Software Design: Tidy First?: Thinkies

Unstick Your Stuck Thinking

Kent Beck — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:07:48 GMT

“We can’t deploy more often because we have too many defects.”
“So when we have fewer defects we can deploy more often?”
“Wait, I didn’t say…”
“How would we have fewer defects? Programmers writing tests. Reviews of every production incident with followups.”
“How did you come up with so many ideas?”

It’s not magic. It’s Thinkies. This one is called “Can’t/Because”. And you can learn any one of a hundred Thinkies to unstick your thinking at Thinkies World Congress II, online May 20, 2026.

Thinkies

Thinkies are learnable pattern transformations you can use to shift how you see a situation, expand the space of options, and spark new ideas — especially when things feel stuck or prematurely decided. It’s not about having the right idea, it’s about generating lots of ideas — some of which might be brilliant.

Thinkies help you notice when a conversation or decision is falling into a predictable groove — and then offer you a way to step sideways, flip the frame, or open up new paths.

TWC

The whole congress gives you a chance to get your hands on Thinkies in a supportive environment. We'll be gathering around virtual tables at the event, where facilitators will guide groups of attendees in applying a Thinkie to a sticky scenario and brainstorming ideas.

One cool thing about Thinkies World Congress is that it doesn’t have to cost you a cent. Sign up as a facilitator, learn one Thinkie deeply at our facilitator’s training, & you’re in the game.

We’re looking to fill the rest of our roster of facilitators, but training starts May 5. Sign up here! Or sign up as a participant if you prefer.

The closing panel discussion on the nature of creativity, inspiration, & innovation is crammed with world-class thinkers. Not to be missed.

Program Committee

Our team of brilliant organizers have spent half a year bringing you TWC II: Blake Lindsay , Bruno Monteiro, Mário Melo , Wisen Tanasa , Carlo Gilmar. All led by the ringleader Arty Starr. (Give them all a listen on LinkedIn.)

Thinkie: Reinforcing Loop

Kent Beck — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:27:42 GMT

Pattern: The worse things get, the worse things get. Every time you try to intervene, it gets even worse.

Transformation: Map the effects & how they affect each other. Find the cycle with an even number of inhibitions. Go upstream & push one of the effects the opposite direction.

Okay, that’s an abstract brainful. But this is the most powerful tool I have for making big changes with small efforts, so it’s worth it. I promise. We’ll start with an example.

Thinkie: Reinforcing Loop

Kent Beck — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:55:38 GMT

Pattern 1: You have a situation where the worse it gets, the worse it seems to get

Pattern 2: You are looking for a way to create large effects with a small investment

Transformation: Find a loop of effects in an influence diagram which has an even number of negative connections. Go backwards in that loop until you find something you can push in the oppos…

Thinkie: Influence Diagram

Kent Beck — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 14:48:36 GMT

Pattern: you have a big, complicated system that’s acting up & you’d like to regain influence over it

Transformation: diagram the effects you observe in the system & their influence on each other

Thinkie: Influence Diagram follows from Thinkie: Separate Observation From Judgement. We aren’t rushing to take action. More probably we have stepped back from t…

Thinkie: Aligning Incentive

Kent Beck — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:47:48 GMT

Pattern: people are working at cross purposes.

Transformation: rather than tell people what to do to work together, give them an incentive that will indirectly require collaboration.

WARNING! Any time I say “incentive”, some readers read, “Money! 💰!!!” Nope. Nope-ity nope. Yes, money is an incentive, but it is one of the most dangerous, most subject to G…

Thinkie: Edges

Kent Beck — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 13:18:42 GMT

Pattern: You aren’t getting enough resources coming in externally to be successful

Transformation: Increase the interaction of different kinds of resources

Okay, this Thinkie is pretty abstract as stated. Let’s start with an analogy. If you have a pond, would rather it be round or irregular?

The temptation is to make the pond round. After all, the round po…

Thinkie: Ask the Genie

Kent Beck — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 15:10:47 GMT

Pattern: You have a question, any question, especially a question you have tended to abandon because it would be too much work.

Transformation: Ask the genie.

This is a habit. A new habit. But a habit. A highly profitable but also highly variable habit. That is, sometimes the genie has a great answer & sometimes just distraction, but the great answers are…

TWC I Wednesday, 4 June 2025

Kent Beck — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 20:18:42 GMT

That’s what I get for writing with a concussion. TWC I is tomorrow, Wednesday, not Thursday. See some of you there & we’ll report to the rest of you.

Thinkie World Congress I

Kent Beck — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 19:20:12 GMT

One day until TWC I (I think we’re going with the Super Bowl-style Roman numeraling). It’s sold out, but we hope to have a larger-capacity TWC II soon so if you missed out, please don’t despair.

I want to thank the team, without whom this definitely wouldn’t have happened.

—the ringleader. Took a vague idea from me. Filled in all the details. Kept gently…

Thinkie World Congress 1: June 4

Kent Beck — Tue, 13 May 2025 17:42:12 GMT

Your brilliant program committee has been preparing the first Thinkie World Congress. It will be an online-only event. The outline is:

Introduction by yours truly
Facilitated discussion of a variety of Thinkies
Reflection on the discussion & cross-fertilization of ideas
Second facilitated discussion of different Thinkies
Reflection
Cognitive scientist gives t…

Thinkie: Set-Based Design

Kent Beck — Wed, 07 May 2025 15:20:38 GMT

Pattern: You are choosing between 2 or more options & you don’t have the information needed to choose wisely yet.

Transformation: Implement some of them all until one is clearly superior.

I’m running into this right now with a personal project—a server-grade implementation of Smalltalk. Should I implement the virtual machine as a bytecode interpreter or a…

Thinkie: No Time Axis

Kent Beck — Thu, 01 May 2025 13:32:20 GMT

Pattern: You’re stuck trying to understand or explain the relationship between two factors over time

Transformation: Ignore time & graph the two factors as the two axes

This Thinkie is a big departure. I haven’t said a word about visualizations so far, even though they are a big part of my thinking & communication strategy. I suppose my graphical Thinkies…

Inhibiting Loop

Kent Beck — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 13:20:47 GMT

This is the first in a series on systems thinking. There is so much more to systems thinking than this, but these are the bits I use daily. I recommend Diana Montalion’s Learning Systems Thinking or Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems as good starting places if you want to dig in.

Pattern: you want to improve but instead you’re going backwards.

Transforma…

Thinkie Aligning Incentive

Kent Beck — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 15:00:37 GMT

Pattern: You can see that folks are working at cross purposes

Transformation: Give them an incentive that will influence their actions towards a common goal

When I say “incentive”, folks immediately think “money”. While money is a powerful incentive, it also tends to distort behavior, precisely because it is so useful & so personal. Still, “$100 to everyo…

Thinkie Perverse Incentive

Kent Beck — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 14:20:12 GMT

Pattern: People are working so as to sabotage progress towards a desired outcome.

Transformation: Look at their incentives from their perspective. Change the incentives. The behavior will follow. (Unless you screw up the incentives, which is easy to do.)

Sales people are poaching sales from other regions, resulting in lower overall sales for the company. …

Thinkie: Change Tradeoff Curves

Kent Beck — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 13:03:52 GMT

Pattern: You’re stalled trying to make progress changing the outcome of a tradeoff.

Transformation: Rather than trying to change the outcome directly, change the shape of the tradeoff curves.

Continuous deployment is an example. We’d like to deploy more frequently for lots of good reasons. However, the cost per deployment is killing us.

I’ve seen folks jus…

Thinkie: Tradeoff

Kent Beck — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 15:50:56 GMT

The International Symbol for “Tradeoff”

Pattern: Someone is trying to maximize some outcome, perhaps getting frustrated that progress has slowed.

Transformation: Ask—

How much increase do you need?
What are you giving up as you increase the outcome?
What will increase friction as you increase the outcome?

I remember going to the Sunnyvale (California) library…

Thinkie Reverse Causality

Kent Beck — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 14:02:25 GMT

Pattern: You’ve tried to make a change by Thinkie Move Upstream [ed: not yet written].

Transformation: Treat the effect as the cause.

Let’s say as your organization has grown there are so many meetings that no one can get any work pushed to production any more. You try just eliminating meetings but they spring back up like mushrooms after rain. It’s norma…

Thinkie Search Space

Kent Beck — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:25:45 GMT

Pattern: You need to act in a context where you can’t predict what the result of actions will be.

Transformation: Treat the choice of action as moves around a search space. Characterize the space.

Ensure that actions are reversible.
Identify the dimensions of variability.
Observe whether the space is smooth or spiky. Do small changes in action result in lar…

Thinkie Nash Equilibrium

Kent Beck — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 14:05:56 GMT

Pattern: Two or more parties are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship but everyone refuses to change.

Transformation: Take a step back & show the whole dynamic to all parties.

These kinds of change-encouraging Thinkies are fraught. People don’t make rational choices. I still tend to assume they do, leaving me baffled most of the time. However, it’s just …