Page - 222 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

222 R.van Solingen • Complex situations are those in which the what and how become a little more uncertain. The characteristic of a complex situation is that it always turns out differently to what you expected. There is more uncertainty than certainty beforehand. There are too many variables involved that are interdependent. Think, for example, of a large project involving many people and parties, the creation of new IT systems or the merger of two companies. You have an idea of what you want to achieve and how it could work, but things always go differently to how you thought they would. However, in complex situations you can always give a good explanation afterwards of why they went this way. And in retrospect you always know, with your current knowledge, how you should have tackled things. In a complex situation it is therefore best to discover in small stepsexactlywhat isneededandhowyoucanachieve this:experimenting, discovering, learning and making adjustments based on intermediate results. Complexsituationsare thereforeextremelysuitable foragile.Daring todiscover and getting a coach to help with this are suited to complex situations. Complex cannotbe plannedin advance,butcanbeexplainedafterwards. • Chaoticsituations:Thesearesituations inwhichthewhatandthehowaretotally uncertain. Think, for example, of major accidents, Brexits or war situations. Such situations are unpredictable and can only be explained to a limited extent afterwards.Termssuchasbadluckandgoodluckthenplayanimportantrole.An agilewayofworkingmighthelp,but inachaoticsituationit ismainlyamatterof action. Doingsomething.No matter what it is. You want to get out of the chaos, so you take action in as coordinated a way as possible to reach a different state asquicklyaspossible.Leaders thereforplaya crucial role inchaoticsituations. Theanswertothequestionastowhentobeagileandwhennotdependspurelyon the situation. Is it complicated or complex? Complex situations are not repeatable. Things always turn out differently.Then agile comes into its own. Agile helps you discovera routewhenyoudo things for the first time. Agile is applied in situations thatarenot repetitive,whereonlyafterwardsdoyouknowhowit shouldhavebeen done and what is actually needed. Take small steps and thus make the learning processshortcycleand repetitive. If it is complicated and therefore repetitive, lean is more useful at first. Lean helps to optimise thingsyoudo moreoftenand to learn fromthem.Lean is applied in situations that are repetitive in themselves—think of operational processes or production lines, especially in the manufacturingor service industries. The goal of leanandagile is basically thesame: to besuccessfuland to improveon thebasisof experience. However, our society is changing in such a way that more and more complex situations are arising. Everything is accelerating and also becoming increasingly digital. A lot of simple and complicated work is disappearing because it is being automated.Andautomatingsomethingisagaincomplex.Asaresult,moreandmore environmentsare becoming complex and there is also increasingly complex work. Thisexplainswhyagile isbeingusedmoreoftenandmorewidely.Agile iscapable ofdealingwithcomplexity,unpredictabilityandchange.