ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Manish Jain — Applied Organizational Theorist

The question

Why the builders can't fix their own build

Why do brilliant analytical minds build software that changes customers' lives — yet can't fix the process they built for themselves?

Manish has spent years studying this question. Executives, managers and engineers are methodically trained analytical thinkers. They leverage that training to solve complex problems and deliver highly scalable, performant software that makes their customers' lives demonstrably better. And yet, the very same people fail to make their own lives better — the pains of a large-scale software development process they design for themselves persist, and often grow.

This is more paradoxical than it sounds. The growing pain exists despite the adoption of the best tools, the best practices and the best ways of working. Agile. Scaled Agile. Large Scale Scrum. DevOps. Lean. A long list of modern methodologies. Teams learn them, adopt them, measure them — and still struggle.

Why is large-scale product and software development so difficult and painful to manage? Why do smart technologists, who are complex analytical problem solvers by trade, fail to address the dysfunctions they experience in their own daily work?

We are too smart for our own good — hurting ourselves without being aware.

— Manish Jain
The answer

Stop sharpening the axe. Change the grip.

It isn't a lack of analytical problem-solving ability. It's the over-use of it.

Manish believes he has found the reason — and it isn't what most teams expect. The issue isn't that people can't think analytically. The issue is that they only think analytically, and apply that single mode of thinking to problems that require something else entirely. We are too smart for our own good. We are hurting ourselves without being aware.

To see it, open any book on modern software development methodologies and read their listed principles. Scaled Agile (SAFe). Large Scale Scrum (LeSS). DevOps. All of them cite Systems Thinking as the key principle. The question is — why? The only plausible explanation is that there is something wrong with our current form of thinking, and that form, by default, is analytical.

That is why so many transformations fail. Why the struggle with large-scale software development is rampant despite the best tools, best practices, best people and best methodologies. Teams are learning and implementing those methodologies with an Analytical Thinking mindset — while the methodologies themselves ask for a Systems Thinking mindset. The gap between the two is the story Manish is here to close.

Every modern methodology cites Systems Thinking as its first principle. Almost no one actually practises it.

Learn the Systems Thinking way
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