Information Processing - Systems thinking (III)

We are evolving into the information age but have a lot of challenges to understand in what it is about in information systems. Systems thinking: understanding the information system as a whole gives a structure to adapt to changing environment changing conditions the information system as a whole.

What is required at all systems:

1. Does the system work?
2. Is it robust? If the context changes, does it degrade gracefully or fail catastrophically?
3. Is it efficient? .. not only in terms of financial resources, but also human resources, energy resources, environmental resources, etc.
4. Does it minimize unintended actions, side effects, and consequences?

Systems engineering (SE) is a relatively young discipline, but evolving rapidly in the face of increasing recognition of the need for a systems approach to facilitate not only the successful engineering of complex systems but also the creative development of elegant solutions to complex problems.

Elementary building blocks

In the context of information processing we have two states of the information.

• Information is somewhere store (at rest) at a location. It could be a zone this meant to handle the information outside the system (DMZ De-Militarised Zone), a backend or frontend location or a specialised are for knowledge about the information content
• information that is not anymore in a clear state because it is being transformed into a new different state of information

There is an continuous interaction between those two states during the flow of processing. There is flow to deliver, the push, and a flow for controlling the demand both in several steps

A generic structure for between demand and delivery of change.

All organisations are unique in the same way as all humans are unique. All humans have a similar design of their way to interactions to align activity so all organisations are likely to have a similar design for their interactions alignment at least there must be many that are similar. The question is how would a model for a generic organisation interactions system look like?

Only having the focus for what done by technology is the "DevOps" doublet. What has been missing in that is that real driver for change is not technology but what is set by strategy at the organisation. The vision by a purpose what goes into missions formulated as strategy. There is an Portfolio-Plan doublet in a zoomed out structure of the system. Any system can be evaluated for extending to a macro-level (more complex systems) or decomposing it into simpler micro-levels (components).

The question in this: how to manage the knowledge for a start and result of all those relevant interactions? A framework and the support by real products for that is the "Jabes" proposal.

Using knowledge at changes, for changes

Managing a system is very difficult by all of what is assumed, missing ambiguous or even what has been wrong stated. How a system is seen using a generic model is however doable. Extending and using the Viable system theory there is a lot possible to classify for maturity and define indications for maturity. This is beyond the understanding and diagnosing of systems, is systems engineering.

The choice in improvement cycles are related to the type of what to improve.

1. Your can improve the situation that is running in small steps: DMAIC
2. You can change the situation by an design overhaul: PDCA
3. There is an unexpected event happening: OODA

The DMAIC and PDCA are activities with a different location to start but are complementair to each other. Both type of changes are important to have in place as is reaction on events.

What is changed is another dimension, options are:

1. The quality/quantity performance of the primary value stream that is delivering results in products and/or services.
2. Changing the products and/or services or the tools with instructions that er needed for them.
3. Adjusting the organisation that is supporting the activities in the now or adapting the support for them what is expected in the future.

More content (external)

There is a long brain dump for this, an adjusted Zachman structure as the whole. It is not the result what is the most important of that but the journey what resulted into to result. https://metier.jakarman.nl/