How Systems Thinking Helps in Work Activities
In the previous sections, we explored the main ideas and techniques of the systems approach. Now, let’s provide a general explanation of how to view any collective activity from the perspective of systems thinking. In other words, how to break the world down into separate parts and connect them, so that you ultimately create a successful system of interest without losing sight of the system-creator. This will help you not only work within a team that is building the system of interest or “our system,” but also interact[1] with other teams that are creating supersystems or surrounding systems, subsystems, or creation systems.
Let’s start with a brief overview of what you have already learned in previous sections about the systems approach. Pay special attention to the second part of the following description, which focuses on the system-creator. This continues the explanation of the essence of the systems approach, which began in the subsection “The use of a systems approach or systems thinking and systematicity” in Section 1, and was later clarified in the subsection “Areas of Interest” in Section 5.
Now it’s time to provide a more complete description, taking into account all the systems concepts you have studied. The logical sequence of reasoning remains the same. We begin with the area of interest of the supersystem—that is, we look at the world we want to change in some way. Then we move on to the system of interest and its structure. After that, we discuss the system-creator, including creation methods, roles, and resources.
The constructor[2] changes the world for the better by creating a successful system that predictably solves certain problems (dissatisfactions) for a particular group of people (target audiences). These people, as the promoter assumes, will change their behavior, so it’s important to understand their project roles and methods, including tools. The success of the system depends on addressing the interests of external project roles[3], and to do this, you need to anticipate the function of the working system (the role of the system of interest) in its environment and take into account the subjects of interest of the project roles.
To achieve this, the product owner[4] creates a usage concept for the system as a “black box.” This helps developers create a system concept that describes the interaction of the system’s functional parts[5] and proposes its structure. It is also linked to the spatial arrangement and to the assessment of the total cost of ownership of the system[6]. These concepts are also used by the visionary to decide whether launching this system of interest to the market will be commercially effective.
Alongside developers, architects are also interested in the system as a “transparent box.” Based on the subjects of interest[7], they determine the principles for dividing the system into modules and organizing the connections between them. The set of such architectural decisions is called the system architecture, which, according to the classic systems approach 3.0, results from evaluating numerous conflicts between system levels[8].
Guided by the principle of continuity of everything[9], the architect tries to organize autonomous creation system teams to deliver increments of the system for modules that are as independent from each other as possible. The overall team aims to detail the descriptions of all systems[10] with enough precision to manufacture the system of interest on the chosen production platform—and to build it[11] using the methods proposed by technologists and DevOps. After that, the system is operated, and everything done is repeated again and again to improve certain parts of the system[12], or even to completely change it, or to change subsystems, or to release other systems of interest.
All of this requires an effective system-creator (most often an organization or enterprise). To develop and operate the production platform (until it becomes profitable), the entrepreneur attracts resources from investors and is interested in the overall success of the enterprise.
Thinking about the system-creator works in much the same way—its functional parts are project roles (organizational roles) that perform a wide variety of tasks using methods[13], and its structural parts are organizational units. Employees of the enterprise, in different project roles, perform tasks using specific methods (practices), as if on a production line (with other agents, including other enterprises, AI, equipment). This production activity is managed by the operations manager[14]. The creation or organization of the production line is initiated by the Chief Transformation Officer[15]. During the creation and/or continuous development of the system of interest, this person may also launch a project to develop the system-creator in order to restructure the current production platform.
Systems thinking about changing the physical world is recursive at many levels and for many different systems. In your project activities or within your enterprise, you may be involved in creating and developing not only the system of interest (with its subsystems), but also the system-creator. In fact, it is even more about an endless process of development, for the systematic organization of which we need systems concepts and certain thinking techniques.
It’s possible that the description[16] of applying systems thinking presented here is not entirely clear to you, but the full picture will come together as you progress through the main AISYSTANT program. Most likely, the first part of this text was clear to you, and the second part, which discusses the system-creator, was less so. We will decode this second part in this section.
Sometimes, this even means getting all members of different teams to reach agreement with each other, not just you reaching agreement with them. ↩︎
In entrepreneurial roles, this person decides to change the world, and may also decide to make money at the same time. It’s best to be aware of both, since people often remember the money but don’t really think about the physical change to the world. ↩︎
These will be played by people from a specific group (the target audience). ↩︎
Or product manager (as a job title), although in Russian business culture, people often refer to systems analysts. ↩︎
Decomposition from the function of the working system. ↩︎
Total cost of ownership takes into account the system’s operating time, which is described in the usage concept, as well as the time required to create the system—that is, a cost description of the system as a “transparent box.” ↩︎
The so-called “-ilities,” that is, architectural characteristics of the system (subjects of interest) such as availability, continuity, performance, recoverability, reliability and safety, resilience, scalability, configurability, extensibility, installability, reusability, localization, maintainability, portability, supportability, and upgradability. Architects also use four key “continuity of everything” metrics: deployment frequency; lead time for changes; change failure rate; and time to restore service. ↩︎
Architects are forced to choose the least bad solutions, because there are no perfect solutions. According to the classic systems approach 3.0, you can’t hope for stability; on the contrary, the world is full of misalignments. So, problems will inevitably come from higher or lower system levels. ↩︎
The principle of continuity will be discussed in more detail in the subsection “Increment and Iteration.” ↩︎
Remember, a project describes several systems at once, not just the system of interest. Some teams will also need to build subsystems, while others will need to build creation systems. ↩︎
Ideally, build an MVP, not a perfect system right away. ↩︎
Incremental development instead of iterative. ↩︎
Including methods for describing different systems, including the system-creator itself. It also needs to be described. ↩︎
The operations manager is an instance of the “managers” class. We also distinguish a manager for external relations (public relations or government relations), who monitors the satisfaction of the interests of external project roles interested in the enterprise’s activities. For example, tax authorities, environmentalists, or public representatives. We also distinguish an administrator, who is responsible for the administrative pipeline, i.e., the work of departments such as accounting, HR, etc. ↩︎
This may be a separate position, or a person in the CIO role may also serve as Chief Transformation Officer. ↩︎
That is, this is a kind of lens through which it is convenient to view any activity. ↩︎