The search is on for what to call the coordination of management disciplines in the business use of IT. Short of the next big acronym, one argument is already more useful than most and is not even new.

1. Systemic Management
Of I.T. Functionality for Business

2. Crossing the chasms
Lean, DevOps, Agile and all other managerial concentrations in “I.T.” share the intent to produce
usable IT functionality for business operations.
The difference between that and engineering is that engineering builds, while management applies.
The business management of IT functionality has been modeled in the paradigm of providing
Service.
Business itself was also conceptually formulated as an Actor, in the paradigm of the Enterprise.
As a result, Enterprise Service Management has labelled the top-line business competency of IT
management practitioners. But in between a top line business competency and bottom line
technology expertise, management fragmented into silos of marketing, religion, or other special
interest communities looking for “solutions” to their respective exposures to high pressure.
Successful solutions breed paradigms, and paradigms, through proof of concept, like to gather
staying power.
ESM is no exception. Although it is fundamentally old, and nearly hiding in plain sight (ESM is to
activity as Finance is to currency), it has periodic episodes of becoming “new” again, this time due
to the interest in “crossing” silos.

3. Managed versus Not Managed
This “crossing” has bred numerous points of view, in effect more reference-grade
explanations such as integration, convergence, holism, and synergy.
But in normal communication with management practitioners, the only reason to move
"beyond" the Service paradigm is to directly address the management discipline itself
instead of the deliverable – first per se regardless of IT, and then in the terms of
accountability and responsibility particularly for producing IT-based functionality.
The difference between "managed" and "not managed" is, simply, that the former is the
continual enforcement of constraints in order to exert guidance towards intended
outcomes.
This is entirely separate from systems engineering, but the commonality of engineering
and management is in the strategy that the sustainable behaviors needed for balancing risk
and benefit are systemically associated.
Systemic dynamics mean in all cases that a behavior change in one factor can alter the
behavior of other factors.

4. Management as systemic Production
The factors of IT-based functionality include scope, availability, and reliability,
and management must attend to risks and impacts that account for those
factors.
The affect of impact on a factor is to increase the likelihood of that factor’s
influence on the risks and impacts on certain other factors.
The affect of risk on a factor is, likewise, to increase the likelihood of that
factor’s influence the risks and impacts on certain other factors.
Systemic management applies constraints and guidance within the expected
tolerances and preferences of pre-existing (but negotiable) intentions about
outcomes.
It understands, by definition, that decisions made in one management
concentration include decisions in other concentrations as influential factors.

5. optimization
mis-use
sourcing
mis-allocation
obsolescence
development
Capability
ProvisionUtility
Preference
ProbabilityPossibility
CREATEOFFER
INTEND
Management accepts the psychology of the
business, which is the virtual equivalency of
business requirements and business opportunity.
That equivalency is a mindset of expectations,
affecting what decisions are deemed necessary.
The constraints and guidance of management always
attend to attaining an acceptable balance of benefits and
risks. That must include understanding how differing
efforts (behaviors) can leverage or counteract each other
both within and across areas, at macro or micro levels.
©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

6. Systemically influential conditions
Possibility
Probability
Preference
ProvisionCapability Utility
Viability
Option
Relevance
Access
Feasibility
Agreement
Fitness
Type
Demand
Systemic conditions are mutually influential. A shift the overall balance of obtainable benefit occurs
when one of the conditions goes into a deficient or advantaged state versus its norm, causing
logically contiguous conditions to react or lose stability themselves.
©2019MalcolmRyder/ArchestraResearch

7. Systemic Management of Production Values in IT Functionality
release
deployment
design
development
quality
compatibility
implementation
capacity
compliance
manageability
requirements
resources
rules
contingency
performance
objective
purpose
scale
Impacts On
Risks To
Priority of
OPPORTUNITYASSESSMENT
Possibility
Probability
Preference
AvailabilityScope Reliability
ProvisionCapability Utility
RETURN ON INVESTMENT ASSESSMENT
Deeper levels of granularity do not
change the mutuality of influence
across areas of concentration.
©2019MalcolmRyder/ArchestraResearch

8. Co-production by systemic management
Management evolves to address (“cover”) the myriad issues identifiable in the big picture.
Coverage varies and overlaps among co-existent concentrations
The main observation about evolving management concentrations is that they most often
derive from a principle that represents the favored solution path discovered for the current
key problem in the concentration.
Whether that principle is then propagated as a manifesto, a method, or a model, it can
become insistent.
Its insistence can range from being locally restrictive (resisting dependency on external
connections or influence) to broadly transformative (being applied as a new perspective in
solving problems of other areas).
The recognition of any boundaries built or breached “on principle” suggests that
“interfaces” are needed between management concentrations to co-ordinate them.
This in turn encourages our view of them to be about “collaboration”; but the reality is that
systemic interaction occurs whether by desired agreement or not, and the responsibility of
management is to bring that dynamic within the tolerances of the business.

9. Archestra notebooks compile and organize decades of in-the-field and ongoing empirical findings.
All presented findings are derived exclusively from original research.
Archestra notebooks carry no prescriptive warranty.
As ongoing research, all notebooks are subject to change at any time.
©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
www.archestra.com
mryder@archestra.com
Archestra research is done from the perspective of strategy and architecture.
With all subject matter and topics, the purpose of the notes is analytic, primarily to:
* explore, expose and model why things are
included, excluded, or can happen
in given ways and/or to certain effects.
* comment on, and navigate between,
motives and potentials that predetermine
decisions about, and shapings of, the observed activity.