What is a case study..? Basically, it is a story. Story of a project, or of a company, or of some change initiative, maybe even about a transformation…
Like most of the stories, it is quite interesting what happened and how… For me personally, cases are nice and pleasent reading, most of the time.
With that said, I should admit, I have very mixed feelings about case studies. Of course, not about cases themselves, but how those are used (or misused). In particular, there are 2 major issues I see all over again and again:
- When discussing cases (for example in a class context or with some internal group for a customer), there are 2 anti-patterns happening often:
- Every case provides some context that could be used for specific questions or discussions. And, of course, let’s say, often there is quite some number of other issues which are far from the perfect state. Regardless of the question in mind (the reason why we are discussing the case), it is very often too tempting for participants not to start a discussion on how all other issues could be fixed…
- It could be very hard to stop adding your own context to an existing case. People see/hear some part of the story and then start adding details based on their understanding, experience, and so on. Very soon story became a mix of facts (from the case itself) and assumptions made by participants of the discussion.
Both of these issues are fixable. After some experiences of going through cases and discussing different aspects of those, it changes for the better. So it is very much trainable.
- Every case provides some context that could be used for specific questions or discussions. And, of course, let’s say, often there is quite some number of other issues which are far from the perfect state. Regardless of the question in mind (the reason why we are discussing the case), it is very often too tempting for participants not to start a discussion on how all other issues could be fixed…
- Another aspect deals with the tendency of some customers to ask for case studies of similar changes that happened in other similar companies (same industry, similar size, etc). The idea behind this is that they look for some proof that it is doable and could actually help…
The main challenge with this line of thought I can see is that in the “Complex” domain (using Cynefin’s terminology), where at least some aspects of our system belong, context is the king – therefore if it worked one time, it doesn’t mean it is going to work next time because of different context. So if you have a “successful” case in a “similar” organization, it doesn’t prove at all that a similar approach would be working for you. Therefore all case studies are interesting, but could not guarantee anything…
The main driver behind studying cases that I can see is training your internal ability to see relations between different (often looking unrelated) aspects of the system under study. This ability/skill is also known as “connecting the dots”… This skill could be developed and cases work very well for that.
Here are a few sources for case studies I find interesting:
- LeSS Case Studies
- Kanban Case Study Series
- Case Studies from scrum.org
- Nice collection of Kanban case studies by squirrelnorth
- Collection of Scrum Papers at scrum.inc
- Holacracy Success Stories
- List of organizations that are using Holacracy
- Generally useful stuff from InfoQ (not only case studies in this list)
- Disciplined Agile Case Studies
- Scrum@Scale Case Study Library
- SAFe Case Studies
- Agile use in marketing, list by agilesherpas.com
Where do you get case studies to learn from? Please, let me know, I’d love to extend this list.