I'm part of a "Papers in Systems" reading club, which meets monthly to discuss a chosen paper. This month we read the lecture transcript from Donald Schön's 1970 REITH lecture series, session 2: Dynamic Conservatism (pdf). I found this to be a very enjoyable and insightful read, especially as someone who has frequently tried (and failed!) …
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21 May 2020 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 14 December 2021“No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering” is a famous paper written by Fred Brooks in 1986 that focuses on the difficulties inherent in developing software. The essence of the paper is summarized by the quote at the start: There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity. With his hypothesis further elaborated close to the beginning of the paper: Not only are there no silver bullets …
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Members can access our most up-to-date version of this resource collection in the Embedded Systems Field Atlas. After a decade spent building and shipping hardware products, I became convinced that many of the problems and schedule delays I experienced could have been avoided with a little bit of planning and thought. Repeatedly, we painted ourselves …
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One of the largest news stories over the past month was the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX-8 and MAX-9 aircraft after an Ethiopian Airlines crash resulted in the deaths of everyone on board. This is the second deadly crash of involving a Boeing 737 MAX. A Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX-8 crashed in October 2018, …
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A famous John Gall quote from Systemantics became known as Gall's Law. The law states: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You …
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Anyone building a product, leading a team, or running an organization needs to listen to a talk by Dr. Ackoff titled "Beyond Continual Improvement". Dr. Ackoff touches on continual improvement, concepts of quality, and implications of systems thinking that are commonly overlooked. As long as we ignore the points described in this lecture, our efforts …
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