by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n
If we can’t provide a simple representation of a system, perhaps we have a mess and not a system.<\/strong><\/p>\n A: Can you draw me a picture of this? Something that shows how all the parts fit together?<\/p>\n B: Uh, well, no. No one has ever asked for such.<\/p>\n A: Well, I’m new here and would like to understand how everything fits together. Just a sketch. Just sketch it out for me.<\/p>\n B: Well, uh, you know, you see this is really complicated and…<\/p>\n A: I understand. Just a sketch. Just the basic pieces.<\/p>\n B: No, that isn’t possible here. We do complex work and capturing that in a picture just won’t work, and…<\/p>\n I have experienced the above conversation too often. The reason a picture is not possible is that no one understands the parts of the system. One reason no one understands the parts of the system is that the system isn’t a system. The system is actually a mess waiting to collapse.<\/p>\n No picture? That is often a sign of impending disaster.<\/p>\n There is a big dog standing outside the front door waiting to devour my homework on the way to school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips If we can’t provide a simple representation of a system, perhaps we have a mess and not a system. A: Can you draw me a picture of this? Something that shows how all the parts fit together? B: Uh, well, no. No one has ever asked for such. A: Well, I’m new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,286,58,3,306],"tags":[154,287,178,126,307],"class_list":["post-2636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-conversation","category-systems","category-technology","category-visibility","tag-communication","tag-conversation","tag-systems","tag-technology","tag-visibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2637,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions\/2637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}