Software And Systems Architecture, more or less
Profile pic: drawing of me (gifted to me); upside down, as if in a reflection, with cloudy sky and little architecture drawing character hanging from frame
| Web | https://www.ruthmalan.com |
| Classes | https://ti.to/bredemeyer/ |
RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116127865101820682
“Equilibrium states follow the second law of thermodynamics, so that no work can be done when equilibrium is reached, whereas the openness to the environment of a steady state maintains the capacity of the organism for work, without which adaptability, and hence survival, would be impossible.”
Went to IU Ballet’s Spring Ballet last night and it was gorgeous, and such a delight — humans do that!! They put years of their lives — so much of their childhood — into very VERY! disciplined practice. Building technique, flexibility, strength, and artistry.
And goodness, is it a visual demonstration of what can be achieved with trust in highly collaborative teaming among humans who are prepared to play their roles in each movement that takes trust to learn, and repeat, and perform!
RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116127865101820682
Monday April 6 discussion of “The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments”
The title itself is thought provoking (in an Alicia Juarrero “Context Changes Everything” sort of way :)
Join us? (Free but sign up.)
This one will be led by @trondhjort — bringing so much background practitioner experience and deep inquiry into sociotechnical and open systems.
And a lovely set of folk joining the discussion! It makes for an interesting **engagement** with the paper, and community!
“Yeah, that's how you get got in this process. Once you stop scrutinizing the model's output, the probability something goes off the rails approaches 1. "Human in the loop" is necessary, but the current process itself makes the loop stultifying, and encourages the human to take themselves out of the loop. That process is straight up dangerous. The temptation to let it rip is always there, and I didn't even have a boss pressuring me to ship code.”
Supply chain risk perception: foresight vs hindsight:
top supply chain perceived risks:
geopolitical instability disrupting supply chains: 34% in 2025
Now?
This concludes my thread on #sociotechnical design principles. If you like to have a look, use this as an entry point, as the threading was a bit tricky to get right. Click on each one for more details. There are so many valuable insights here that we need when establishing sociotechnical systems
RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116127865101820682
We’re discussing “The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments” Emery and Trist on Monday (April 6)! It’s a wonderful group to explore a paper in systems with!
Resilience Engineering “put doing things safely & effectively together to mitigate the risk of these kinds of viability crushing events[..] The starting point was the evidence that systems were more exposed to break down than stakeholders recognized, but major failures occurred less often only due to people who provided the extra adaptive capacity to make things go right.”
— David Woods
A key driver in the origin of Resilience Engineering RE was the need to help organizations outmaneuver complexities that arose in parallel with growth. Organizational struggles with complexity undermined all aspects of system performance & threatened an organization's viability in terms of both large economic harm and safety harm (injuries and deaths). The runaway automation event that bankrupted the Knight Capital in 2010 was characterized by the same dynamics that occurred in events that led to substantial fatalities (eg Boeing crashes in 2018/2019). RE put doing things safely & effectively together to mitigate the risk of these kinds of viability crushing events (eg chapters in the 1st book). The starting point was the evidence that systems were more exposed to break down than stakeholders recognized, but major failures occurred less often only due to people who provided the extra adaptive capacity to make things go right. Doing things safely & effectively depended on supporting and not hindering this adaptive capacity. RE continues to learn from the ongoing stream of challenge cases usually well handled or nearly so. The knowledge, findings, technqiues that followed are even more important today as multiple destabilizing forces now combine to disrupt all systems at all scales up to societal. But need, capability, & adoption are different. Yes, adoption has been slow/spotty. The understanding of how adaptive systems function/malfunction has grown dramatically in conjunction with using this knowledge positively in many projects & sectors. Need is clearer & greater than ever. Now we must expand RE advances to function at/across community, regional, societal & even global scales. This is a tall order. Yet in times where the only certainty is high uncertainty ahead, investing in adaptive capacity is the best strategy available. Carney's Davos talk is a guide to adaptation & re-vitalization given the shock of "rupture" in geopolitical/economic sphere, and parallels what RE has learned about adaptation & re-vitalization for shocks in the safety/technology sphere. The irony is-all of us need to use what we have learned about adaptive capacity ourselves in our roles, including those of us who have tried to advance doing things safely and effectively. Carney highlights re-vitalization & reframing, despite the tensions, and cautions that retreat to the past or cautious incremental steps will be unable or insufficient to rise to the challenges of today.
