Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 459



This week’s episode, number 459, features Tom’s essay on resistance to change. This is followed by our Form Follows Function segment discussing my post “Innovation, Intention, Planning and Execution”. Jeremy Berriault‘s QA corner finishes the cast with a segment on testing packaged software.

In this installment, Tom and I talk about effectiveness, particularly the relationship between effectiveness and reasoned, intentional action. In short, organizations are (social) systems, and “things work better when they work together on purpose”. You can’t create serendipity, but if you want to be able to exploit what serendipity drops in your lap, you need to prepare the ground ahead of time.


Systems Thinking Complicates Things

4th UK Rock Paper Scissors Championships by James Bamber via Wikimedia


I’ve had the honor and pleasure of appearing as a regular on Tom Cagley‘s SPaMCast podcast for almost three years now. Before I write one of my “Form Follows Function on SPaMCast x” posts, I always listen to the podcast to make sure that the summary is right (the implication being, relying purely on my memory won’t be right). I got a bonus while writing up last week’s appearance, because Tom asked an excellent question that deserved its own post: does thinking about a problem (legacy systems, in the instance of last week’s discussion) holistically/systematically complicate things?


It is much easier to avoid all the twists and turns and possibilities inherent in systems thinking. A simpler approach, picking one lever to pull/one button to push, makes it much easier to come up with a solution.

It just doesn’t work very well at coming up with solutions that actually work.

When there is a mismatch in complexity between problem and solution architectures, this mismatch will be an additional problem to deal with. This will apply when the solution is more complex than the problem space warrants and when the opposite is the case. Solutions that fail to account for the context they will encounter are vulnerable. This is the idea behind the quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Human nature can push us to fix problems quickly, and quick will generally equate to simple. It takes time to analyse the angles and consider the alternatives. How often have you seen people ask for “the best” way to do something absent any context? How often have you seen people ask “why would someone ever do that?”

I’ll answer that by asking 3 questions:

  • since Rock beats Scissors, why would anyone ever choose Scissors?
  • since Paper beats Rock, why would anyone ever choose Rock?
  • since Scissors beats Paper, why would anyone ever choose Paper?

Reality isn’t binary. It’s not what’s “best”, it’s what’s fit for purpose in a given context and there are lots and lots of contexts out there.

This isn’t to say that all quick, simple interventions are wrong. If you find yourself in a house fire, more action and less comprehensive deliberation may well be in order. The key is matching the cost (largely in terms of time) of defining the problem space with cost (in terms of both effort and risk that the intervention adds to the problem) of crafting the solution.

Rock, Paper, Scissor, Lizard, Spock rules diagram

It’s almost guaranteed that the system contexts we deal with (both technical and social) will evolve toward more and more complexity. Surprises will emerge as a matter of course. We don’t need to make more by failing to take a more holistic view when we have the time to do so.

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 446






Innovation, Intention, Planning and Execution

Napoleon at Wagram


Convergence is an interesting thing. Greger Wiktrand and I have been trading posts back and forth on the subject of innovation for almost eighteen months now (forty posts in total). I’ve also been writing a lot on the concept of organizations as systems, (twenty-two posts over the last year, with some overlap with innovation). The need for architectural design (and make no mistake, social systems like organizations require as much architectural design over their lifetime as any software system) and the superiority, in my opinion, of intentional architecture versus accidental architecture are also themes of long standing on this site.

My last post, “Architecture Corner: Good at innovation – Seven Deadly Sins of IT”, linked to a YouTube video produced by and starring Greger and Casimir Artmann. It’s worth the watching, so I won’t give away the plot, but I will say that it demonstrates how these concepts interrelate.

Effectiveness requires reasoned intentional action. I’ve used this Tom Graves’ quote many times before, but it still applies: “things work better when they work together, on purpose”.

The word “purpose” is critical to that sentence. The difference between intentional rather than accidental activity is the difference between being goal-directed and flailing blindly (n.b. experimenting, done right, is the former, not the latter). An understanding of purpose can allow a goal to be reached, even when the initial route to that goal is closed off. Completing a required set of tasks lacks that flexibility. This appreciation of the utility of purpose-oriented direction over micro-management is an old one that the military periodically re-visits:

An understanding of the purpose aids the joint force in exercising disciplined initiative to facilitate the commander’s visualized end state. Moreover, the purpose itself not only drives why tasks must happen, but also how subordinate commanders choose to execute their assigned mission(s).

Purposes must be carefully crafted, nested, and organized not only to achieve unity of effort, but also the intended outcomes (selected tasks to execute, method of execution, and/or desired effects). They also must give subordinates the latitude to find better, innovative solutions to tactical and operational problems. Finally, the operational purpose must ultimately nest back to the strategic national interest in order to affect change in the human domain. Purposes for the subordinate operations must be well thought out, nested within the desired operational objectives, and be the correct purpose in order to achieve the desired operational end state. Therefore, it is incumbent upon commanders to develop purposes for subordinate operations first and subsequently build the tasks. The “why” trumps the “how” both in importance and in priority.

What to accomplish and why are more important than how to accomplish something. As the author of article above noted, communicating purpose “…enables subordinates to take advantage of emergent opportunities that arise by enabling shared understanding of the commander’s purpose and end state.” It should also force those providing direction to examine their rationale for what they’re asking for. “Why” is the most important question that can be asked. Activity that is not tailored to achieving a particular aim will be ineffective. This includes chasing the latest silver bullet. A recent article on International Business Times, “As a term of description, ‘digital’ is now an anachronism”, had this to say:

As a term of description, digital is an anachronism. It reflects an organisational mindset that views technological transformation itself as the aim. It’s a common mistake. At the height of the dotcom boom, suddenly everyone needed a website, but not everyone understood why.

Over the last few years, the drive to digitisation has intensified. Business models, brands, products and services, customer relationships and business processes are increasingly governed by digital elements such as data.

But much the same as building a website in 1999, it’s not a question of becoming “more digital”. It’s a question of what you want digital to do.

Confusing means and ends is both futile and expensive. No matter how many tools I buy, buying tools won’t make me a carpenter (though my bank balance will continue to shrink regardless of whether the purchase helped or not). Dropping tools and techniques into a culture that is not able or prepared to use them accomplishes nothing. Likewise, becoming more “digital” (or for that matter, more “agile”), will not help an organization if it’s heading in the wrong direction. Efficiency and effectiveness are two different things that may well not go hand in hand. Just as important to understand, efficiency must take a subordinate position to effectiveness. You cannot do the wrong thing efficiently enough to turn it into the right thing.

You need to understand what you want to do and what the constraints, if any, are. That understanding will allow you to figure out how you’re going to try to do it and determine why the tools and techniques will get you there or not. The alternative is delay (waiting for new instructions) caused by the bottleneck of over-centralized decision-making with a high probability of something getting lost in translation.

Work together purposefully so things work better.

Go-to People Considered Harmful

Neck of Codd bottle






They may:

  • Feel underpaid.



  • Feel underappreciated and untrusted.
  • Feel underappreciated and untrusted.



“Distance…is the one true enemy…”

Gregory Brown tweeted a great series on the problem of distance last week:

It’s amazing how much information can be conveyed in nine tweets. It’s amazing how many aspects of a very complex socio-technical undertaking, software development, are affected by this concept of distance. I would argue that this concept of distance applies likewise to the social systems that software development belongs to as a component part.

Distance between action and result as well as distance between result and response are just as much a problem for social systems as software systems. This was one of the main themes of “The Ignorance of Management – Deep and Wide”, trying to manage too far down the hierarchy just doesn’t scale. There are too many decisions at too deep a level of detail across too many areas for this to be effective.

It’s a case of mismatched impedance, resulting in overload. Increased distance equals increased transmission time, meaning that remote decisions will either take longer (risking timeliness of the decision) or will have to be made with less consideration (risking the fitness of the decision). Likewise, the greater number of decisions being made due to an inappropriate distance will force the same set of trade-offs. Time spent on lower-level issues also reduces time available for issues that are appropriate to the decision-maker’s level. This places even more pressure on the decision-maker in terms of being either hasty or late.

Ironically, better control is likely to come from delegating decision-making to the appropriate level of the organization than attempting to micro-manage. The true test of leadership, in my opinion, is not how things run when a leader is present, but how things run when they’re not. Adding distance stacks the deck, and not in your favor.

The Hidden Cost of Cheap – UX and Internal Applications

Sisyphus by Titian




  • Is this really going to improve anything?
  • Sounds like an expensive waste of time
  • They’ll have to use whatever they’re given


Roach’s answers:










