domain.dot.net team

The conceptual model before Agile can take root: wicked problem

1) Does your culture understand and nurture ‘software as iterative learning’?

2) How do you treat failure that is related directly to exploration around iterative solutions?

Some specific aspects of problem wickedness include (from Rittel and Webber, 1973):

• You don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.

  Indeed, there is no definitive statement of “The Problem.” The problem is ill-structured, an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints.

• Wicked problems have no stopping rule. Since there is no definitive “The Problem”, there is also no definitive “The Solution.” The problem solving process ends when you run out of resources.

• Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong, simply “better,” “worse,” “good enough,” or “not good enough.”

• Every wicked problem is essentially unique and novel. There are so many factors and conditions, all embedded in a dynamic social context, that no two wicked problems are alike, and the solutions to them will always be custom designed and fitted.

• Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation,” every attempt has consequences.
  editor: This is not to say ‘reuse’ is not assumed, only that the end result as an entity for one ‘realization in full’ is unique. It is assumed this solution leverages external services, components, etc.

As Rittel says, “One cannot build a freeway to see how it works.” This is the “Catch 22″ about wicked problems: you can’t learn about the problem without trying solutions, but every solution you try is expensive and has lasting unintended consequences which are likely to spawn new wicked problems.

• Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions. There may be no solutions, or there may be a host of potential solutions that are devised, and another host that are never even thought of.

Problem we face

1) It is irrelevant how correct the above is until external, internal or a combination of forces move the collective thought.

Typically the competitive market and legislation protecting shareholders should resolved the glaring nature of this issue. However, it is ignorant for we technologists to believe the ‘objective truth’ of our knowledge will directly drive cultural shifts. It doesn’t happen that way in most cases. If it did we would all have OS/2 running on our machines and beta-max machines.

2) Most cannot actually act on these facts or even acknowledge their reality.

This is of course due to their having to ‘change everything’ in how their fiefdoms execute, not to mention trying to explain this to the other stakeholders of IT. I see disastrous practices perpetuated rather then trying to actually be viewed strategically in the value they could offer their organization.

(1) 1973 “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”
pp 155-169, Policy Sciences , Vol. 4
Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc.
Amsterdam

So you can see it’s worse then our ‘collective minds’ having no model at all. We DO have a few models. Unfortunately they are almost fundamentally driving incorrect decisions. This makes whatever they get right diminished to varying points of absurdity. Of course many are doing better but one cannot help but be astounded just how many are no farther along and indeed cannot even accept what was documented above as early as 1973

If someone asked you to describe a ‘category’ of problems that complex large-scale software development it best described by, what would you use as an example from another field that is the most similar?

This question is something I was asked one day, and I couldn’t think of anything than properly captured the full spectrum of challenges we face. Then while reading an old architecture (buildings not systems) magazine I came across what I firmly believe is the answer to at least correcting the blatantly flawed meta-model far too many use today.

For example, Agile Practices (the baby steps of software) work so well can be almost ‘point for point’ correlated to wicked problems’. The fact they are reacted to almost viscerally (say as ‘evil’) all the way to ‘very complex and non-intuitive’ shows how off the mark people’s heads are.

We all know what happens when teams/companies try to use a waterfall approach.. Disaster. Not much has changed since the linked article Frankly I am amazed we all have jobs.

This is the manifestation of the ‘problem set definition/model’ being incorrect. Their mental characterizations refuse to acknowledge that the waterfall approach is not compatible with the problem domain of large software. Yet even today BILLIONS are wasted rather then fix the issue.

Here are the critical points in a wicked problem.