STISE

Systems Thinking in Software Engineering

Overview

While there are many different systems thinking "tools" that can be used to help us investigate, understand and alter how systems work, these tools can be classified into three general categories.

The most basic systems thinking tool, causal loop diagrams (CLDs), is useful help understand the internal dynamics of a system, allowing us to investigate how variables in a system are related in a dynamic (interdependent) way.

Computer models are useful where the dynamics of a system are too complex to understand using CLDs, or where more clarity is need to understand more precisely how relationships of variables can affect system behavior. While there are many different ways to model the processes of a system (such as a software project), the kinds of models we focus on in systems thinking are ones that describe the dynamic and sometimes nonlinear characteristics such systems possess (sometimes referred to as the dynamic structure of the system).

Simulators take computer models as a systems thinking tool to the next level by (a) allowing people to interact (usually with a computer model) to examine possible "what-if" scenarios, and (b) learning how decisions and actions within the system influence system behavior in the long term.

Learning laboratories or microworlds are abstract representations of a system that we are interested in studying, understanding and potentially altering the behavior of. Microworlds, like simulators and computer models, allow us to examine the dynamic, nonlinear and open characteristics of a system under time-compression. As part of studying how a system operates, a microworld allows us to learn (more) effective ways of dealing with situations that might occur in real life. A good example of such a microworld is a software project management learning laboratory.