Systems engineering firm that operationalizes emerging technology for high-reliability organizations. Scientific Computing, MBSE, Systems Integration.
The Fractal Organisation Manual: How to diagnose & design organisations using the Viable System Model
In a world of increasing turbulence, the need has never been greater for knowing how to build systems capable of maintaining their viability when all around them is change. This is a follow up to the Fractal Organization published by Wiley almost twenty years ago. It provides practical guidance ...
The Fractal Organisation Manual: How to diagnose & design organisations using the Viable System Model | SCiO - Systems and Complexity in Organisation
RRP: £12.99; Paperback: 192 pp; Publisher: SCiO; ISBN 979-8250847018
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Curious about systems — how they behave, how they fail, and what they get up to when nobody is steering.
Malleable Systems Collective
The Malleable Systems Collective catalogs and experiments with malleable software and systems that reset the balance of power in computing
Reality Blind - Vol. 1
Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures
A distributed systems reliability glossary
A list of key concepts for building and testing reliable distributed systems, with basic definitions and deep references.
The Systems Thinker
The Systems Thinker works to catalyze effective change by expanding the use of systems approaches. All articles are available free of charge in an effort to expose as wide of audience as possible. Browse, share with others, save your favorites and tell others about this valuable resource!
How Complex Systems Fail
All of the interesting systems (e.g. transportation, healthcare, power generation) are inherently and unavoidably hazardous by the own nature. The frequency of hazard exposure can sometimes be changed but the processes involved in the system are themselves intrinsically and irreducibly hazardous. It is the presence of these hazards that drives the creation of defenses against hazard that characterize these systems.
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
By Donella Meadows~ Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. This idea is not unique to systems analysis — […]
The VSM Test & Guide | SCiO - Systems and Complexity in Organisation
Links are to the VSM basic test and the VSM advanced test.Aim of the guide: This VSM guide serves as a quick and practical resource for understanding and applying the Viable System Model in organizational analysis and design. It should help to spread the powerful knowledge of management cybernetics.
Distributed Systems lecture series
Modal Collective
We do development, design, organizing, policy campaigning, and more to make computing more useful, secure, and resilient. Our work is centered around software infrastructure projects such as GNOME, postmarketOS, p2panda, systemd, and the Linux kernel.
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
ASA advances systems analysis as a meta-level approach to understand and govern complex socio-environmental systems. The overall objective is to increase realism, relevance, and agility of systems analysis. How? By harvesting new opportunities provided, in particular, by • New sources of data and methods to convert data into knowledge • Novel modelling approaches and underlying theories enabled by increased computational capabilities • Innovation through transfer of methods across disciplines and expansion of system boundaries • Continuous horizon scanning to identify novel matches between methodologies and applications across all thematic areas of IIASA • Enhanced transdisciplinary research
Large tech companies don't need heroes
Large tech companies operate via systems. What that means is that the main outcomes - up to and including the overall success or failure of the company - are driven by a complex network of processes and incentives. These systems are outside the control of any particular person. Like the parts of a large codebase, they have accumulated and co-evolved over time, instead of being designed from scratch.
The Fractal Organization
The world of management is in crisis - the old remedies no longer work and organizations are failing at an increasing rate. Although many talk of 'joined up thinking', few offer practical guidance on how to achieve this in organizations. <b><i>The Fractal Organization</i></b> sets down the practical implications of a well tested systemic approach to building organizations that are capable of surviving and flourishing in these turbulent times. <p>"An excellent read…Many organizations fail at the mercy of their own ignorance. The author has done an excellent job in making ‘the science of effective organization’ accessible to management, providing them with a new knowledge to deal with the uncertainties that the markets place upon them."<br /><b>Stephen J. Brewis, Business Architect, British Telecom</b></p> <p>"...one of the most interesting, thorough and rigorous guides to management that I have ever read, … introduces new insights in every chapter… carries a credibility which acts as a counterbalance to the sometimes difficult message which he conveys which is that a lot of mainstream management practice is at best ineffective and at worst downright destructive. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in management or systems thinking."<br /><b>Penny Marrington</b>, <b>Course Chair, Systems Group, Open University</b></p> <p>"In my opinion this book manages to present sound academic theory that is relevant and helpful to the practitioner in the business. I experienced several A-HA moments."<br /><b>Pauline Marsh, Strategy Director, CS&S International, BAE SYSTEMS</b></p> <p>"The insights of the Viable System Model have been open only to a select few for much too long. Hoverstadt has gone furthest in bringing these ideas to a wider audience…Management books have too often been serious but not practical, or practical but not serious. This book is both brilliantly serious and practical, and often entertaining too."<br /><b>Professor Peter Kawalak, Manchester Business School</b></p> <p>"Integrates mainstream management ideas with the systems ideas underpinning the VSM, and flows and reads well. As a starting point for developing understanding of the VSM in today's world this book improves greatly on all books that have gone before, I would certainly recommend it to colleagues, clients, and students."<br /><b>Dr. Robin Asby, Course Chair, Communication and Systems, Open University</b></p>
Self-organizing systems: what, how, and why?
I present a personal account of self-organizing systems, framing relevant questions to better understand self-organization, information, complexity, and emergence. With this aim, I start with a notion and examples of self-organizing systems (what?), continue with their properties and related concepts (how?), and close with applications (why?) in physics, chemistry, biology, collective behavior, ecology, communication networks, robotics, artificial intelligence, linguistics, social science, urbanism, philosophy, and engineering.
