At 11:41 AM 11/1/96, RMTomasko@aol.com wrote:
>It's very amusing, to me at least, that a group of people I thought were
>trained to think systematically (computer programmers and systems
>analysts) got us into this mess.
Computer people do tend to think systematically, but not necessarily
systemically. A systematic thinker will think about things logically,
starting at the preceived beginning, and going to the end. A systems
thinker will think about the entire system, including delays. Delays in
the process are especially hard to foresee if you only think about things
linearly, even if in a systematic fashion.
Performance enhancement for computer systems is one place where the
differences in thinking become obvious. The systematic thinker will start
optimizing code "at the beginning". The systems thinker will analyze the
system to find the innermost loop, where you get the biggest bang for the
buck.
In my experience, systems thinkers spend significantly less time, and get
80% of the possible performance out of their work. They continually change
their mental models of how the system works, until what they think matches
reality. Systematic thinkers don't change their mental models, they just
keep banging their heads against the wall.
Back in the early 70's, I was taught to approach computer systems problems
this way.
>I also wonder if the efforts to "correct" the Year 200-programming
>situation will go beyond just adding another two digits to every piece of
>old software, and will surface some of the underlying causes - so when
>this is all (hopefully) resolved, we can say we really "learned"
>something.
How do you teach people that what they *think* they know is not
necessarily what reality is? If the technical and especially managerial
folk get that learning, then we will all have learned something from the
Y2K problem.
Johanna
-- Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. URL:http://world.std.com/~jr/ voice:617-641-4046 fax:617-641-2764 jr@world.std.com Management Consulting for High Technology Product DevelopmentLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>