On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Stuart Charlton <stuartcharlton@...> wrote:
I have Sterman's book and found it useful; when I was an EA I do recall a couple of colleagues that were influenced by (an older but still relevant view of system dynamics, IMO) both Stafford Beer's work on organizational cybernetics. I also recently noticed that David Hay's book on requirements analysis (aligned to Zachman) included nearly a whole chapter on Beer's work.The challenge with using all of these in business architecture is the specific organizational mindset - i still see a frightening number of executives that cannot grasp (or don't believe in!) emergent behaviour or non-linear effects. They never let go of "Theory X".On the other hand I find groups that are goal-driven rather than process-driven may be inclined to it -- if their work isn't inherently repeatable or countable .. And attempts at making it so are flawed...eg. Think of a high-touch sales organization like enterprise software; the pipeline doesn't dictate the behavior, the account list v. quota goal does. Yet enforcing ever more yield/probability driven process is a common way management tries to induce predictability, however flawed. Continuous informal "system dynamics analysis" in their accounts was how the better account executives got their large deals; too bad the sales management would not catch on.Stu