Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
A
project is a system of people, equipment, materials, and facilities or- ganized and managed to achieve a goal. Much of the established theory and practice about what it takes to put together and coordinate project organizations comes from a perspective called “systems think- ing” or the “systems approach.” At the same time, work done in projects is often done for the purpose of creating systems. In projects, especially those in product and software development, engineering, or research in high-technology industries, methodologies such as “systems analysis,” “systems engineering,” and “systems management” are commonplace. This chapter introduces systems concepts that form the basis for pro- ject management and the systems methodologies used in project work.3.1
S
YSTEMST
HINKINGSystems thinking is a way of viewing the world. It is the opposite of analytical think- ing in which things are broken into progressively smaller parts and more highly specialized disciplines. Part of what distinguishes systems thinkers from analytical
thinkers is that the former focus on “whole organisms” rather than just the parts. Even when they look at the parts, systems thinkers try to keep the whole organism in mind and attempt to understand the parts by understanding the processes taking place among them.1
Systems thinking means being able to perceive the “system” in a situation. It is the ability to take a confused, chaotic situation and perceive some degree of order and interrelationship. Systems thinking is a useful way of dealing with complex phe- nomena, especially in human endeavors such as large projects.
Although project managers must be familiar with and coordinate the individual parts of the project, most of the responsibility for each of those parts is delegated to managers and technicians who specialize in them. Project managers are concerned with the “big picture,” and as such, they must be systems thinkers. This chapter cov- ers fundamental topics for the project manager/systems thinker: Systems concepts, the systems view of organizations, and the systems approach to problem solving, de- sign, and management.
3.2
D
EFINITION OFS
YSTEMTo some people the word “system” means computer or bureaucracy, yet it is so com- monly used that the term seems to refer to almost everything. By definition, a system is “an organized or complex whole; an assemblage of things or parts interacting in a coordinated way.” The parts could be players on a football team, keys on a keyboard, or components in a VCR. The parts need not be physical entities; they can be abstract or conceptual entities, such as words in a language or steps in a procedure. Everyday usage of the word is included with such disparate things as river systems, planetary systems, transportation and communication systems, nervous and circulatory sys- tems, production and inventory systems, ecosystems, urban systems, social systems, economic systems, stereo systems, philosophical systems, ad infinitum (and com- puter systems).
Thus, a system can be just about anything. Besides being an “assemblage of parts,” the definition of system should include three other features:
1. Parts of the system are affected by being in the system and are changed if they leave it;
2. The assemblage of parts does something; and 3. The assemblage is of particular interest.2
The first feature means that, in systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The human body, for example, can be analyzed in terms of separate compo- nents—the liver, brain, heart, nerve fibers, and so on; yet if any of these are removed from the body, both they and the body will change. Parts of the body cannot live out- side the body, and without the parts, the body cannot exist either. The name given to a way of viewing things in terms of their “wholeness,” or the whole being more than the sum of the parts, is holism. Holism is the opposite of reductionism, which says that things can be understood by simply breaking them down and understanding the pieces. Certainly many things cannot be understood by simply looking at the pieces. Water, for example, is more than just the characteristics of hydrogen and oxygen com- bined. The idea of the parts affecting the whole and vice versa is central to systems thinking. (Related ideas appear elsewhere. Psychologists use the term Gestalt to de-
scribe theories and practices that emphasize the whole person and the surrounding situation. Another term, synergy, describes situations where several components work together to produce a combined effect.)
The second feature of systems is that they are dynamic and exhibit some kind of behavior; they do something. The kind of behavior they exhibit depends upon the par- ticular kind of system at hand. System behavior can usually be observed in the out- puts of the system or the way the system converts inputs to outputs, though the conversion process and the outputs may be quite obscure.
Third, systems are conceived by the people looking at them, which means they exist in the eye (or mind) of the beholder.3This is not to say that they fail to exist un- less someone is there to see them, but rather that the conception of a system can be altered to suit one’s purpose. For example, in diagnosing a patient, a doctor may see the whole body as “the system.” The doctor may send the patient to a specialist, who sees only the digestive tract as “the system.” If the problem is food poisoning and the patient files suit, her attorney may include the restaurant and food manufacturer in “the system.”
3.3
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YSTEMSC
ONCEPTS ANDP
RINCIPLESThe following concepts, principles, and terms are applicable to all systems.