2nd October 2022 - Systems Thinking
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Listening to Shut Up You Freak on aNONradio.

I have had the pleasure and frustration of having been on a training 
course over the past week. It was frustrating as I was commuting each 
day to Derby, a 45 mile each way journey which takes at least an hour. 
This reminded me why I have tried to keep my commutes short... On the 
good side, the course was really interesting and might actually help. 

The title of the course was "Introduction to Systems Thinking." Now, I 
design electronic control systems for safety critical applications and 
work within a lot of procedures which force systems thinking. However, 
I found it really helpful to see why we use these tools and 
techniques. I tend to work at the component or sub-system level. If 
you consider a toaster as a system, one sub-system would be the eject 
bread part and a component would be the spring. 

So what is systems thinking? Simply put, it is a series of strategies 
and tools to help you design something which meets customer 
expectations while also being closer to 'right first time'. 
Traditional methods include:

Flower Arranging - rearrange bits you have already designed
Photocopying - replicating a previous design
Pet Pony - doing someone's favourite design

The first step of systems thinking is to identify your stakeholders. 
This includes the whole life time of the product such as repair and 
disposal. You request requirements from these stakeholders/customers 
and of course, you will find they are not complete. This is because 
humans are incapable of telling you what the root needs of the design 
are in a measurable and implementation free manner. There are a 
variety of tools used to flesh these out and determine the operational 
requirements, functions, non-functional system requirements, 
non-functional operational requirements and non-function 
implementation requirements. Once you have these requirements, you can 
verify they are correct using various techniques. Then you can go 
through concept design and whittle those down into a detailed system 
design using yet more tools. It all becomes rather familiar by this 
point. 

What was nice was that I kept recognising things which I have fought 
for on previous projects in these steps. I certainly picked up things 
which I intend to carry forward. Always a great sign from a training 
course. I heartily recommend systems thinking no matter what you 
design.

I certainly will not miss the hours. The course ran from 08:30 to 
17:00 each day and that was a long time to spend concentrating. The 
last week long course I went on was in 2018 and was fundamentally a 
lecture morning with calculation afternoons. This was lecture all day 
with some exercises spread around. It didn't help that each day seemed 
to fight for the title of least welcoming commute either. There was 
torrential rain, fog, localised flooding and of course traffic jams. I 
almost turned around the one day as the weather leaving Birmingham was 
horrific. The sort where windscreen wipers cannot clear the windscreen 
enough for you to see. Ah well. Will get a hotel for next time! Next 
week involves more travel although this time to Bristol for a week of 
workshops. I know have to have fun! I have certainly got a hotel room 
booked for this one. Bristol is 1.5 hours each way on a good day. Sod 
that commute! I have the joys of working with a group from Japan with 
very little guidance on how to handle the export control side of life. 
I suspect I will spend a lot of time filling in export forms for 
everything I show and say. Sigh. At least the social side should be 
fun.