Systems do what they have been designed to do, not what we meant them to! Learn how to identify common system archetypes and apply systems thinking.

1. Systems Thinking
How systems are all around us
Presented by Lorraine Steyn
www.krs.co.za
@lor_krs

2. Intuitive understanding of complex systems vs rational analysis of small pieces of
a problem

3. Companies lose market share through their own policies. Competitors scoop up
the advantage.

4. MODELS ALIGNED WITH THE REAL
WORLD MODELS ALIGNED WITH
THE REAL WORLD MODELS
ALIGNED WITH THE REAL WORLD
MODELS ALIGNED WITH THE REAL
WORLD MODELS ALIGNED WITH
THE REAL WORLD MODELS
ELEMENTS
Easy to identify parts of a system
INTERCONNECTIONS
Physical flows, information flows
PURPOSE
Observe how the
system behaves
over time

5. Software systems exist within social systems. We solve people
problems.

6. Boundaries, Stocks and Flows

7. Dam/Reservoir runs dry
- Is it an inflow problem, or an outflow?
- You can increase a stock by less outflow, as well as by more
Dam/Reservoir overflows
- Maybe the outflow cloud needs to be examined (why are we not
- Inflow problem? More rain, or river flow changed?

9. Can you think of any human decision that occurs without a
feedback loop?

11. Draw a diagram of the factors involved in a sales system
Case Study
Select any Sales Process:
 Define your stock
 Show the inflows and outflows
 Add feedback loops

12. Car Sales Example
 Stock = Cars
 Inflow = Deliveries from
 Outflow = Sales
 Feedback = Increases in sales,
delays in

15. Renewable resources are flow limited
Renewable resources are flow
limited
If extracted faster than their
regeneration rate they become
non-renewable

17. A decision based on the feedback can’t
change the behaviour of the system that
drove that feedback; the decisions will
affect only future behaviour

18. Shows the influences on the R and B loops
Case Study
You’ve just designed the viral game of
 Define your stock
 Show the inflows and outflows
 Add reinforcing feedback loops

20.  The ability to bounce back into shape after being pressed or
stretch
 Tends to have rich feedback loops
Placing a system in a straitjacket of constancy can cause
fragility to evolve
CS Holling
Resilience:

21.  Feedback loops that can restore or rebuild feedback loops are meta-
resilient.
 Systems that can do this are self organizing or learning systems

22. Hierarchy
Subsystem goals should not dominate the total system goal

24. Case Study
Let us apply Systems
Agile Teams:
 What is our “stock”?
 What are the inflows
outflows?
 Goal: Working
Draw a diagram of the factors that affect a team’s productivity

26. Conway's law: Organizations which design systems
... are constrained to produce designs which are
communication structures of these organizations.
Organization

27. The Mythical Man-Month
Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late software
project makes it later
Fred Brooks

28. System archetypes

29. Policy Resistance: actors in the system have their own
goals

30. Tragedy of the Commons: abuse of a shared resource
DAY ZERO

31. Drift to Low Performance not holding standards absolute

32. Success to the Successful: the rich get richer

33. Shifting the Burden to the Intervenor: addressing the
symptoms not the problem. The self-maintaining
then erodes.

34. Rule Beating: obeying the rules, but not the intent

35. Seeking the Wrong Goal: confusing effort with results

36. Trump’s Border Wall
$33 Billion
Could the money be better spent?

37. Intuition vs Analysis
Boundaries constrain the problem

38. Systems always behave exactly as they are
designed, just not always as they are intended.
Be creative and courageous about systems redesign.
Lorraine Steyn @lor_krs