Self Organizing Analogy Only Works when the Domain is Defined

While watching the AFC West playoffs with our beloved Broncos v. New England (they lost bad, were outplayed, and couldn't stop Brady), it dawned on me how defining the domain is critically important to any discussion around a method. This is connected to the popular statement in a well known agile management book...

A football team self-organizes within the boundaries of the playing field and the rules as they are laid down by the football association.

The first thing to recognize in American Football, when watching the game in the family room, is the coaches call the plays. A world class quarter back may decide on the line to change the play with an audible, but the offensive coordinators see the field from the top of the stadium and call plays from the  play book - the strategy for winning the game. The game is NOT self organizing on the field. Maybe the company picnic flag football game.

The coach calls plays from the side line, with the advice from the coordinators - offense and defense.

The is how professional football works. Similar processes take place for Volleyball, pre-planned plays. Baseball not so much, since the play evolves from the pitch, but once the ball, if hit, the processes for getting the out are practiced and practiced and all the palyers know exactly what to do. Same for Volleyball - having played in college.

Don't tell me you're game is on, you do it in practice first - Brady to Gronkowski

The 3^rd TD Brady to Gronkowski, where he was ½ step ahead of the defender and the pass landed in his hands without missing a step. This is not self-organizing on the field. That pass had to have been practiced 500 times. Every step, every shoulder turn, every motion practiced. That's called execution excellence.

Hockey executes rehearsed plays, soccer executes rehearsed plays. Once in awhile there is a broken play, but not often. I don't know of any field sport where the game evolves on the field guided by rules defined by some external body. Even professional cycling has a strategy for every portion of the course. Watch the Tour and the coaches in their cars talking to the riders,reading from the play book for the race, guided by the course and the specific responsese to the action developing in front of them.

I know of no successful complex activity that can succeed through self directed action by the player(s) on the field in the absence of a Plan and a set of practiced Plays needed to execute the Plan. There also must be plans for handling the unexpected once the game is underway.

The next popularized statement is ...

Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning.

This of course violates the laws of physics of any system of interactions in the known universe. Human systems of course appear to operate in this way, but only because human systems are complex in ways not understood by other humans. So if the domain of human systems in the presence of poorly understood interactions had been used, then maybe the statement would have merit.

Here's What Has To Be In A Plan For Success

So let's look first at the processes needed in the presence of human systems to establish a central authority and an external planning process. Both are present in all human systems. The central authority, in our program management domain is usually called The Ground Rules. Having ground rules prevents chaos from breaking out on day one. Re-imposition of the Ground Rules can recover the human system from chaos.

I'm working a program now where chaos reigns, because the Ground Rules for managing the project have been abandoned. And this Blog is about managing projects, so we'll stick with the management of projects domain, even complex projects involving complex human behaviour.

So here some Ground Rules for project success in the presence of possibly chaotic human behaviour, whether we're playing a team sport or building the next manned space flight machine.

1. The team has to know what done looks like, so they can recognize done when it arrives.
2. They have to know how to reach done, usually along multiple paths, since the plan never goes according to plan.
3. The have to have the right resources, skills, experience, capabilities, intent, and capacity to execute the plan.
4. The impediments to success must be recognized, handled, and reduced (retired) within the planned budget and schedule. It's easy to handle risk when you've got more money and time than you planned.
5. And finally to succeed you've got to measure your progress in units that are meaningful to the decision makers. In the Pro-Football paradigm, it's not just the scoreboard (well it is in the end) along the way. There are dozens of metrics used to measure progress toward that win. This is the case in any sport and it is certainly the case for projects using other peoples money.

So the football paradigm popularized in the quote above is not actually how American Football, Soccer, or any other ground rules based team sport works unless it is just jungle ball as we would say about the company picnic volleyball game - which I learned long ago never to participate in.