» Intro to Systems Thinking «

Diana Montalion & Andrew Harmel-Law


Abstract

Systems thinking expands your capacity to do difficult things. For software developers, relational complexity is increasingly difficult. Cross-functional thinking is difficult to orchestrate. Changing entrenched organizational patterns is difficult. Thinking in systems … is difficult.

Peter Senge has demonstrated that we blame the wrong things (events, situations or processes) for our systemic problems. W. Edwards Deming says that 94% of the time, the system is to blame for performance issues, not the individual parts of the system. Jay Forrester discovered counterintuitiveness: most organizations “fix” systemic problems by inadvertently making them worse.

In this workshop, you’ll learn why systems thinking is difficult to master. What are the blockers and challenges?

You’ll learn a few core practices that will expand your skillset. We’ll use the Iceberg Model to explore the root cause of recurring systems problems. You can use these practices to help you develop impactful recommendations.

Bio

Diana Montalion

Diana is the author of the O’Reilly book, Learning Systems Thinking: Essential Nonlinear Skills & Practices for Software Professionals. She has twenty years experience engineering and architecting software systems for organizations including Stanford, The Gates Foundation, Memorial Sloan Kettering and Teach For All. She has served as Principal Systems Architect for The Economist and The Wikimedia Foundation. Her company, Mentrix, publishes learning materials for aspiring nonlinear thinkers and builds modern software systems for diverse clients.

Diana lives in the Hudson Valley (New York, USA) with three dogs, one cat and nine chickens.

Andrew Harmel-Law

Andrew is a Tech Principal at Thoughtworks, and the author of Facilitating Software Architecture. He specializes in Java / JVM technologies, agile delivery, build tools/automation, and domain-driven design. Experienced across the software development lifecycle and in many sectors, he understands that people, architecture, process and tooling all have key roles to play in achieving this. He enjoys sharing his experience as much as possible. This sharing is not only seen in his formal consulting engagements, books and training for O’Reilly, but also informally through mentoring, blog posts, conferences (speaking and organizing), and open-sourcing his code.