SENG411 L4 Notes

From Craig

Method links

...System dynamics is a method for studying the world around us. Unlike other scientists, who study the world by breaking it up into smaller and smaller pieces, system dynamicists look at things as a whole. The central concept to system dynamics is understanding how all the objects in a system interact with one another. A system can be anything from a steam engine, to a bank account, to a basketball team. The objects and people in a system interact through "feedback" loops, where a change in one variable affects other variables over time, which in turn affects the original variable, and so on.

-- From the MIT System Dynamics in Education Project

On projects, the problems are typicall not technical; they are political, social, cultural and people centric.

• Recruit better people
• Better education

Many methodologies fail because they fail to acknowledge the most important part of the puzzle: People

Strategic vs Tactical

• Strategic planning may involve models
  • Workflows
  • Activity diagrams
  • Processes
• Tactical or day-to-day operations involve different models
  • Mental Models
    • add more people
    • infinite unpaid overtime
    • cut the project team in half by creating an "artificial crisis"
  • Spreadsheet models
    • PERT or Gantt charts
    • Static. Trends over time are not visually obvious.

The nature of interactions:

Initial Idea:

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Interaction1.png
Image:Interaction1.png

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Interaction2.png
Image:Interaction2.png

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Interaction3.png
Image:Interaction3.png

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Interaction4.png
Image:Interaction4.png