I've finally posted the system redesign canvas. It's a simple one-page tool to help anyone working on difficult problems, and especially business analysts, programmers, process design folks, etc. It's a first draft, so let me know what you think. In exchange for the feedback I will place your name on my office wall, where I will ...
Naive Objectivity and the McNamara Fallacy
In this age of dataharvest many feel a sense of empowerment in their ability to measure and extrapolate from measurement. And indeed, measurement is a magnificently useful tool. But if held too tightly, if the seeming certainty it provides becomes a motivation in itself, the process of measurement can turn on its user. One common way the tool ...
What hacking Shakespeare can teach organizational IT
Last year I did some quick-and-dirty computer-aided text analysis on two Quartos of Hamlet, and it struck me how differently information technology is received in the so-called digital humanities than in workaday organizations. Shakespeare scholars will jealously defend their texts, holding the technology suspect, forcing it to prove its value. And even if it can prove ...
Best definition of design, ever.
to create an artifact, the designer needs to be a scientist to model reality, an epistemologist to metamodel the design process, and an artist to contemplate the result. -- JP van Gigch
How many systems thinkers does it take to change a light bulb?
1. Before answering we must first note that the bulb, its burnout, and its replacement are all factors of psycho-socio-technical system, which must first be understood as a whole. Sure, we could easily replace the bulb, with, say, one guy, but then we'd be reinforcing your neglect of the system and your dependence on easy ...
The Transparency Fallacy
Who is not a fan of informal logic? Who can resist the exploration of the subtle mis-turns of reasoning that lead us into the swamp of error? In honor of professor whatshisname, who was gracious enough to let me pass his logic class, I induct an Internet-age fallacy into the great book of fallacies. It's called the ...
Ruby meets System Dynamics!
Systems Dynamics = A way to model all sorts of systems as a set of feedback relationships. Ruby = A fun, expressive programming language. Put 'em together and you get a flexible and expressive way to model feedback systems! I call it Rubynamics. It's a small library that follows the ever popular "internal DSL" pattern, allowing this growth_frac ...
Category Blindness
This article grabbed me. It describe a dreadful condition that affects all those people born of mothers and then over-educated: category blindness. The article describes the experiences of adults developing Type 1 diabetes but getting a diagnosis for Type 2. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are different conditions. Type 1 diabetes used to be called ...
What’s missing in the advice to “fail small”
The "fail small" advice is becoming more and more widespread. It's meant to get people who make things out of planning mode and into execution by giving them the comforting notion that it's safer to actually produce something than to plan it all out in advance. It's good advice, but most formulation of it leave ...
Reassessing quality measurement of enterprise software
I've been wondering for some time how to assess the quality of enterprise software. Or any software, I suppose, or any artifact. But I'll stick to my humble domain. A software engineering textbook I have on bookshelf has a chapter on "Quality Management," chapter 24 of 28 in total. It links quality to how well a ...
Systems geek marinated in people problems