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About The Four Complexities

Most agile practices and methods are “sold” as a way to deal with complex systems. Complexity thinking is interwoven into every part of the expansive Agile tapestry. But, it can be extremely frustrating to pull on any single thread of complexity thinking. That’s what happened to me. But here is a satisfying approach to grasping complexity thinking in agile practice, use The Four Complexities.

Even though complexity-oriented systems thinking is part of all agile methods and practices, when you take all of the literature together, you’ll arrive at a fragmented and inconsistent view of complexity. It’s confusing because our complex systems include all of the things you’ll find described… some of the time.

Are you an agile practitioner? The Four Complexities will help you adapt and relate your view of the complex system adaptively and responsively in a dynamic way so that you can respond effectively to challenges together with many different actors—even when they are using a different view or definition of complexity in their work. The Four Complexities will also help you develop a richer, more accurate, and more useful understanding of your complex adaptive system to use systems thinking and systems action in a transformative way.