Johannesburg, 12 Feb 2015
In previous articles published on ITWeb, I raised the notions of companies transforming rather than changing, and evolving resilience rather than building robustness, says Stephen de Villiers Graaff, Principal Agile Consultant at DVT.
In each case I made the argument that to become truly agile - not only for the purposes of software development, but also as a mantra for the future direction of the business - companies needed to both transform and develop a certain degree of resilience to overcome their bottlenecks, attain their goals and remain competitive in a fast-changing environment.
To recap, too many companies have erred on the side of robustness, looking to avoid failure at any cost, and in doing so trying to build systems that account for every possible eventuality. Not only is this impossible, but systems become so bloated with checks and balances they eventually hinder rather than aid, crippling the business in the process and achieving the exact opposite of agility.
Those that have seen the light and move towards a more resilient development approach accept that failure is inevitable, and instead focus their systems on early detection and recovery, effectively becoming far more nimble.
But that's not the end of the story, far from it.
In his book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues some systems actually benefit from failure and thrive from exposure to unexpected shocks and changes. They essentially thrive from their fragility, but need to learn from it and adapt so future shocks are mitigated. They need to become the opposite of fragile - or antifragile.
In his own words: "Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better."
Although controversial and sometimes contradictory in his thesis, Taleb's observations hold much value for us students of agility. Take the human body, for example, as a good analogy.
As a system, the human body needs stress in order to strengthen and grow. Straining the muscles through exercise, for example, improves circulation and increases strength. The introduction of small amounts of toxins in vaccinations encourages the development of antibodies that fight off exposure to those toxins in diseases.
The human body is so antifragile, that leave it in a state of inactivity for a long enough period and it ceases to function.
That's not to say any amount of stress is ideal; indeed too much stress is just as dangerous to the human body 'system' as no stress at all. The key is finding an appropriate amount of stress that benefits the body and stimulates its ability to learn and grow.
We all know exercise is essential to good health, but too much exercise can actually be harmful. Long distance running, for example, can lead to knee injuries and other skeletal problems, and too much cycling can actually result in lower bone density over time. The combination of moderate running and cycling, however, benefits the body immensely without any serious negative impact.
The same applies to our corporate systems. Too little 'stress' and we risk losing our innovation, becoming satisfied with the status quo. Too much stress and we end up with chaos, having to put out multiple fires, and creating an impossibly erratic business environment.
But introduce just enough stress into the business and suddenly our focus is sharpened, and we start to notice opportunities we didn't know existed before. In a business sense, our antifragile systems become far more responsive to changes that come into our environment.
The key, again, is balance. Build too much robustness into your systems and they become turkeys fattened by the farmer for the slaughter, with the same false sense of security that comes to an abrupt end just before Christmas. A shift in thinking - transforming rather than changing - allows for more resilience, but too much resilience and we start to lose sight of opportunities when the shocks do come, often because we're too busy predicting and avoiding them.
To take a step beyond resilience is to take a step towards simplicity. We want our systems to be as pluggable and unpluggable as possible. We want components that are single-purpose and highly replaceable, with appropriate levels of redundancy built into every aspect of the system.
But, most of all, we need to avoid the mindset of impossible perfection, which is ultimately unattainable and negates the very necessary shocks we need as we make our way towards true agility.
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