An Open Systems Thinking perspective on Agile transformation
Channel: Systems at Play
Date: 08/07/2022

Details

An Open Systems Theory and Sociotechnical Systems (STS) Perspective on the success or challenges of agile transformation and scaling agile in the enterprise

As an agile practitioner, you can use OST for three purposes:

- A diagnosis tool to identify where and how agile adoption or transformation has failed to deliver to its promise
- A practical model and method to design or evolve agile organisations
- A model to make sense of the complexity of organisations

Agile Manifesto is more than 20 years old and almost all industries have now tried adopting some version agile way.

Agile practices have won their place but are organisations being more agile or have adopted an agile mindset? Has this really lead to more business agility, happier employees, better and more sustainable business outcomes, customer satisfaction and better treatment of our social and environmental responsibilities?

The results are less than ideal and there are very few credible theories that explains the causes of the current problematic situations, let alone ways of addressing the challenges.

OST is a powerful way of making cultural change. Its power derives from its comprehensive, internally consistent theoretical framework, developed over many years. It is the framework called open-systems theory or thinking (Emery, F. 1981), OST for short.

The theory has been evolving and field tested over 50 years and have been tried in various industries, countries, and different sizes of organisations.

## About the presenters

## Peter Aughton

Since 1993, Peter has worked with managers and employees, from both the private and public sectors, to design sustainable organisations that significantly increase employee engagement, innovation, and organisational performance. These outcomes are realised from the application of methodologies that have been translated from Open Systems Theory (OST) – a socio-ecological (people-in-system-in-environment) body of knowledge, which relates people and their organisations to their environments.

Ecological strategy development leading to widespread commitment to desirable and achievable goals in uncertain environments and the active adaptive plans to meet these goals
The identification of organisational factors that are leading to (and not leading to) high levels of employee motivation, wellbeing, innovation, and productivity
The joint optimisation of an organisation’s social and technical systems, which produces organisational structures where the basic unit of work is the self-managing group; and where each group is responsible for meeting its agreed goals
Competency-based remuneration programs that sustain team-based structures and collaboration, recognize individual competencies and contribution, and reward employees for improving overall organisational performance
Peter has applied these OST transformation methodologies and improvement techniques in many different organisations, from SMEs to large corporations. He has also trained management and staff across the globe in the application of these methodologies, so their organisations have the in-house capability to sustain performance improvement in rapidly changing environments.
Before becoming an OST practitioner, Peter held various research and management positions with the Exxon and Mars Corporations. Peter has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Chemistry) and Post Graduate Qualifications in Education and Business Science from the RMIT, Melbourne, and Victoria Universities respectively.

## Trond Hjorteland

Trond is an IT architect and sociotechnical facilitator from the consulting firm Scienta.no and has many years’ experience working with large, complex, and business critical systems, primarily as a developer and architect on middleware and backend applications. His main interests are service-orientation, domain-driven design, event driven architectures, and open sociotechnical systems, working in industries like telecom, media, TV, and public sector. His mantra: great products emerge from collaborative sense-making and design.