Reverse Engineering Reality Part 2: Creating Causal Loop Diagrams

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Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) share several things with books: they both tell stories, they can be fact or fiction, and they’re both easier to read than write. Keep reading to learn how to write CLDs. The Buddy System The first step in creating CLDs: find a buddy,...

Reverse Engineering Reality Part 1: Reading Causal Loop Diagrams

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Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) can help us understand complex interactions and events by revealing system structure. Unlike buildings, most systems don’t have visible structure. We notice systems by observing events. When the events form a pattern (usually over...

Context is Everything

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Today I had the opportunity to remember that “context is everything”. Hurricane Frances continues her slow crawl up the eastern United States. It started raining here in North Carolina yesterday (Tuesday 2004.09.07). This morning my radio crackled with...

Learning to Change

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In Changing Quicker we looked at reducing or removing system delays to reduce the time delay between realizing a change needs to be made, and when the change’s effects occur. Another way to change quicker involves learning to change. Learning is a process that...

Changing Quicker

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We finished “Change and Stable Systems with the questions: Will reorganizing every two weeks lead to stable software processes? What conditions would enable this to happen? When should we schedule the next change? Today we’ll discuss some conditions that...