<aside> <img src="/icons/list-indent_gray.svg" alt="/icons/list-indent_gray.svg" width="40px" /> SIS Background
The key principle in SIS is the Minimum Viable Process, originally formalised by Mary-Ann Johnson in 2017.
Quite simply, the principle states that in order to add value, a process has to be the most lightweight possible while achieving its core purpose. Additions to the process, even if useful, should be avoided unless they are necessary to achieve its primary purpose.
Underpinning the MVP principle there’s the belief that once an appropriate MVP is in place, all people involved will informally adjust their behaviours around it to achieve the best outcomes in their continually evolving context. You can see how choosing the “right” set of goals for your processes is a tough and never-ending task.
Coaching teams have the responsibility of designing the communication channels at all levels of the value stream.
The overarching communication principle for SIS is to enable meaningful interactions. This means that everyone involved in an interaction should receive and perceive enough value to justify the effort in participating in it. An interaction is any communication or discussion at any level, including all messaging and meetings.
Human communication is inherently complex, so to follow this principle we have used experimentation and feedback. A mix of expert-generated communication patterns (read: meeting design and facilitation as well broadcasting strategy) and observation of the emerging desire paths.
Some communication waste is inevitable, just don’t let it be the obviously avoidable one.
There is a trend towards more complex problems to solve and more asynchronous interactions. This makes serendipity more valuable on one hand, and more difficult to achieve on the other.
So when designing the interaction patterns in the value stream you’ll have to make space for serendipitous discovery. Offer more and more diverse information, available but not enforced to keep the meaningful interactions principle valid. Make everything visible and create opportunities to stumble on interesting information. Encourage interactions in unusual groupings and settings.
You’ll have to judge how much precious team time to invest, because you can’t know which serendipitous interactions will generate value. Or how. Highly parallel, chaotic interactions are efficient serendipity generators, hence the open space design in the Sync Event.
There is some degree of uncertainty in everything we do in all aspects of our lives, and this is certainly true in the world of organisations.
By recognising this uncertainty, we approach activities as experiments where we highlight our hypothesis of what we hope to achieve, our assumptions, and how and when we will measure whether the experiment has been a success ahead of embarking on the experiment.
We go into these experiments with our best intentions to produce value-adding outcomes, and with an open mind to learn from whatever the outcomes turn out to be. If the outcomes are as expected, that’s great – the experiment worked! But this won’t always be the case, and that’s okay. If the outcomes do not match the hypothesis, then this is an opportunity to learn and feedback into the next experiment.
Every SIS design is an experiment for the current iteration. For the next iteration you will learn from the experiment and design next one.
Lots of smaller experiments are preferable to fewer larger ones as it shortens the feedback loop and time to learning. Setting work out in this approach might seem unusual at first but, with practice, you will find that having work set out in this way and with a focus on learning, you will keep better focus on what you were originally trying to achieve whilst optimising towards an as-fast-as-is-appropriate learning cycles.