It’s day one of the most exciting project of your career. You and your team are going to build the next great social media website! The potential rewards you will reap are exceeded only by how daunting the deadlines are. The whole team is energized and gets right down to business. You’re all slinging code day and night, heads-down and in the flow. During one of your rare free moments during the day you pause and take a look around you. Right then it hits you: this is one of the best teams you’ve ever worked with! You all rock!

• And then somebody mentions that IT won’t give the team a place to build their code for another six weeks.
• And the security team wants to review all of your code, but they can’t get around to it for another 2 months.
• And your lead developer? Your main man? The man with a plan? His dog just died.

Suddenly, you are totally screwed.

That’s what impediments feel like. It doesn’t feel very good does it? All of a sudden, the project that looked like a guaranteed “win” just became a lot more likely to fail.

The impediments that teams deal with are perhaps one of the most under appreciated subjects in the project management world. When not uncovered and resolved, impediments can do harm to an otherwise well run project in ways that are often subtle and easy to miss.

That's what this book is all about: how you find, track, and destroy impediments.

This ebook on A3 Problem Solving is meant to demystify some of what people know and hear about A3s. In the past 5 years, it has become one of the most prominent lean tools. But while the work itself is hard, the method doesn't have to be as complicated as it is made. In this ebook, we get to the core of what it's all about, how you use it, and connect it to lean thinking throughout. Afterall, a template is useless without the thinking. I hope you find it useful, but please share your experiences, feedback, and other comments. To take advantage of LeanPub's capabilities, I hope to update it more frequently that most books. Sincerely, Jamie Flinchbaugh

Complexity Science, together with Lean and Agile Software Development are the three pillars of modern ways of working.

Complexity is considered by many to be the single most important scientific development since general relativity. Complexity Science study systems like weather systems, cities, organisations, and teams. With users, customers and competitors that are hyperconnected, and with the rate of change of the markets and the technology that is constantly accelerating, understanding Complexity Science today is more useful than ever.

While Complexity science literature is very theoretic, this book explores the practices to manage Complexity in the context of software and digital products development. It shifts up-side-down the centre of gravity of the conversation around Complexity and makes the practical applications of Complexity theory prominent.

It talks about and discusses Complexity from a practical point of view to engage hands-on practitioners, problem solvers and tinkerers.

This book also focuses on the human element in Complexity that is essential when looking at teams and the organisation.

These practices give you the means to navigate everyday Complexity and to dance with complex systems. This book is for everyone working in software and digital products development, and more specifically for leaders, managers, facilitators (e.g. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches), and team members.

The book also describes a way to gradually introduce our co-workers, our teams and our organisation to Complexity. They exemplify a new approach that consists of acting our way into the new Complexity thinking.

It introduces a landscape of Complexity-inspired practices organised in three regions. All the practices from the first region are about human self-organisation. The practices from the second region are about assessing and adapting to the degree of complexity of the work at hand. And the practices from the third region are about collaborating in the presence of Complexity.

The practices in this book are inspired by the work of Joseph Pelrine, David S. Alberts, Ralph Stacey, and Dave Snowden. This book also contains original contributions from Dean Latchana, Liz Keogh, and the author himself, Luca Minudel. This book also aspires to be an example that inspires other Complexity practitioners to share other practices that could potentially be added to this book.

This book has been improved thanks to the precious feedback from Joseph Pelrine, Sunil Mundra, Dave Snowden, Brett Ansley, Ilias Bartolini, Carlo Beschi, Maurizio Pedriale, Peter Fessel, Bülent Duagi, Tom Northwood, Antonia Greensides, David Legge, Katya Kolmogorova, Greg Franklin, Corrado De Sanctis, Michael Park, Vicenç García Altés, Simon Reindl, Carlo Volpi.

Note to this second version of the book: This is the first major reversion of this book after the first official publication. Errata corrige or minor fixes may follow. Check here for any updates https://leanpub.com/user_dashboard/library

Rate and review the book here https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53843886-living-complexity.

Finding the root cause of an issue is not as easy as people may think. Most see only the symptoms and try to mitigate against them. Doing so will delay the inevitable of problems coming up again. Thus creating more frustrations within the organization and clients as it seems like a never-ending cycle..

This book provides guidance on how to create a Root Cause Analysis program within a team, department and or an organization. To provide context to each section you will follow the story of John and his team work through an issue and provide process changes for executive support.

This book will expand your thinking of what process issue is causing headaches for people downstream and how to provide the right message to get executive buy-in.

EventStorming is a very flexible approach to collaborative modeling that is continuing to grow and evolve as practitioners innovate and adapt it to new problems. I hope you will do the same! Start with trying out the basic recipes in this book, and see what works in your context.

The book is concise, actionable, and highly visual, containing only the essentials needed for you to be successful. if you are struggling with working in a complex business domain, especially where the complexity is in the business processes and system behavior, then this EventStorming Handbook provides techniques for better solutions to be delivered faster through collaborative modeling.

Agile emphasizes to establish teams and give them whatever they need to do their work. This book on impediments explores how teams can effectively deal with the problems that will happen in their daily work. In agile these problems are called impediments: anything that slows down a team and needs to be dealt with. Agile teams need to be able to handle impediments.

This is the first book specifically about dealing with impediments using agile thinking with problem-solving practices. In this book, I explain why dealing with impediments matters. The book also provides approaches for you to effectively handle impediments in teams and beyond the teams. I'm also sharing experience stories from my practice.

I based this book on my experience as a developer, tester, team leader, project manager, quality manager, process manager, consultant, coach, trainer, and adviser in Agile, Lean, Quality, and Continuous Improvement. This book dives into problem solving and impediments, viewing them from different perspectives and provides ideas, suggestions, practices, and experiences that will help you to become more effective in dealing with impediments.

This book is for agile teams, Scrum masters, tech leads, agile coaches, consultants, developers and testers, project managers, line managers, and CxOs; basically, anyone who is looking for an effective way to handle impediments or support people in doing that.

With plenty of ideas, suggestions, examples, and practical cases on impediments, this book will help you to become more effective in dealing with impediments.

The full package includes two successful Agile Coaching Tools:

• The Impediment Coaching Cards: For coaches, teams, and organizations to improve impediment handling skills.
• The Impediment Board Game: Learn how to recognize impediments and explore ways for dealing with them by playing this game.

This book is also available on Amazon in paperback format: Problem? What Problem? (paperback).