About
Profound is a collection of playbooks and instruments for understanding a system of work.
Most organisations cannot describe how they actually deliver value, only how they think they do. The tools here help close that gap. Playbooks describe practices that have travelled well across contexts. Instruments surface the signals - cognitive load, flow, collaboration overhead, learning rate - that tell you what your system is actually doing.
The instruments are sensemaking tools, not dashboards. They produce conversations, not scores. Deming was clear that the most important figures for managing an organisation are unknown or unknowable. The instruments collected here are designed for that reality.
The collection draws on Deming, Team Topologies, DORA, the Improvement Kata, and the wider sociotechnical tradition. It is opinionated. New material is added when it has proven itself in practice.
Maintained by Benedict Steele.