Healthy Feedback Loops

Feedback Loop: A part of a system in which some portion of the system’s outputs are fed back into the system as inputs. These “recycled” inputs prompt adjustments to the system according to the differences between the actual outputs (now inputs) and the desired or optimal outputs.

Feedback loops exist everywhere around us; in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our businesses. In this article, we will look at the types of feedback loops we encounter, relate those types to the feedback loops that we leverage in our everyday environments, and, finally, look at how we can ensure that the feedback loops we create and use in our work (and other) environments are as healthy as possible.

Types of Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are classified as either positive or negative. These classifications do not indicate whether a feedback loop is good or bad, value-added or waste, effective or ineffective.

A negative feedback loop, also known as a balancing loop, works to stabilize a system or a process. The intent of a negative feedback loop it to place a check-and-balance on the system to ensure that it operates at a desired, and hopefully optimal, baseline. For example, our body temperature is maintained by a negative feedback loop creating homeostasis. When we exercise, our body temperature is pushed to rise. That rising body temperature (output then input) triggers our brain to do numerous things, such as sweat, to maintain our body temperature at 98.6F.

A positive feedback loop, also known as a reinforcing loop, works to move and even accelerate a system to change and move away from it’s initial state. Apples ripening on a tree is an example of this. As one apple ripens, it emits ethylene. Ethylene causes the apples nearby to ripen and emit ethylene. Quite quickly, all the apples on the entire tree ripen seemingly at the same time.

Not All Loops are Optimal

The examples above are considered optimal loops. They generate favorable outcomes. However, sometimes both negative and positive loops can result in unfavorable outcomes.

A negative feedback loop with an unfavorable outcome might be the maintenance of a bad habit. For example, you may have a daily routine that encourages you to forgo daily exercise. You get up early because you are overwhelmed with work obligations. Over the course of the day, you get things done, but take on more work obligations for which you have no time. At the end of the day, you are overwhelmed with new things and are now too tired to exercise knowing that you need to get up early again tomorrow to do it all over again.

A positive feedback loop with an unfavorable outcome might occur on the back of the above example. You have a health condition that could be made better with exercise or worsen with the lack of exercise. The more sedentary you are, the worse your condition becomes.

Feedback Loops in Our Ways of Working

Let’s adapt these concepts into our ways of working using agile practices as examples.

Positive, or reinforcing, feedback loops in agile environments focus on continuous improvement of the product we are creating and the continuous improvement of teaming. By continuously improving, we are encouraging change away from our current state in an optimal way.

The product review meeting, for example, is the feedback loop in which stakeholders can observe, experience, and question the product increment. As the team listens to that feedback, they are intaking data with which they can gauge how well they are meeting expectations and get a sense for where to take the product in the future. This allows them to continuously make the product better and more palatable for the user over time.

Similarly for a retrospective. The retrospective is the positive or reinforcing feedback loop for the team as they seek to continually improve how they work together. Unfortunately, for teams that have been together for a long period of a time, a team that is “overly polite” to one another, or the team that lacks psychological safety, the retrospective is at risk of becoming a negative, or balancing, feedback loop. If the team voices only corrective types of actions (Bill and I need to communicate twice a day instead of once a day regarding the UX design) or submits only behaviors that the team needs to continue demonstrating (I like it when Sue starts the daily standup with a dad joke), the retrospective has become a negative/balancing feedback loop and indicates folks are seeking only to maintain their current level of teaming.

Ensuring Our Feedback Loops are Healthy

Healthy feedback loops produce optimal outcomes. Healthy feedback loops have the following characteristics:

• Intent – The feedback loop serves a defined purpose. Is it to balance toward a steady state? Or are we attempting to accelerate change? This may be dynamic, thus requiring the team be intentional in determining whether a feedback loop’s intent must remain the same or be modified.
  
  For example, in a retrospective, the team may decide that one set of teaming behaviors (ie. role delineations) needs to be kept in steady state for the time being, while another set of teaming behaviors (open communication) needs to be put on a track of continuous improvement…for now.
  
  
• Cadence – The feedback loop occurs at intervals that are frequently enough to meet the intent. If our bodies only checked temperature once every 24 hours, we would be in a world of trouble!
  
  
• Measurements and data – The data, indicators, and measurements that indicate either a level of balance or progression of change are defined and agreed upon. If we are measuring our team’s ability to move stories through an iteration to done, what is our velocity? How will we track and monitor it? What variance level will indicate that an adjustment to our agile system is needed? Healthy feedback loops drive action.
  
  
• Safety, trust, inclusivity, and commitment – In our agile ways of working, people are the key. People define all the above attributes. People will make mistakes. People will have ideas that make other people uncomfortable. People create and contribute to feedback loops. If the right people are not included and if those people don’t feel safe in communicating or receiving feedback messages, our feedback loops are likely to fail.
  
  
• Regular re-evaluation – Thank goodness our body temperature remains self-regulated due to a fairly fail-safe negative feedback loop. But the feedback loops we create for our ways-of-working must be continually re-evaluated. In other words, we need feedback loops for our feedback loops!

If a feedback loop is no longer meeting its intent, if its cadence is causing it to be ineffective, or if it is no longer producing optimal results, we have an unhealthy feedback loop. It is time to diagnose its root problems and either make it whole and healthy again or decommission it.

I challenge you to look around and identify the feedback loops in which you participate or that you manage.  Are they healthy? What feedback loops might be valuable that you need to create or formalize? Do you need reinforcement or balance? So many loops, so little time.

Happy looping!

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This article was written by Bonnie Baldus.

Bonnie is an accomplished Agile Instructor, Consultant, Facilitator, Coach, and Educational Program Designer with a talent for simplifying complex concepts for learner comprehension and engagement. She currently instructs several ICAgile-accredited courses at SkillsDG.

Sources:

Systems Thinking: Feedback Loops - The W. Edwards Deming Institute

Khan Academy

And for further information:

Lianne Wappett: Feedback loop: creating healthy conflict through critiques | TED Talk

Feedback Loops Explained: 4 Examples of Feedback Loops - 2024 - MasterClass