Viable System Model Example
How to apply the Viable System Model? One of the most obvious ways to use the Viable System Model is a mapping approach. You take the VSM quite literally and map organizational aspects like meetings, roles, tools, or artifacts to the model’s different systems. Even though this method is partially criticized within the VSM community, […]
Introduction to the Viable System Model
My Video Lectures about the Viable System Model Finally, I am releasing the first three videos about my introduction to the Viable System Model. I decided that I wanted to share everything I have understood so far, but not in a written form anymore. Therefore, I produced a series of simple screen captures and dared […]
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety
The Story of Requisite Variety for Reflective Practitioners It is a real pity that the idea of Requisite Variety is almost unknown. From my perspective, it is astonishing that almost no one with a degree in business has heard about it, not to talk about many Agile or Lean folks. It is insofar unbelievable, as […]
Service Dominant Logic
The fundamental misunderstanding about products, services, and value creation It is popular to speak about product-led organizations. They shall be able to solve customer problems better because teams in this kind of organization have full accountability for product success. An enterprise organized around products The basic idea sounds fantastic: Instead of organizing an enterprise functionally […]
Viable Leadership – Basic Questions
A nano manifesto for Viable Leadership The one who contributes leads – forget the organigram. Four basic questions of Leadership “What must be done? …is more important than… “What do I want to do?” “Is this the right thing to do?” …takes precedence over… “How do employees, clients, and shareholders value my work?” “What contribution […]
Post Agile Era
Beyond Agile? Some wild speculations Agile is (almost) a commodity. Many young folks coming fresh from the university know nothing else than the agile way of working. Being agile is in many IT/Digital related areas the new normal. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it does not, but nobody who has got the taste of it […]
An Agile Team as Viable System
The basic structure of an Agile Team Every Scrum Master, Agile Coach or how ever you call the role of an “Agilist” knows the situation: There is a new team or even a team of teams which wants to learn the new way of working. Usually, there is some sort of a kickoff – the […]
Viable Leadership
The Viable System Model and Leadership This post contains an excerpt of the book „Responsible leadership in a complex world“ (Zitat, so far only available in German) which is a co-production of Peter Gomez, Timo Meynhardt and me. Our work used the Viable System Model to offer a framework for Reflective Practitioners (according to the […]
Setting a goal with a range
Key Results and the Estimation of Metrics Nowadays it is almost standard to use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) in Agile Organizations. It is claimed that this goal-setting-philosophy enables a true delivery/product organization, since the “simple” application of agile working practices like Scrum or Kanban is not enough to align huge working systems towards a […]
Free Release – Viable System Model Canvas
The VSM in a nutshell It’s a very special day for me! Why? Because I am very excited to release the … Viable System Model Canvas. It all began about 24 months ago when I started this project (or product?). This outcome (or output?) is my recent development to get a step closer to make […]