Cognitive Load

Cognitive Load is a concept that models the cognitive effort humans need to apply to learn new information[1]. For what we need in the context of scaling, a simplified description of the concept is that learning requires effort, and the actual amount of effort depends on two main aspects:

• The Intrinsic Cognitive Load of what we want to learn. There are topics that are more or less difficult to learn simply because of the complexity of the topic
• The Extraneous Cognitive Load is, instead, dependent on how we learn and how the materials to be learned are made available.

While the Intrinsic Cognitive Load cannot be changed, the Extraneous Cognitive Load is, instead, a parameter that is impacted by how a company operates and, as such, it should be part of the experiments and improvement activities that makes a company more agile. To create a Learning Organisation, it is fundamental to facilitate learning. Several techniques described in Craft can help with this.

Note: this concept is different than the concept of Cognitive Load described in the popular book Team Topologies, which is actually much closer to what in psychology is called Mental Workload.