Time Span of Discretion and Scope of Complexity

We could talk about hierarchies and what, if anything they are good for, and so forth. Here, I just want to talk about the concept of time span of discretion and scope or span of complexity, as these concepts are useful. For example, seniority, generally speaking, comes with increasing scope of concern (across areas of a system, across systems, of systems, and, with more seniority, more impact on ecosystems). For technical leaders, increases in scope mean we’re with dealing with greater complexity, and we need expertise and experience that is rooted in the technical but is increasingly strategic and organizational. And we’re dealing with longer time horizons, so more uncertainty, but also more impactful choices (for example, deciding on a business area to develop, and ruling arenas of business in scope, or out, for the strategic horizon).

Elliott Jaques’ concept of time span of discretion and span of complexity, provides a way to talk about roles and decision span. Those with shorter time span of discretion (and more narrowly scoped decision frames), are making decisions within shorter time horizons with more immediate impact and, often, more conscribed decision autonomy. This may mean that decisions that are local to a team's charter, can be made within the team, but for those that impact some other part of the system, for example, the team may need to involve others in the decision making. 

For roles where the impact of decisions takes more time to unfold, the decision frame encompasses more uncertainty and ambiguity, and experience is relied on to anticipate and shape responses to strategic challenges. As scope increases, boundary spanning introduces new challenges in terms of interaction and “translation” across domains, with increasing uncertainty and responsibility. More hinges on what decisions are made, and not. They impact more of the organization, much of the impact takes longer to be observable, and they have substantive strategic consequences.

"It's the idea that different entities (orgs, roles, etc.) have a span of time in which they can effect change, so that's the span of time to which they tend to pay attention." — Yvonne Lam

Noticing that different roles work at different scopes in terms of systems (of socio-technical systems) and timeframe is useful. The focus is different, so that some are paying local attention and getting stuff done in that sphere of work, while others are keeping an eye on cross-the-system (of sociotechnical systems) co-ordination and longer time horizons setting direction and paying attention to the environment and competitive and other forces, and getting stuff done at that scope. And we recognize that any of these scopes of concern take attention and cognitive bandwidth, and effectiveness relies on building experience, though what is being attended to at different decision fields or span of concern (so kinds of decisions being made) changes with scope. Narrow scope (for example, developing or adapting a mechanism or component), by and large means deep focus and the work is more tangible, or at least the outcomes are (often) more direct and visible in shorter durations. For example, with CI/CD, we're making impact continual with feedback in very short cycles.

In contrast, being more senior in the organization, typically corresponds to having impact across a wider span of organizational and sociotechnical systems (e.g., business areas), and a longer time span of discretion, involving decisions that have a longer time frame before the impact of decisions is realized.

At any rate, the scope and time spans in question differ for different roles, typically increasing with seniority (or span of responsibility). And roles with wider scope of responsibility, require their own kind of expertise and experience working at broader scopes and messier systems (alternatively put, with more wicked problems) and resolving ambiguity by making longer range judgment calls. And along with this span of complexity, there are also demands that relate to increasing organizational effectiveness, because more is achieved indirectly, relying on the work of those working more concretely (yes, that's a weak word in the context of software development, but in a relative sense).

Whether the expertise is deep, or more far ranging in scope of complexity and time span, it is at least in good part developed (yes, we diverge from Jaques' essentialism, where he viewed people as having a time horizon and scope of complexity they are comfortable working at; we take a growth orientation, rather than a fixed predilection orientation). Further, we may choose not to move to broader scopes of concern, because doing so, means losing some of the skills (or fail to keep updating them, in a fast paced tech world) we need at more narrow scope. Or we may choose to move between focus areas, and scopes of concern, to develop the perspective, knowledge and experience set that makes us more effective in boundary spanning roles (tech leadership). However, it is worth bearing in mind that differences in time span of discretion and span or scope of complexity (of different roles), may produce mismatches in how decisions, actions and contexts are viewed.

"the cost of change from an executive, is completely different from the cost of change from a development team” — Jabe Bloom