Evolving organisations using sociotechnical architecture

(This is a hands-on lab with limited capacity)

"Change is the only constant in life.". You might recognise it. The saying is from Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher. The organisation you work with is changing. You don't understand why, nor your manager can explain it. Our brains like routine, and it feels like we control our lives. But more than we would like, we are faced with change.

Organisations constantly evolve, sometimes with intention, and other times grab an opportunity. Often, those changes have side effects: they can affect people practices, teams mission and organisations processes. Is there a way where we can be prepared for such changes?

From my experience, yes, we can be prepared for those changes. And we can use one of the oldest human skills: visualisations. To be more specific, we can combine different visualisations to discuss, reason and communicate change. It doesn't matter your role in an organisation; it is possible to use visualisations to discuss other points of view and the different options and trade-offs.

This hands-on will take you through evolving an organisation by using different visualisations such as Wardley Maps, Context Maps, and Team Topologies. We will start with a Wardley Map to create the context for everyone and have a series of exercises to evolve the organisation using other visualisations such as Context Map and Team Topologies. By doing it, you will be creating and evolving the sociotechnical architecture of the organisation. At the end of the session, you will have experienced the different visualisations and combined them. More importantly, how to visualise change and tame the brain.

Principal Consultant and Interim CTO for hireTwitter