Signals & Levers: Systems Thinking Tools to Unblock Software Delivery

Stop fighting symptoms. Start finding solutions. Discover the systems thinking tools that actually work.

In Signals & Levers, Elisabeth Hendrickson—former VP R&D at Pivotal and author of the enduring Explore It!—and Joel Tosi—who has spent 25+ years delivering software and a decade helping teams stop “change theater”—teach you to see through the illusions that plague every software organization. Using tools from statistical process control, systems thinking, and economic theory, they show you how to identify real problems and find the levers that create lasting change.

Each chapter delivers practical techniques. Learn to spot critical illusions that derail delivery, build causal diagrams that reveal system dynamics, and uncover hidden connections that make obvious solutions backfire. See how to separate signal from noise, frame problems as testable hypotheses, visualize trade-offs as continuums, build cultures that learn instead of repeating mistakes, and ultimately choose the right path forward given your context. Plus, “Better in 30 Minutes” exercises let you practice immediately.

Along the way, you’ll meet Theresa, an engineering director. She learned that her teams are late delivering the next release. Again. Frustrated, she digs into the data only to discover that she’s been suffering from illusions that readers will find all too familiar. You’ll follow Theresa's journey as she learns to read signals and find the right levers to fix systemic issues.

Whether you're a developer tired of death marches, a CTO struggling with predictability, or a PM wondering why everything takes longer than planned, this book provides the systems thinking skills that transform software organizations.

Elisabeth Hendrickson is a technology leader with 30+ years experience and a track record for building highly effective leadership teams. She led a geographically distributed organization with ~170 engineers, product managers, and designers as a VP R&D at Pivotal, a publicly traded company. She has also been a VP engineering at a series B startup, and has held various other technical leadership roles in addition to hands-on-the-keyboard roles as a programmer and tester.

Her book Explore It! from Pragmatic Bookshelf remains popular over a decade after publication. These days she works with technology leaders to improve collaboration, decision making, and execution.

Joel Tosi has been delivering software products for over 25 years. Along the way, he has felt frustrations that he couldn’t express effectively; managed teams where he could see the problems they were experiencing, but couldn’t get peers to see it the same way; and seen far too many good intentions end with less than desirable results. Joel has stories.

For the past decade, Joel has focused on helping make it easier for teams to enjoy their work and innovate. This has led him to need to find new ways to express what is holding teams back so everyone could see the same reality. Frequently what is holding teams back is the network effect inside of an organization - the system reacting. Blindly following processes never solves this.

Joel started leveraging the techniques in this book to help teams tell their story at first, then to educate managers and executives on the techniques in this book so they could make better decisions together. Ultimately it is about stopping change theater.

Joel has been presenting the concepts in this book internationally for over 5 years and continues to explore new ways to leverage these techniques to help make work more enjoyable. The joy when people say “now others can see what I have been feeling” is a wonderful feeling.