Learn to present a clearer and more certain picture of the future than sticking your wet thumb in the air
It can't last forever
No matter how good the service is and no matter how well the service
appears to be meeting demand, sooner or later the laws of system dynamics will come into
play and causal loop feedback will catch up with us. Quite simply put: 'it can't last forever'.
In the above services system model acceptable service quality is limited by
capacity, ultimately having an adverse effect on provisioning the service,
for instance, not being able to meet the agreed service level. This is typical of the system archetype limits-to-growth.
How to address it?
- Use system dynamics to map-out and model service provisioning
- Try to understand and map-out all the systemic influences involved
- Consider the dimension of time and see what influence it has on the model(s)
- Consider the voice of the customer and involve customers with the model(s)
- Statistics don't lie, obtain as much statistical data as possible
- Identify trends and patterns of behaviour
- Walk-through and live-out the various scenarios learned from the models
- Pick one that works
Conclusion
You've heard the saying "there's no silver bullet"? Well, try to get as close as you can, maybe there's no guarantee and maybe it's hard to imagine all the "unforeseeable" circumstances, but when you start to use models in this way you can certainly present a clearer and more certain picture of the future than sticking your wet thumb in the air.
When I started looking at the world through models the penny dropped, the overwhelming feeling was "IT people must know about this". That was in 1994 and I've been banging on about it ever since.
The system archetypes are in control and it is very hard to do anything about it, but if we don't try, what does that make us? I talk about this in the conclusion of Sea of Systems "well at least I helped this one".
No comments:
Post a Comment