Mike's Notes
Useful systems thinking.
Resources
- https://curiousduck.io/
- https://signalsandlevers.com
- https://maven.com/p/4c46b4/ai-adoption-rewired-a-systems-thinking-approach
- https://sim.curiousduck.io/
- https://itrevolution.com/product/signals-and-levels-paper/
References
- Signals & Levers, Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi, IT Revolution. 2026.
Repository
- Home > Ajabbi Research > Library > Subscriptions > Signals & Levers
- Home > Ajabbi Research > Library > Publishers > IT Revolution
- Home > Handbook >
Last Updated
13/09/2026
Signals & Levers: AI Pokes the System
Elisabeth Hendrickson: Elisabeth Hendrickson is a technology leader with hands on experience leading geographically distributed teams. She was VP R&D at Pivotal where she led Engineering and Product for the Big Data Suite, and a VP Engineering at a Series B startup. She is also the co-author of Signals & Levers: Systems Thinking Tools to Unblock Software Delivery (with Joel Tosi), and author of Explore It!, a book on exploratory software testing. These days she works with leaders and teams to unblock software delivery.
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In Extreme Programming Explained (right at the start of Chapter 5, “Cost of Change”), Kent Beck asked a deceptively simple question: “What if the cost of change didn’t rise exponentially over time, but rose much more slowly, eventually reaching an asymptote?”
The question holds profound economic implications. If a change tomorrow costs essentially the same as a change today, there is no penalty for delaying a decision. You can start with the simplest thing that could possibly work, and only make further investments when signals from actual customers—not just opinions—show that it’s needed. Whenever additional complexity starts creeping in, you can invoke the principle of YAGNI: You Aren’t Going to Need It. You don’t have to commit to an approach; you can learn as you go.
That was back in 1999. Today, the promise of AI opens a new line of questions about software economics: What if the time and cost of writing code shrinks to almost nothing?
Yes, we’re in the middle of a hype cycle and actual outcomes have been mixed. You might be skeptical, and rightly so. Perhaps you’ve seen too many instances where AI took indefensible shortcuts, and obsequiously responded “You’re right to challenge this…” when called out on its mistakes.
But suspend disbelief for a moment. What if the promises were real? What then?
If 1K lines of code costs just pennies in tokens, experimentation becomes absurdly cheap. Can’t figure out how to crack that gnarly technical problem? Take 100 runs at it in parallel. Unsure what features real users will actually use? Build them all and collect telemetry. Historically struggled with a flood of demands on engineering’s incredibly limited capacity? Code isn’t a constraint anymore.
And then what? There’s the rub.
Just because experimentation becomes incredibly cheap doesn’t mean your customers will appreciate the thrash of a rapidly changing user experience. Just because you can collect near infinite telemetry data doesn’t mean you’ll be able to turn all that data into actionable insights. At a certain point, an overwhelming amount of data makes even legitimate signals feel like noise. For that matter, just because initial development costs pennies doesn’t mean that maintenance or operations are cheap. Keeping production systems up and running can be expensive.
Every solution—no matter how powerful or good—brings new problems. Software delivery remains a non-linear, socio-technical system. You poke the system and the system pokes back. More code doesn’t guarantee more value.
When we wrote Signals & Levers, we avoided talking about AI. It gets a short mention at the beginning of the book and again at the end of the book. But in between? No mention. Our editors and early readers asked us about that: Why would we ignore the thing that is radically transforming software development right now?
The answer is that we believe systems thinking is evergreen, and we didn’t want premature declarations about the nature of AI’s impact to limit the shelf life of our book. And we were right. When we started this book two years ago, AI was essentially a powerful auto-complete. Now you can unleash fleets of agents to build entire systems nearly unsupervised, and those systems actually work. (There are some big caveats about what has to be true in your system to see those kinds of results, but that’s a topic for another day.)
Upcoming Events
If you're interested in exploring how systems thinking can help you reason about the impact of AI in your context, we hope you'll join us for our latest Maven Lightning session.
- What: AI Adoption, Rewired: A Systems Thinking Approach
- When: Thursday August 27, 10AM Pacific
- To join us, please register on Maven
In this talk, we pull on the systems thinking tools from Signals & Levers, including causal models and variability analysis to explain differences in outcomes. In doing so we help you identify where your organization is best poised to get benefit from AI today and how to find the right interventions in your system to increase the impact AI can have.
We also hope to see you in person at a conference this fall:
- DevOps Midwest @ St. Louis MO, Sep 16
- Prairie Dev Con @ Winnipeg MB, Sep 21 - 22
- Tech Fuse DSM @ Des Moines IA, Oct 15 - 16
- Agile Testing Days @ Potsdam & online, Nov 16 - 19
Or check out our previous appearances on these podcasts:
- Build & Break Through: Joel talked to host Hunter Harris about about high-functioning product teams, integration, customer feedback, and the importance of focusing on strategy over reaction.
- Build & Break Through: In a separate episode, Elisabeth talked to Hunter Harris about systems thinking and feedback loops.
- TechLead Journal: Joel and Elisabeth talked to Henry Suryawirawan about Signals & Levers, the persistent illusions in software delivery, and implications of AI.
- Engineering Alpha in Private Equity: Elisabeth talked to Dave Mangot and Dr. Paul Karner about quality as a strategic advantage for PE-backed companies.
- Leadership & Success Podcast: Elisabeth and Joel talked to Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga (Coach BZ) about building better systems.
- Goto; Joel and Elisabeth talked to Charles Humble about signals, levers, and why systems thinking is having a moment right now.
- Third Loop: Elisabeth and Joel talked to Kim Harrison, Heidi Waterhouse, Adam Zimman, and James Governor about Signals & Levers and seeing software delivery as a system.
And, book news! In addition to the print and e-book pre-order, the audio book is now available for pre-order. It's read by professionals. We got to hear the audition recordings and had a hand in selecting our favorites. There are two: one reads the fiction portions of the book, and the other reads the non-fiction portions. We have't heard the whole thing yet, but we heard a sample and can't wait to hear the rest. Having two readers was definitely the right call.
Finally, the launch date for Signals & Levers is almost here! September 22! We'll have news about our virtual launch event soon.
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