of maturity and self-awareness in both coaches and teams that I see all to rarely.

Look forward to your blog entries about retrospectives and changing conversations

I have little experience with AI and Solutions Focus, so I can’t say much about that. I know that Dave Snowden emphasizes that learning from failures and failure stories is much more effective than learning from success stories. He’s also quite critical of approaches like AI. On the other hand, I think it’s good to learn about multiple approaches realizing that there’s no best way or set of best practices. Having more perspectives can be useful when moving in the complex domain.

I’m still percolating about (agile) retrospectives as they are often performed and taught. I encounter teams that do retrospectives like following a kind of recipe – do the steps of the retrospectives, note stuff that works, keep doing that, change what doesn’t work, basically assuming an ordered context.

In my opinion, retrospectives in the complex domain work differently – the most important thing is then getting the stories out, sharing there, and having the right conversations. Retrospective structure, facilitation, program, planning, etc. are only a means (i.e. they work as boundaries, attractors, etc.) to let the conversations happen.

My ideas about retrospectives have recently been heavily influenced by the book “Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change” by Patricia Shaw (highly recommended). I’m still processing it and intend to write more blog entries about retrospectives and changing conversations.

Even though I strongly believe in the XP practices I do think that Jurgen has a good point, though I don’t agree with all his arguments or presuppositions. And, I think you bring his point even more home for me with what you call retrospective coherence. All the hoopla in the Agile community now about “doing Agile correctly” reminds me of Dale’s excellent post on the Null Process (http://cwd.dhemery.com/2003/09/the_null_process/).

Another point you make came as a bit of a surprise to me. About how focusing on what went well in retrospectives is not a recipe for success. Well, nothing is a recipe for success in our complex environment, as CAS theory tells us, but does this mean you focus more on dealing with the negatives? Am I on the wrong track learning about Appreciative Inquiry and Solutions Focus?