Team Development Framework I

Tailoring
Prescriptive frameworks [AA], such as Scrum, give instructions on how things should be done. Descriptive frameworks describe options, letting the individual decide for themselves how to act in their particular situation. Such frameworks include Sociocracy [SA] and DAD [DA].

Prescriptive frameworks work well in Simple Systems [CS], such as making brownies, opening a factory canteen, etc... In this case, the user has to carefully follow best practices which is most likely to lead to success. Unfortunately, project team management is rarely a simple system, so few leaders succeed in applying Scrum by instruction. Prescriptive frameworks have to be tailored.

Descriptive frameworks are hard to create, hard to learn, and hard to adapt to the leader's situation. They are effective for Complicated Systems, which could be described but are too hard for a specialist to understand in detail. For example, people have been designing cars for 150 years, but there are still no precise instructions on how to design the best possible car. Tesla cars have problems with doors opening, and Bentley cars, despite the brand reputation, have a problem with rainwater running into the boot.

A car is a complicated system made up of different parts that interact with each other in predictable ways, but the power of the human brain is not enough to make such predictions accurately enough. So only Good Practices will be available for the team that wants to design a new car, not Best Practices.
In Complex Systems, even good practices are quite rare. These systems consist of a large number of simple and similar elements, but their interaction generates complexity. There are Complex Systems that we created and that we can understand, such as CPU. And there are Complex Systems that we created but do not properly understand. For example, economics, Nobel Prizes in which are awarded every year. And, of course, there are natural Complex Systems which were not created by humanity. In Complex Systems experimentation is the best way to reveal patterns.

In product development, hypotheses and experiments came to hypotheses and experiments in the late 90s, after the dotcom bubble burst [SB]. This happened for the reason that creating a product may be Complicated, but the people who will or will not buy the product will definitely form a Complex System.

We will describe the first phase of the Team Development Framework in a largely prescriptive way. But of course, some elements simply cannot be universal and must be adapted to your specifics. Nevertheless, the adaptation should not cause the element to become meaningless. Therefore, the first phase is still not a pure instruction, but an instruction with comments to help the adaptation.

Описание первой фазы Team Development Framework мы будем давать во многом прескрептивно. Но, конечно, некоторые элементы просто не могут быть универсальными и должны быть адаптированы под вашу специфику. Тем не менее, адаптация не должна приводить к тому, что элемент потеряет смысл. Поэтому первая фаза все же не чистая инструкция, а инструкция с комментариями, которые помогут адаптации.
[AA]
We could be too academically inclined. Sometimes, there are situations where a three-word expression needs a page of comments with a literature analysis. But we realise that for the practitioner (i.e. you) it is not that important, so when we still cannot resist providing a link or leaving a comment that it is not that simple and there are studies that refute every component of that theory, then we will leave such a comment. Each such comment has a two-letter code that carries no underlying meaning. We do this purely for internal reasons.
[SA]
Sociocracy is one framework for creating a self-organising organisation through teamwork. You can read about Sociocracy in [Bernhard Bockelbrink, James Priest, Liliana David – A Practical Guide for Evolving Agile and Resilient Organisations with Sociocracy 3.0] or at [Link].
[DA]
[DA] Disciplined Agile Delivery is a great example of a descriptive Agile framework that PMI is currently developing [Scott Ambler, Mark Lines – Choose Your WoW!].
[CS]
[CS] In Cynefin, the Simple System is called the Clear System. The author of the framework, Dave Snowden, now wants all four domains to start with 'C': Clear, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic. We would not want to support this trend. Firstly, because we think that picking names so that they make nice acronyms is a very American story from the 70s and the value is low. Secondly, an important mental model: it is important for practice that systems are divided into Simple and everything else. There are many articles about Cynefin on the internet, but there is also a book with a detailed description [Dave Snowden – Cynefin: Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World].
[SB]
[SB] A fundamental book on startups, and startups are product development, is Steve Blank's book [Steve Blank – The Four Steps to the Epiphany]. In it, you can see how Steve Blank builds his entire book around hypothesis testing.