I managed to make a little dent with my series of posts on #SocioTechnical principles of the day, and thought it was due to do something similar, but this time in the context of modern organisations (especially #agile ones) and the modern version of #STS, known as Emery's #OpenSystemsTheory ( #OST). I'll list some systemic problems I have seen in organisations over the years and explain their causes using OST, one each day as I did back then. Probably way too ambitious, but let's see how this goes. Happy to take comments and rebuttals to each one of them, as the point of doing this is to trigger reflections and critical thinking.
Warning: these will probably be a bit more opinionated. 😁

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Stand-ups

Context: Your team is using Scrum and has been taught how important stand-ups are (daily coordination meeting), but it feels like a drag and a complete waste of time. Feels more like reporting to someone, be it the scrum master or the product owner. And you really do not care about what the others are working on, as it has little to no impact on what you're doing.

OST explains: This team is probably not a team at all; it's more like a group of individuals working on different things. They may contribute to the same delivery but have not been able to take control of the work design and the coordination needed to deliver it. This is not a self-managing team, but rather a delivery group assigned specific tasks by a manager, in charge of splitting the work so that all team members are working as effectively as possible. This is pure DP1 and nowhere close to the self-managing teams in DP2.

Dear followers and "fellow kids,"

In hopes of landing an interesting and fulfilling gig next, I just wanted to let you know that I'm ready for new assignments. Preferably helping companies with digital transformations that keep people at the centre. My 25 years of experience in the IT industry have taught me one essential thing: efficiency and quality are achieved only when happy people work closely together, within and across teams in the whole enterprise.
#SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #SystemsThinking
More on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/trondhjort_gruppedynamikk-sosioteknisk-saeokkonferansen-activity-7427627571858681856-rVko

At its core #sociotechnical system design is about a holistic democratisation of work.

"Not many people know that."

Your architecture isn’t failing just because of bad code! It’s being shaped by forces you aren’t even tracking: HR reward systems, "culture of coolness," and organizational silos.

In this #InfoQ talk, Vanessa Formicola introduces #HolisticEngineering - the practice of factoring the organic socio-technical problem space into your technical decisions.

Key takeaways for Architects & Leaders:
✅ How to use Social Decision Records (SDRs)
✅ Why HR policies create "Kitchen Sink" libraries
✅ Moving from "Fate" to Strategic Design

Watch now: https://bit.ly/3LZ8bNY

#Culture #EngineeringManagement #SocioTechnical

🚨 Human belief is becoming a #security issue.

Security in #sociotechnical #systems is shaped not only by #technology, but by how people interpret information.

Our new study reviews 24 factors and conceptualizes belief in false information as a human-centered security risk.

👉 https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07016

#Misinformation #Disinformation #FakeNews #DeepFake #AI #Trust #DigitalRisk #InformationSecurity #BusinessInformatics #Wirtschaftsinformatik #FakeInformation #SocialNetworks #Cybersecurity

What happens when an architect disagrees with a team's decision in a culture of autonomy? The answer isn't to overrule.

We explore the shift from control to influence, where the architect's first question becomes introspective: "Was my advice good enough?" Learn how architecture principles and DDD Context Maps help create guardrails for good decisions and navigate boundary disputes.

Read more at: https://virtualddd.com/facilitating-archdes/architects-disagreement-team-decision/

#DDD #SoftwareArchitecture #TeamAutonomy #SocioTechnical

This is a fantastic talk by Kent Beck. And so important. What he is saying here, using his perspective from Extreme Programming (XP), basically sums up all my talks from the last few years. His distinction between deserts and forests is the same as bureaucracy and sociotechnical/democratic systems, respectively, and the parallel universes are the unmixable world views that people carry around. No data or good arguments can make people switch from one to the other. It's futile to try, IMHO. Only by being aware of what they are and how different they make you see the world can a conscious choice be made to move from one to the other.

<thinking hat>
You can't extrapolate from a closed system to an open one, but you can reduce an open system to a closed one. Or, put it in Beck's terms, you cannot grasp a forest when all you know is the desert, but you can imagine how a forest can become a desert. 😉
</thinking hat>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVqISU5M5ow

#XP #Sociotechnical #OpenSystems

Fast, reliable delivery needs more than clean code – it needs the right socio-technical architecture. In his #SAGconf session, @crichardson shows how to start simple, evolve intentionally, and spot the signals that your structure needs to change. ✨

Learn more about his session 👉 https://t1p.de/huajb

#SAG2025 #SoftwareArchitecture #FastFlow #TeamTopology #SocioTechnical #iSAQB