devops and intentional emergence - velocity conference

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