When you're managing software development projects, you need to know the difference between complex and complicated. Not knowing this difference means you might apply exactly the wrong approach to the right problem. (Or, if you prefer, the right approach to the wrong problem.)
It's a simple message, really. But if you don't get it, you're headed for chaos.
Simple = easily knowable.
Complicated = not simple, but still knowable.
Complex = not fully knowable, but reasonably predictable.
Chaotic = neither knowable nor predictable.
Simple and complicated systems are all fully predictable.
The main difference between predictable systems and complex systems is our approach to understanding them. We can understand simple and complicated systems by taking them apart and analyzing the details. However, we cannot understand complex systems by applying the same strategy of reductionism. But we can achieve some understanding by watching and studying how the whole system operates.
What's important for managers is that this also works the other way around. We create complicated systems by first designing the parts, and then putting them together. This works well for mechanical things, like buildings, watches and Quattro Stagioni pizzas. But it doesn't work for complex systems, like brains, software development teams, and the local pizzeria. We cannot build a system from scratch and expect it to become complex in the way that we intended. Complex systems defy attempts to be created in an engineering effort.
Complex systems are not constructed, they are grown.
via noop.nl
As I start the series on "Seeing through the Complexity of Culture" with Stuart Baker, I will offer up what I think are some of the best pieces from others. Here is post from Jurgen at NOO.NL that offers an exceptionally elegant description of the key problem of today - that we refuse to see the complex and work as if complexity was complicated or simple.
Stuart and I hope that we can help you at least see the elements of the complexity that is human culture and so be able to make more assured judgments about what might happen.
