When we enter the Complicated domain, we have the knowledge for closing the gap and reach our goal. Sometimes we need experts to guide us right, but the knowledge is knowable, we just need to use the right knowledge.
Here we can increase the length of our time boxes more and more and our integration events can come more seldom to get just-in-time feedback, since we know what to do. This knowable knowledge is especially obvious in hardware development, where we do prototypes of exploitational nature since we know there is an answer. But, only after the test of the prototype we can pick the right answer, and from that prepare for the next prototype. Many times, EMC, lightning, etc. are the reasons for the need of prototyping, but also the functionality that is increased for every prototype. After a couple of prototypes, we can release the hardware.
If we want to work in parallel, we need to keep track of the interdependencies especially between the teams, so that teams do not get blocked. But, also help needed from an expert is an interdependency, so planning is needed also there. Important to note is that if an interdependency is blocking the team, the queue is not on the team, the queue is on the blocking part. It is the blocking part that is the bottle neck, so the organisation with its way of working need to investigate to understand why the blocking happened. This is especially obvious in Agile development, if the teams working in parallel are too autonomous and the whole delivery is not taken care of which are root causes regarding too little T-shape and bad planning and is handled in this blog post.
Development that starts directly in the Complicated domain can for example be:
– Incremental SW/modules for HW
– Easy refactoring of code (a new systems design is in the Complex domain)
– Trouble reports (harder ones)
– Exploitational prototypes/MVPs
For hardware development, the closest we can come to incremental development is with an existing platform and a release of; new more powerful modules, or existing modules are updated with new functionality, cheaper components, new technology, etc.
The Product value flow in the Obvious domain will be the following blog post. C u soon.