When the knowledge needed to build a project product does not exist – inside or outside the performing organization – that knowledge will need to be created. This situation is one associated with discovery, invention, innovation, and new product development. The creation of such new knowledge is what the SECI model models. The model is based on research done in Japan by Nonaka and Takeuchi and published in an article titled “The New New Product Development Game”. The model then strongly informed the thinking and practice of leading practitioners in software development, including Sutherland and Schwaber, the inventors of Scrum. In fact, “Scrum” was one analogy that Nonaka and Takeuchi used in their 1986 article to explain the new new product development approach they recommended, and this is where Sutherland and Schaber seem to have gotten the name for their approach, rolled out in the early 1990’s.

This video provides a nice visual explanation of the SECI model.