We cannot master complexity with a complicated process

Speaker: Colin Hood (Colin Hood Systems Engineering)
Venue: Hamburg

“We cannot master complexity, we have to avoid it“ Henning Butz 2011
“To increase quality, do as little as possible and as much as necessary”, Colin Hood 1989

Systems thinking is the art of simplifying complexity. It is about seeing through chaos, managing interdependency, and understanding choice. We see the world as increasingly more complex and chaotic because we use inadequate concepts to explain it. When we understand something, we no longer see it as chaotic or complex. (Gharajedaghi 1999)

Sometimes our experience and past success tend to reduce our ability to see challenges in new ways. Past success with “divide and conquer” processes can lead us to miss the importance of interactions and interrelated connections between the parts that we specify.
Do your processes concentrate more on responsibility for parts, or do your processes concentrate more on responsibility for interactions between parts and achieving more than the sum of the parts?

The role of systems engineering has never been more important than now.

Colin Hood started work in the electrical and electronics industry in 1977, and has been a systems engineer since 1985. He has worked as trainer and coach for requirements engineering since 1987. Colin Hood together with partners of Colin Hood Systems Engineering supports customers world-wide to successfully improve quality and delivery through system engineering techniques in several industries. Colin Hood is author of many books on requirements and requirements tools. Colin Hood is co-founder of the International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB), and is co-author of the syllabus and examination of the qualification of Certified Professional in Requirements Engineering (CPRE). Colin Hood has been a member of INCOSE since 1999.