optionality: synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project
DESCRIPTION
This presentation examines insights on winning from John Boyd and insights on optionality from Nicholas Taleb to synthesize an optionality approach to development. Boyd had a lot to say about winning. His final brief was titled “The Essence of Winning and Losing.” Much of Nicholas Taleb’s career was spent as an options trader on Wall Street. His first best selling book was “The Black Swan.” Black Swan theory refers to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence. Typically, black swan events are unpredicted. They are rationalized in hindsight. Another best seller was “Antifragility.” This presentation summarizes a few highlights from that book. This presentation expands several concepts from Taleb and combines those with insights from Boyd. The capability to synthesize many options and exercise attractive development options rapidly throughout a project enables a properly prepared network of individual contributors to realize non-linear gains that are not possible by alternate development approaches such as ones that focus on managing mandates. Some of the insights to facilitate wins: - The synthesis of many options is facilitated by mobilizing a network with a diversity of specialties (requisite variety) and practicing pair development. - Rapidity is facilitated by designing for disintermediation and enhancing the capability of the network to detect mismatches. - The determination of attractiveness can be improved by designing for recursive approaches.TRANSCRIPT
![Page 1: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Optionality: Synthesizing and Exercising
Attractive Options for Non-linear Gains during your Next Project
Mark A Hart#BoydAndBeyond
4 October 20141
![Page 2: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Objective
Analyze insights on winning from John Boyd and insights on optionality from Nicholas Taleb to synthesize an optionality approach to development
2
John Boyd Nicholas Taleb
![Page 3: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Outline• Common approaches to development projects
• Optionality
• Antifragility
• Using the OODA Loop sketch to represent situations
• Analyses, synthesis, and winning
• Synthesizing and exercising options
• How to improve development experience during your current project and ensure that you win at the end of your next project
3
![Page 4: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
The Gnomes of Product Development
4
Section 1
![Page 5: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Development Experience
• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose
5
![Page 6: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Optionality:A quality of state where choice or discretion is allowed.
6generic*
*Section 2
![Page 7: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Financial Options• Provide the buyer the
potential to take action
• No obligation to buy or sell
7
![Page 8: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Preferred Payoff Function• Asymmetric
• Convexity
8Based on Taleb, Understanding is a Poor Substitute for Convexity, 2014
![Page 9: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
An option is a substitute for knowledge
9
![Page 10: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Options Example
10
It is advantageous to possess a variety of
responses that can be applied rapidly to gain
sustenance, avoid danger, and diminish
adversary’s capacity for independent action(Boyd, Patterns of Conflict, #12)
![Page 11: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Antifragile•An adjective created by Taleb
•The exact opposite of fragile
•Beyond resilience or robustness
11
Section 3
![Page 12: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Characterizations of development environments• Fragile
• Robust
• Resilient
• Antifragile
12
![Page 13: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
From project-to-project• Robust development
environments tend to survive unchanged
• Resilient development environments survive changes from external factors
13
![Page 14: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
Antifragile SystemsAn antifragile system thrives and grows when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and it welcomes adventure, risk, and uncertainty
14
![Page 15: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
The option is an agent of antifragility
15
![Page 16: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Antifragile Example 1
16
Netflix strives to be antifragile. They
attack their solutions to make themselves
a stronger company and improve their
development environment. They stress
their system to build up their ability to
withstand attacks.
“Chaos Monkey is a service which
identifies groups of systems and
randomly terminates one of the systems
in a group.”https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/Chaos-Monkey
![Page 17: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
Antifragile Example 2
17
In the late 1950s and the first half of
1960, Boyd and his students at Nellis Air
Force Base incorporated activities to
improve their antifragility. In the time
between the classroom and the debrief:
“They played grabass. They went rat-
racing. They got into furballs. Boyd gave
them their chance and one by one he
hosed them, and then he nursed them
along, teaching, demonstrating how to
control the Hun”
Ronald E. Cattonat Nellis Air Force Base
(Coram #96-97)
Image from http://www.nellis.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123310303
![Page 18: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
OODA Loop sketch
18Based on the OODA Loop sketch from “The Essence of Winning and Losing” by John Boyd 1995
Section 4
![Page 19: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
Representing loops of various durations
19
![Page 20: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
Representing a series of maneuvers of various durations
20
![Page 21: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
Detecting the duration of a loop
21
![Page 22: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
Representing a series of maneuvers
22
![Page 23: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
Representing operating inside an adversary’s OODA loops
23
![Page 24: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
Representing a competitive encounter
24
![Page 25: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
Representation of the impact on OODA Loop duration when there is a dependency
25
![Page 26: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
Representation of a single effort that is transformed to parallel efforts
26
![Page 27: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
Representing harmonious efforts
27
Boyd’s definition of harmony was the “Interaction of apparently disconnected events or entities in a connected way” (Boyd, 1986. Patterns # 125).
![Page 28: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/28.jpg)
Items not included explicitly in Boyd’s OODA Loop Sketch
28
• Faster tempo or rhythm
• Agility
• Fast transients
• Negative factors and noble counterweights
Fear : Courage
Anxiety : Confidence
Alienation : Esprit
Mistrust : Harmony
Uncertainty : Adaptability
Menace : Initiative
![Page 29: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/29.jpg)
Stacked Representation of an OODA Loop Sketch
29
![Page 30: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/30.jpg)
How will you recognize a win?• Experience
• Problem to be solved• Job to be done
30
Section 5
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snowmobile_race.jpg. Trevor MacInnis.
![Page 31: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/31.jpg)
Preparation to recognize a win
In freshly fallen snow, my friends and I want to experience the exhilaration associated with being a fighter pilot
31
![Page 32: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/32.jpg)
Analyses and Synthesis
32
Boyd’s thought experiment
Boyd, The Strategic Game, 1987
![Page 33: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/33.jpg)
Preparing for an informed analyses
People engaged in activities that are enabled by technologies
33
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mt_hood_territory/8407904161/.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/91591049@N00/14714584344/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hutchike/4549229178/
![Page 34: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/34.jpg)
Analyses
Select one potentially valuable item from each activity then discard and forget the rest of each image 34
Skis
Handlebars
Treads
Motor
![Page 35: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/35.jpg)
SynthesisTransformation and combination
35
![Page 36: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/36.jpg)
In most cases, one analyses and synthesis effort is not enough for a win.
In most cases, one OODA cycle is not enough for a win.
36
![Page 37: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/37.jpg)
A synthesis approach enables one to imagine how several capabilities may work together to produce the desired result
37
![Page 38: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/38.jpg)
“A loser is someone — individual or group — who cannot build snowmobiles when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change; Whereas,A winner is someone — individual or group — who can build snowmobiles, and employ them in an appropriate fashion, when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.”
38
Boyd, Revelation, 1987
![Page 39: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/39.jpg)
39
To win, the emphasis is on the capability to build and employ products in an appropriate fashion when there are unknowns
![Page 40: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/40.jpg)
A winner is not required to be the inventor of a product or the first to market it
40
In 1917, Virgil D. White received a patent for "an attachment designed to convert a Model T into a 'Snowmobile,' a name coined and copyrighted by White" in 1913. Snowmobile on display at the National Postal Museum. Images from http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/museum/1d_Snowbird.html
![Page 41: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/41.jpg)
Validation
In freshly fallen snow, my friends and I want to experience the exhilaration associated with being a fighter pilot
41
![Page 42: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/42.jpg)
Preparing for more analyses
People engaged in activities that are enabled by technologies and enhanced through play
42
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mustafakhayat/10213753235/
![Page 43: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/43.jpg)
More analyses
Select one potentially valuable item from each activity then discard and forget the rest of each image
43
![Page 44: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/44.jpg)
SynthesisTransformation and combination
44
![Page 45: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/45.jpg)
Validate exhilaration45
![Page 46: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/46.jpg)
How to improve development experience during this project and ensure that you win at the end of the next project
46
Section 6
![Page 47: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/47.jpg)
Development Options• More than a negotiated agreement
based on speculation• Multiple options can be explored
simultaneously• Associated with current capabilities• Within project constraints
47
![Page 48: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/48.jpg)
Requisite Variety
48Formulated by W Ross Ashby
= variety of potential responses
= variety of disturbances (problems) = variety of outcomes tolerable bythe essential variables
![Page 49: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/49.jpg)
Achieving Requisite Variety• Mobilize network of contributors
with diverse specialties and multiple perspectives
• Additional training
• Access to expertise
• Cooperation
49
![Page 50: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/50.jpg)
Without requisite variety, familiar patterns may not be recognized as insufficient responses
50
![Page 51: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/51.jpg)
Without a variety of potential responses at the appropriate times, a development environment may be
fragile51
![Page 52: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/52.jpg)
Excessivevariety may reduce agility
52
![Page 53: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/53.jpg)
To ensure the adaptability of the development network
53
• Amplify appropriately• Attenuate appropriately
![Page 54: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/54.jpg)
Disintermediation• Remove layers between individual
contributors and data• Remove barriers between decision
makers
54
![Page 55: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/55.jpg)
Facilitate Disintermediation
• Experience interactions of customers with prototypes
• Direct observations that promote full-fidelity interactions
55
![Page 56: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/56.jpg)
Pair Development• Interaction of disciplines
• Synthesis of options
• Develop self-correcting focus and direction informed by the analyses of multiple perspective
56
![Page 57: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/57.jpg)
Detecting Mismatches
57
![Page 58: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/58.jpg)
RecursionRecursion: any solution or technique in which large problems are solved by reducing them to smaller problems of the same form.
58
![Page 59: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/59.jpg)
59
Ilya Prigogine is known for his definition of dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far-from-equilibrium. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.
![Page 60: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/60.jpg)
Fragility in a development environment tends to promote procrustean rules, mediocrity, and apathy
60
In a fragile environment, one problem or one
failure or one inadequacy can impede success
![Page 61: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/61.jpg)
An antifragile development environment benefits from a moderate amount of stress
61
Antifragility in a development environment tends to promote autonomy, mastery, and purpose
![Page 62: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/62.jpg)
How Pixar Wins • Successfully searching rather
than avoiding failure• A successful project is
comprised of millions of ideas and decisions. Show incomplete work (Dailies and notes from Brain Trust)
• Relatively few projects• Training that promotes
interaction
62
“Showing work in an incomplete state reduces the potential for one group to perfect the wrong thing”
![Page 63: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/63.jpg)
Optionality
63
• Development options• Requisite Variety• Amplify and attenuate• Disintermediation• Pair development• Detect mismatches• Recursion• Far-from-equilibrium• Antifragile
Summary
Synthesizing and Exercising Attractive Options for Non-linear Gains during your Next Project
![Page 64: Optionality: Synthesizing and exercising attractive options during your next project](https://reader036.vdocuments.mx/reader036/viewer/2022062615/5486e61eb4af9fca3b8b476a/html5/thumbnails/64.jpg)
Optionality: Synthesizing and Exercising Attractive Options for Non-linear Gains during your Next Project
64
www.Developing-Winners.com
Twitter: @OpLaunch
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahart