workshops |
sunday |
5 |
System Envisioning Workshop |
pan pacific hotel |
Software systems are conceived out of an understanding and conceptualizing of a problem space. System Envisioning is about how we create possibilities for what the software system might and should do.
The workshop is motivated by an interest in sharing experiences on the relationships between problem domain understanding and creative thinking on formulating systems concepts. We are interested in how different types of thinking and action are involved in developing the Conceptual Architecture of a software solution.
System Envisioning is a creative process for establishing the possibility of viable system concepts and technologies by, first reaching a shared understanding of a problem situation and desired futures and then nominating solution architectures. System Envisioning is motivated by ideas from Checkland's work on Soft Systems Thinking, Beer's work on Viable Systems, Gelernter's work on Mirror Worlds, Morgan's work on "Imaginization", Van der Heijden's work on Scenarios and Miller's work on Living Systems metaphors.
We wish to share experiences on requirements elicitation and generation techniques that help us think "out-of-the-box". Through techniques such as fantasizing, scenario generation/enactment and future search, we attempt to experience what a new system will be like, and what was important to its creation. The possibility of new systems ideas are stimulated or denied by the opportunities or constraints that present themselves in the way we perceive and define organizational structures. System envisioning creates an opening for new possibility by allowing new ways of speaking about and seeing the world.
Ralph Hodgson, IBM Object Technology Practice
Email: rhodgson@us.ibm.com
Martine Devos, Argo
Doug McDavid, IBM
Consulting Group