Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Richard Veryard Before the start of the football season, football journalists have little to write about except transfer speculation – wondering which player might be about to transfer from one overpaid job to another overpaid job. This period is known as the Transfer…
A few weeks ago, @Cybersal and I met with @snowded to talk about enterprise architecture. He showed us a graph of the Complex Space, whose two dimensions were Evidence and Consensus. Dave has since posted a version of this graph on his blog.Source: D…
A few weeks ago, @Cybersal and I met with @snowded to talk about enterprise architecture. He showed us a graph of the Complex Space, whose two dimensions were Evidence and Consensus. Dave has since posted a version of this graph on his blog.Source: D…
One seminar (free) and several workshops (pay).Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture and Systems Thinking (EAST)14 June 2013, Central LondonThe meeting is intended for experienced practitioners of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and/or Systems Thinkin…
One seminar (free) and several workshops (pay).Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture and Systems Thinking (EAST)14 June 2013, Central LondonThe meeting is intended for experienced practitioners of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and/or Systems Thinkin…
Is there a difference between function and capability? You can find endless debate about this on the Internet (yawn). One of the reasons business architects often prefer the word capability is that the word function can become extremely overloaded – so…
Is there a difference between function and capability? You can find endless debate about this on the Internet (yawn). One of the reasons business architects often prefer the word capability is that the word function can become extremely overloaded – so…
@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”
Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.
Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.
to be continued …
Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)
@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”
Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.
Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.
to be continued …
Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)
If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves … There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
We who labor at the crossroads of structure and behavior have learned the hard way that content management is far messier than garbage collection and “the system always kicks back.”
Churchman’s interest in computing reaches extensively beyond the metaphor of inquiring systems. He addresses many issues with the state of MIS research of his time, including the tendency of IS researchers to focus on “safe” issues such as “structure of files, retrieval techniques, automatic abstracting, and the like” (Churchman 1968, p.111). He indicates that the majority of such research is not consistent with the systems approach as it focuses on transactions rather than the true goals or benefit of the system. Churchman is also quite visionary as he predicts the ubiquitous role of computers in everyday life. With the ability to “find facts” readily, Churchman predicted that information systems will actually work to reinforce a user’s Weltanschauung (world-view), as the user would screen information based on his Weltanschauung. In order to expand use MIS to expand the user’s view to one that is more holistic, Churchman envisioned a “deadly enemy” proposal for the design of an information system. The main role of this deadly enemy is for the system to propose information results based on assumptions that are opposite of the user’s information request, thereby revealing to the user his fundamental assumptions and at the same time questioning them (Churchman 1968, p. 122-123).
See also Kristo Ivanov, The systems approach to design, and inquiring information systems (2001)
If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves … There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
We who labor at the crossroads of structure and behavior have learned the hard way that content management is far messier than garbage collection and “the system always kicks back.”
Churchman’s interest in computing reaches extensively beyond the metaphor of inquiring systems. He addresses many issues with the state of MIS research of his time, including the tendency of IS researchers to focus on “safe” issues such as “structure of files, retrieval techniques, automatic abstracting, and the like” (Churchman 1968, p.111). He indicates that the majority of such research is not consistent with the systems approach as it focuses on transactions rather than the true goals or benefit of the system. Churchman is also quite visionary as he predicts the ubiquitous role of computers in everyday life. With the ability to “find facts” readily, Churchman predicted that information systems will actually work to reinforce a user’s Weltanschauung (world-view), as the user would screen information based on his Weltanschauung. In order to expand use MIS to expand the user’s view to one that is more holistic, Churchman envisioned a “deadly enemy” proposal for the design of an information system. The main role of this deadly enemy is for the system to propose information results based on assumptions that are opposite of the user’s information request, thereby revealing to the user his fundamental assumptions and at the same time questioning them (Churchman 1968, p. 122-123).
See also Kristo Ivanov, The systems approach to design, and inquiring information systems (2001)
Is systems thinking really possible? Here’s one reason why it might not be.
One of the concerns of systems thinking is the need to avoid the so-called environmental fallacy – the blunder of ignoring or not understanding the effects of the environment of a system. This is why, when systems thinkers are asked to tackle a concrete situation in detail, they often hesitate, insisting that it is wrong to look at the detail before understanding the context.
The trouble with this is that there is always a larger context, so this hesitation leads to an infinite regress and inability to formulate practical inroads into a complex situation. Many years ago, I read a brilliant essay by J.P. Eberhard called “We Ought to Know the Difference”, which contains a widely quoted example of a doorknob. As I recall, Eberhard’s central question is a practical one – how do we know when to expand the scope of the problem, and how do we know when to stop.
C West Churchman went more deeply into this question. In his book The Systems Approach and its Enemies (1979), he presents an ironic picture of the systems thinker as hero.
If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.
Like Eberhard, Churchman seeks to reconcile the heroic stance of the systems thinker with the practical stance of other approaches. But we ought to know the difference.
This is an extract from my eBook on Next Practice Enterprise Architecture. Draft available from LeanPub.
John P. Eberhard, “We Ought to Know the Difference,” Emerging Methods in Environmental Design and Planning, Gary T. Moore, ed. (MIT Press, 1970) pp 364-365
See extract here – The Warning of the Doorknob. The same extract can be found in many places, including Ed Yourdon’s Modern Structured Analysis (first published 1989).
See also
Nicholas Berente, C West Churchman: Champion of the Systems Approach
Jeff Lindsay, Avoiding environmental fallacy with systems thinking (December 2012)
Updated May 14 2013