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RuthMalan

@RuthMalan@mastodon.social

Software And Systems Architecture, more or less
She/her

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RuthMalan, to random
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Realizing that I get really squirmy when I see "optimize" used in the context of the organizational/team work we do. Even within our technical systems, we're working within a design space that is complex enough that "optimize" is... well, I don't know but... hm. A stretch. But for our teams, we need to shift the managementese away from notions that optimizing... is something to strive for... It's people, people! We're working on messy -- wicked -- problems.

RuthMalan, to random
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I hate when there are consequences to my actions

Microsoft [refrerence to Recall] should learn this too

I never said anything about learning from it!

RuthMalan, to random
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"I built a web of interesting papers. I identified 50 papers that seemed worth reading and read them all."
— Hillel Wayne as live-tweeted by @mathiasverraes from DDDEU

They’re here: https://hillelwayne.com/talks/ese/ddd/ “

Via @mathiasverraes

Source: https://x.com/mathiasverraes/status/1796126916514062578

RuthMalan, to random
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Upcoming in the remote discussions:

June 3, 1-2pm ET: Mel Conway will present his working paper:
“Needed: Systems Thinking in Public Affairs”
More/sign up (free): https://ti.to/bredemeyer/conway

July 1, 1-2pm ET: @tianijones will lead discussion of “A Classification of Uncertainty for Early Product and System Design,” by Olivier de Weck, et al
More/sign up (free): https://ti.to/bredemeyer/uncertainty/

RuthMalan, to random
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heuristic: architecture decisions are those that need to be made from the system perspective *

  • if made from a local perspective, the impact on the system bends the arc of the system away from system “fit” (to its various contexts, cohesion and integrity, adaptive capacity in changing contextS, fitness properties, etc.)

Architecture decisions: significant design decisions that shape a system (Booch)

Decisions chapbook: https://ruthmalan.com/Leadership/20240220TechnicalDecisions.pdf

RuthMalan,
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Heuristic:

Engineering heuristics, or rules of thumb, are "statements of common, or contextual, sense that aid in concept development, problem solving, decision making, or judgment" (Rechtin, 1991)

'Heuristic has a Greek origin, heuriskein, a word meaning “to find a way” or “to guide” in the sense of piloting a boat through treacherous shoals.' -- Maier and Rechtin

"Heuristics offer plausible approaches to solving problems, not infallible ones."

Contextual sense? It depends!

RuthMalan,
@RuthMalan@mastodon.social avatar

‘better expression than “common sense” is contextual sense — a knowledge of what is reasonable within a context’ — Eb Rechtin

Image: a page from Systems Architecting, by Eb Rechtin

RuthMalan, to random
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When i hear root cause… the image that comes to mind

Image from: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/01/wageningen-root-archive/

RuthMalan, to random
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Female cicadas. The most metal of bugs! No, no, literally. Well, figuratively too.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56203-6

Edit to add: Via https://noc.social/@todayilearned/112486833634573732

RuthMalan, to random
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Um.. some of the folks who are vulnerable to microsoft’s incursion with Recall dont have a choice… … kids, employees, folk struggling to get by (cognitive overload and executive function theft, financial constraints, more) … The “just switch to linux” advice is… huh…

RuthMalan, to random
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Cabrera thinking moves:

  1. Is / Is Not : make distinctions; distinguish what the “thing” fundamentally is

  2. Zoom in / Zoom out : break things down; see the context

  3. Part / Party : when break down into parts, think about the relationships

  4. R-channel : create a relationship (name it), zoom into the relationship and break it down

  5. P-circle : take different perspectives, from different points of view

Cabrera Systems Thinking Conference (online today and tomorrow)

RuthMalan, to random
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I feel so seen

Via https://indieweb.social/@mariapopova/112471481056699280

RuthMalan, to random
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Ohhh!!

“Lines in the Sand - DIGITAL COMIC

A 20-page printed comic that tells the story of Lynn Conway's groundbreaking invention of Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) that enablies today's billion-transistor chips, and the birth of the foundry model that separates chip design and printing.”
https://www.unsungheroes.info/product/lines-in-the-sand-e

Via https://twitter.com/lynnconway/status/1778053340959498373

RuthMalan,
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“In 1968, Conway was fired by IBM after revealing she was undergoing gender transition. Starting from scratch and living in stealth mode under a new name, her career blossomed. Five years later, she was offered a research position at Xerox PARC. it was here, in the late 1970’s, that she invented the microchip design methodology that changed the world.”
— Jim Boulton

https://www.unsungheroes.info/product/lines-in-the-sand-e

RuthMalan, to random
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To offset conference FOMO (feeling not fear), I have a remote workshop in July!

Technical Leadership: July 16 and 23, 2024, 12pm-3pm Eastern Time (US/Canada)

🎉 Some discounted seats still available!

Enroll: https://ti.to/bredemeyer/technicalleadershipjul2024

More: https://www.ruthmalan.com/Bredemeyer/Technical_Leadership_Masterclass_Overview.htm

Preview material: Decisions for Technical Leaders (pdf): https://ruthmalan.com/Leadership/20240220TechnicalDecisions.pdf

RuthMalan,
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Some pages of the pdf linked above. The quotes alone are worth the price of clicking?? :)

Quote: "For me, "engineer" means knowing that all decisions are tradeoffs. It means considering both upsides & downsides of each technical choice, and doing so with explicit consideration of the larger system context." - Sarah Mei
Quote: Crop "If you give a mouse a cookie," "he's going to ask for a glass of milk." "When you give him the milk," "he'll probably ask for a straw" "When he's finished, he'll ask for a napkin." "Then he'll want to look in the mirror To make sure he doesn't have a milk mustache." — Laura Numerof
Quote: "Eg: on a platform team driving an enterprise technology migration, focusing time between focus areas like maintenance, new development, and support/training/customer success. Conditions and opportunities change over the migration lifecycle (adoption curve), and capturing these requires tradeoffs of team attention." — Juno Suárez

RuthMalan,
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"You cannot coordinate purpose without developing purpose, it is part of the same process."
— Mary Parker Follett

"Any given change may be a positive for some people and a negative for others. Who benefits from they way things are now? Who will benefit from a change? Who will experience the negative space, and what will that negative be?“
— @estherderby

“Be deliberate and deliberate all the things"
— @dahukanna

And so much more

RuthMalan,
@RuthMalan@mastodon.social avatar

Seeing the Mel Conway quote on the second page upthread, reminds me:

The next Papers in Systems discussion is June 3rd, 1-2pm Eastern Time (US/Canada) and we will focus on a working paper by Mel Conway (yes, the Mel Conway of Conway's Law).

Adding: and Mel Conway will present and lead the discussion.

More info/enroll (free): https://ti.to/bredemeyer/conway

RuthMalan, to random
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“He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.”
— Robert Frost, Mending Wall

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall

RuthMalan, to random
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That rare one of my posts that got boosted a fair bit … was me stealing (with reference but still) from @coderbyheart so I feel kinda bad about that! I wish quote-boosts were here already!

https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/112457208565914597

RuthMalan, to random
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“ The ingredients for conceptual integrity are these: the talent(s) of the human designer(s)—all of them; the thing designed; the luck that brought the designers (and everything they needed) to the right place(s) at the right time(s); the luck of the thing designed to have the right ingredients.”

— Richard Gabriel, Designed as Designer

https://dreamsongs.com/Files/DesignedAsDesignerExpanded.pdf

RuthMalan,
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Which brings me back to a post from a few weeks ago, connecting Richard Cook’s point to design:

“Complex systems are heavily and successfully defended against failure” (https://how.complexsystems.fail/)

But not just in an operations failure sense, but a design evolution sense.

We put work into bending the arc of the system.

Here: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/112333573414452428

And there are various forces at play. Some pushing against system integrity (including conceptual integrity).

RuthMalan, to random
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I can’t think of a more appropriate reaction than [holy exclamation!] so I’m going with it.

impactology, to random
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Art of Semantics https://youtu.be/6T44xBgKV_s by Sally Emm @Sallysm from AnRel

https://twitter.com/Sallysm

https://bsky.app/profile/sallysm.bsky.social

"AnRel short for Anarcho-Relating is a channel where I get to talk about applying my interpretation of anarchist theory to relating! With each other, with ourselves, with our environment..but mostly with each other"

"Video Essayist - Anarchist theory applied to interpersonal relationships (they/she)"

RuthMalan,
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@impactology

“Semantics is seeking to uncover the meaning of words based not only on their definition, but also the context they are being used in"

Thank you!! Already so good!

RuthMalan,
@RuthMalan@mastodon.social avatar

@impactology yes! I can see why you found yourself transcribing all of it! (And so glad you did!)

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