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.