You should start seeing some more frequent posts now… I promise! My next MSc STiP module is due to start in November and I will once again be using this blog to record some of my thoughts and associated activities. The Open University does provide an online blogging tool inside the StudentHome section of their… Read More Refreshing my Systems Journey
“The solutions that we design for problems are obsolete by the time we are ready to deliver them.” Agile is not new. Many software companies have adopted it over the last decade, picking up on the increased speed to market that such an approach can provide. Others have managed with more iterative change but are… Read More Some interesting opportunities; working towards Agile
My second @OpenUniversity assessment was handed in this week; looking at Viable Systems Model (VSM) by Stafford Beer and Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA) by Ackermann and Eden. I will do some 101 posts on these in due time to match Systems Dynamics 1 and Systems Dynamics 2. I found this TMA significantly harder… Read More Procrastination and being aware of it
There has always been something I find both fascinating and yet slightly ‘off-putting’ about UK politics. Since reaching voting age I have always taken it to be part of my civic duty to vote, but over the years I have grown steadily more disillusioned. It has just become so unbelievably nasty. Brexit is a prime… Read More There Can Be Only One… Point of View?
Today is a bit of a landmark for me. It is the cut-off date for my first Post Graduate assignment. It’s all submitted now. The eggs have hatched… the birds have flown. As regular readers of my blog will know, I am currently in the early stages of taking an MSc Systems Thinking in Practice… Read More Observations on a Systems Thinking eTMA
in Looping the Loops I introduced the idea of reinforcing and balancing loops, and some basic Systems principles, Now I feel I should try and put what I have learned into practice: FYI: I used InsightMaker to create these diagrams after drafting them out (and moving things around a lot!) on a whiteboard! I haven’t… Read More Systems Dynamics: Joining the dots
A simplified idea of Systems Thinking is that there are consequences to every action; some predicted, and some unexpected. In Systems Dynamics this reaction is known as feedback. A potted history of Systems Dynamics System dynamics was created during the mid-1950s by Professor Jay Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1956, Forrester accepted… Read More Systems Dynamics: Looping the Loop
The recent hoohah over the WannaDecrypt / WannaCry ransomware debacle, and the subsequent shamefaced admittance from a number of institutions that they have not been maintaining and /or future-proofing their systems properly, has once again brought one of my personal ‘bafflements’ into sharp focus. My background in the IT space has most often been supporting the… Read More The bugbear of being Back Office
Systems thinking is both a mindset and particular set of tools for identifying and mapping the interrelated nature and complexity of real world situations. It encourages explicit recognition of causes and effects, drivers and impacts, and in so doing helps anticipate the effect a policy intervention is likely to have on variables or issues of… Read More Quotes: System Thinking
I am currently reading a book by the Nobel prizewinner, Daniel Kahneman – a person described by Steven Pinker as “the world’s most influential living psychologist”. Entitled ‘Thinking: Fast and Slow‘, it is a weighty tome which provides a great deal of research based – and choice anecdotal – insights in the concepts of Behavioural… Read More What You See Is All There Is
