Causal Loop Diagram [CLD]

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A Causal Loop Diagram is a visual representation and reference that helps to understand cause and effect connections. It works best when people work together to create it, and the collaboration is used to tease out the common understanding of a problem. I like using them with teams to help think about moving beyond the Quick Fix mentality to deeper, more systemic solutions.

You can see examples of CLDs in action in these anti-patterns, where the Causal Loop Diagram makes more obvious the detrimental affect they can have:

Scrum Anti-Patterns: The Hardening Sprint

Scrum Anti-Patterns: Large Product Backlog

Scrum Anti-Patterns: Micromanagement

Resource Links:

• Exploring the future: four ways to combine future scenarios with causal-loop diagrams
• From the LeSS Toolbox: Causal Loop Diagrams to Visualize System Dynamics
• Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams

See Also:

Improvement Experiments
Large Scale Scrum [LeSS]
Systems Thinking

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