Synthesising system development methods and not gearing up for schizophrenia

There are various systems development methods and concepts that address some issues within the complex environment of "Systems of Systems". Think of DevOps, Scrum, XP, Kanban, RAD, DAD, ... When faced with the challenge of developing a system under time, budget/money and people constraints, it surely is common sense to tailor a method that fits your challenge. This is generally done by synthesising concepts from existing methods.

If the synthesis is well thought, a development and operations environment is created that harmonises people, tools, processes and other resources. Otherwise the environment gears up for schizophrenia. Environments gearing up for schizophrenia are common place with symptoms such as "people with overloaded concurring roles", "Information overload & reload", "multiple inconsistent information communicated over multiple communication channels" ...

Contrary to schizophrenic environments, desired harmonious environments are created by carefully mapping and sourcing people, tools, processes, accessories and other resources within the given constraints. In such harmonious environments collaborators have an overview perspective from where they can zoom in and out of details to facilitate consistent and coherent communication. A key challenge in these environments is to sustainably maintain information consistency and coherency. This can safely be addressed with SAFe in a healthy mature and experienced manner (bringing the right people together).

Getting the right people, processes and tools at the right place and time is easily said than done. The discipline, time, money, knowledge and attitude required will not be available at all times. And in the context of continuous improvement, this reality is responsible for some skewed decisions screwing up various enterprises.

There is no silver bullet to address these challenges. Every team will have to forge its own bullet and hope it is well formed to assure the development and protection of the desired environment.