Situational Awareness
Empirical processes
Decisions are made on the basis of existing knowledge and gain clarity with ever shorter learning cycles.
At the beginning of an initiative, it is rarely possible to know all the conditions completely. Obstacles and new unknowns can and will arise at any time as the initiative progresses.
Empirical process control is an essential feature of agile working methods: decisions are made on the basis of existing knowledge and ideally at the latest possible time.
Empirical in this sense means reducing uncertainties and ambiguities through concrete experiences and fact-based insights – gaining more clarity with the shortest possible learning cycles.
Sense Making
The prerequisite for a short learning cycle or feedback cycle is an effective way to understand the situation or “sense making”. Without a solid understanding of the situation, efforts to be more adaptive are just useless exercises.
There are a number of effective and proven tools at all levels:
- OODA by John Boyd at the tactical level
- The “Art of War” by the ancient Chinese general Sun Tsu for strategy and tactics
- Wardley Mapping for strategy and product development (Simon Wardley also draws heavily on Sun Tzu and John Boyd)
- Lyssa Adkins’ famous question to coaches: “can you read a room?” to draw attention to the importance of situational awareness in teams.
Agile Evolution also provides central tools:
- The GOOD (sense making) Cycle, which builds on the tools mentioned above
- Visualization of a transformation through Focus Maps
In Steve Bungay’s “Art of Action”, a version of mission-type tactics, a sense-making process is used explicitly for alignment (see strategy implementation).
