A while ago, I came across a post on Instagram from a psychologist. Sadly, I didn’t make a note of who wrote it.
The post was about dating after the end of a relationship. One idea in particular stayed with me: when you begin a new relationship, you don’t arrive as a blank slate. You bring aspects of the previous relationship with you.
He said, “Your nervous system is still calibrated to your last relationship.”
Not necessarily because you want it to be, but because experience shapes expectations. Things that happened before can affect what you notice, what you worry about and what feels safe.
And recently I’ve been thinking: the same is true when we start a new job.
But sometimes Agile itself becomes a way of avoiding reality.
When that happens, practices become rigid, language becomes moralistic, and teams are judged not by whether they are learning, but by whether they are following the ‘right’ process.
This is where Cynefin helps.
Cynefin reminds us that context matters. Not every problem is the same. Not every team needs the same response. And not every Agile practice fits every kind of work.
When Agile becomes dogma
Dogmatic Agile usually sounds certain.
It says:
every team must work this way
every backlog must look like this
every Sprint must follow the same pattern
every problem can be solved with better Scrum discipline
That kind of thinking can make people feel safe, because it offers clarity and control.
But it can also become blind.
When Agile turns into a rigid formula, it stops being adaptive.
What Cynefin brings back
A line drawing of the four regions of the Cynefin framework: Clear, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic, plus the central unknown area Confusion. (Source: Wikipedia)
Cynefin asks a more useful question: what kind of situation are we in?
That question changes everything.
In the clear domain, standard practices and repeatable steps may work well.
In the complicated domain, expert analysis and judgement matter.
In the complex domain, you cannot rely on fixed answers. You have to probe, learn and adapt.
In the chaotic domain, you act first to create enough stability to make sense of what is happening.
Cynefin does not reject method.
It rejects the idea that one method fits every situation.
Why this matters in Agile teams
Many teams struggle not because they lack frameworks, but because they are applying the wrong kind of thinking to the work in front of them.
For example:
treating culture change as a process compliance issue
treating uncertainty as poor planning
treating experimentation as failure to decide
treating every deviation from Scrum as a sign of immaturity
These are not just mistakes in practice.
They are mistakes in sense-making.
Agile needs humility
Cynefin introduces humility into Agile.
It reminds us that:
some things can be standardised
some things need expertise
some things have to be explored
some things need immediate stabilisation before anything else
That makes Agile less ideological and more useful.
Instead of asking, “Are we doing Agile properly?”, a better question is “Given the nature of this situation, what approach makes sense here?”
A better kind of Agile
Cynefin does not weaken Agile. It strengthens it by returning it to its purpose.
Agile was never meant to be a belief system. It was meant to help people respond well to change, uncertainty and learning.
Used together, Agile and Cynefin can help teams become less dogmatic, more thoughtful and more responsive to reality.
In the previous posts in this series, we explored the Cynefin framework and the role of constraints.
Now we can connect that lens to something many teams use every day: Scrum.
A powerful insight emerges once you see it: Scrum is not really a delivery framework. It is a way of working designed specifically for the complex domain.
