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DevOps and Intentional Emergence
Jim StogdillVelocity
September 16, 2014
intentional: done on purpose. deliberate.
emergence: the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and
properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems.
Q: The traditional corporate / government enterprises have the same technologies as
Silicon Valley.
So why do they deliver innovation so differently?
Top Down Bottom Up
Industrial Age -> Network Age
Centralized -> DecentralizedPlanned -> Generative
Hierarchical -> Flat, NetworkedModernist -> Post ModernistSovereign -> Interdependent
Modular, Readily Deconstructed -> ComplexEstablishment-> Counterculture
Reductionist -> ExpansionistDesigned-> EmergentOpen-> ProprietaryMass-> Information
Organizational fitness:
Goals +
internal state +
dynamic environment
2) Must change in response
1) Is Changing
ObserveOrient
It’s not the OO loop.
Q: Why is maneuver, fast transients, or whatever in the
corporate enterprise so difficult? Why can even simple projects
feel like pushing rope?
Photo Jan Banning http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/bureaucracies-around-the-world
A:
organization characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority.
bu·reau·cra·cy:
Photo Jan Banning http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/bureaucracies-around-the-world
Bureaucracy is a low band pass filter, with delay.
a brief aside:
http://www.ukuleleman.net/uploaded_images/Bush%20Faces%20of%20the%20dead-795931.jpg
Image Source: http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kx11ssrFCN1qb0ukuo1_400.jpg
Yaneer Bar-Yam, Dynamics of Complex Systems
And, maybe it takes a network to build a network to interact
with a network.
Constructal Law:
For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.
-From Design in Nature
More and more of the “currents” imposed on the modern corporate enterprise are informational and
digital.
If you want information flow, architect your systems to promote connections
“It is no exaggeration to say that if we had had to rely on conscious central planning for the growth of our industrial
system, it would never have reached the degree of differentiation, complexity, and flexibility it has attained.
…
Any further growth of its complexity, therefore, far from making central direction more necessary, makes it more important than ever that we should use a technique which does not depend on
conscious control.”
Friedrich Hayak, The Road to Serfdom
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Company: Planned, Hierarchical, Reductionist,
Bureaucratic…
Market: Emergent, Networked,
Expansionist, …
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Internal characteristics are becoming “post-
bureaucratic” with more permeable
boundaries.
Surroundings
Market: Emergent, Networked,
Expansionist, …
Enterprise Core: planned,
hierarchical, reductionist
Edge: Impedance matched hybrid.
Intentionally emergent.
The Paradox of Control
Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
So, we need to make lots of little systems. And help them grow, adapting quickly as they do.
The skunk works of One
“One” starts here
Building the long tail of IT contribution. On purpose.
Generativity = “a system’s capacity to produce
unanticipated change through unfiltered
contributions from broad and varied audiences.”
Some things that contribute to generativity
Open Source Software
Open Standards
Runtime Platforms
Low hurdles for initial
project start
Small world networks
Simple rules
20% time Variable Cost
Open Data
Open API’s
…
Community
Intentional Anode
Q: What changes to policy, architecture, technology, or
culture would enhance long tail emergence in the company you
work for?
Q: How can we better impedance match our organizations to the
decentralized and emergent world we are immersed in?
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the
mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank YouJim Stogdill
@jstogdill