Book : The Systems Bible: The Beginner’s Guide to Systems Large and Small (3rd Edition) (2003)

Summary

From the publisher

GENERAL SYSTEMANTICS™ PRESS is proud to announce the revised and much enlarged THIRD edition of SYSTEMANTICS™, THE UNDERGROUND TEXT OF SYSTEMS LORE. Sixteen years in preparation, this THIRD Edition includes a new Preface, three new chapters, new AXIOMS, THEOREMS AND RULES OF THUMB, and many new Horrible Examples, for a total of 40 chapters covering the entire field from the PRIMAL SCENARIO to the FAIL-SAFE THEOREM and including the celebrated definition of GARBAGE that is fundamental to any real understanding of SYSTEMANTICS™.

The FIRST EDITION of SYSTEMANTICS™ was “highly recommended” by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Books and Films and has since been translated into Spanish, German, Hebrew, and Japanese.

The SECOND EDITION has been favorably reviewed in the Whole Earth Catalogue (1986) by Kevin Kelly: The author is having fun with a serious subject . . . insights come in the form of marvelously succinct rules of thumb, in the spirit of Murphy’s Law and the Peter Principle. And Computer Book Review remarks, From ‘Function-and-Failure’ to ‘Management and Other Myths’, here’s a collection of witty observations… grown into mature rules of thumb.

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Book : The Systems Thinking Playbook (2008)

Summary

The Systems Thinking Playbook is a lively resource for the promotion of Systems Thinking.

Packed full of hands-on games and activities that stretch the mind and alter pre-conceived perceptions, The Systems Thinking Playbook is an ideal way to teach people to “go wide” and see underlying cause and effect relationships and recognize the delays inherent in any complex systems. The Playbook also abounds with practical advice for using the exercises to maximize the learning experience.

It has been used widely by schools, government agencies (both in the US and Internationally) and corporations to train managers to “think beyond the loop.”

Book with companion DVD!

This book has become a favorite of K-12 teachers, university faculty, and corporate consultants. It provides short gaming exercises that illustrate the subtleties of systems thinking. The companion DVD shows the authors introducing and running each of the 30 games.

The 30 games are classified by these areas of learning – Mental Models, Team Learning, Systems Thinking, Shared Vision and Personal Mastery. Each description clearly explains when, how, and why the game is useful. There are explicit instructions for debriefing each exercise as well as a list of all required materials. A summary matrix has been added for a quick glance at all 30 games. When you are in a hurry to find just the right initiative for some part of your course, the matrix will help you find it.

Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows both have many years of experience working with adults. This book reflects their insights. Every game works well and provokes a deep variety of new insights about paradigms, system boundaries, causal loop diagrams, reference modes, and leverage points. Each of the 30 exercises here was tested and refined many times until it became a reliable source of learning. Some of the games are adapted from classics of the outdoor education field. Others are completely new. But all of them complement readings and lectures to help participants understand intuitively the principles of systems thinking.

The book includes many quotations from practitioner, who share their insights about the relevance of specific exercises. There are also citations for related reading

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Book : Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008)

Summary

From the Sustainability Institute:

Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind.”—Hunter Lovins, founder and President of Natural Capital Solutions and coauthor of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet— Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001.

Meadows’ newly released manuscript, Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.

Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.

While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.

In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

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Book : UML for Systems Engineering (2001)

Summary

From the publisher:

This book is based on a very successful IEE course which is in turn based on many years research into modelling and the Unified Modelling Language (UML) by the author.

The UML is the new industry standard for modelling software-intensive systems and this book looks at several applications where the UML can be used as part of a generic approach to aid many kinds of problem solving and information modelling. These include: modelling standards, processes and procedures, requirements engineering, implementation of processes, assessment of tools, defining a quality system, lifecycles and lifecycle models and software.

The book is intended to bring UML to the wider audience of systems engineers, and its application to real examples for non-software applications; a problem which is widely acknowledged in other texts, but rarely addressed.

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Book : UML for Systems Engineering (Second Edition) (2004)

Summary

From the publisher:

Scope: Up until a few years ago there were over 150 different modelling languages available to software developers. This vast array of choice however, only served to severely hinder effective communication. Therefore, to combat this, every methodologist and many companies agreed to speak the same language, hence the birth of the unified modelling language (UML). The UML offers a means to communicate complex information in a simple way using visual modelling; i.e. drawing diagrams to create a model of a system.

This fully revised edition, based on a training course given by the author, coincides with the release of UML version 2 by the standard body, the Object Management Group, and covers the significant changes that have occurred since its release. It also includes material on life cycle management, examining the way the UML can be used to control and manage projects and the UML systems engineering profile.

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Book : When a Butterfly Sneezes: A Guide for Helping Kids Explore Interconnections in Our World ... (2001)

Summary

From the publisher:

New kind of thinking prepares kids for a complex world

Preparing our children for life in the complex world of the 21st century is arguably the most important of all our responsibilities. Now, a new book focuses directly on how we can cultivate in kids the thinking skills that will help them the most in facing the unique challenges ahead. When a Butterfly Sneezes: A Guide for Helping Kids Explore Interconnections in Our World Through Favorite Stories (Pegasus Communications, 2001, $14.95), breaks new ground by educating our children to think beyond the limitations of conventional mindsets and to find creative, responsible paths to sharing our lives and our world.

Praised by innovators in learning such as Dawna Markova, and Peter Senge, When a Butterfly Sneezes guides parents (or teachers) in using popular children’s picture books to help kids learn the basic skills and concepts of “systems thinking” in a fun and memorable way. So, when you consider the outlandish consequences of giving a mouse a cookie or the escalation of the Zooks’ and Yooks’ battles over the right way to butter toast, you really are starting to understand the same basic processes that underpin such weighty issues as global warming, population changes, and international conflicts.

Systems thinking, a method for understanding complex interconnections, always looks for the “feedback loops” that determine the behavior of a system, whether biological, social, ecological, or economic. These loops are the building blocks of all systems, regardless of their level of complexity. Because most picture books fail to take into account feedback processes, author Linda Booth Sweeney contends that they give children the wrong ideas about how the world really works. Typically, A causes B, B causes C. End of story.

But our world is rarely so simple. Sweeney points out that getting stuck in this kind linear thinking can be a big obstacle for kids as our world becomes more complicated and interconnected. The stories featured in When a Butterfly Sneezes focus on connections that are best described as loops: that is, A causes a change in B, B causes a change in C, and then C in turn causes a change in A. In this way the feedback loops form a web of relationships among the changing elements of a “system.”

Changes in the world around us that are puzzling when examined with linear thinking become understandable from the perspective of systems thinking. Aided by systems thinking skills, children learn to question simplistic explanations. They start to see the systems they are part of, to look for patterns in how things happen, to understand why problems arise, and to figure out what they can do about them. Ideally, they learn to influence and design systems to produce better outcomes.

The first two sections of the book offer a basic introduction to systems and systems thinking, and detailed tips for how to use the book with children. The third section includes a comprehensive guide to the 12 children’s books. The books include The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, The Sneetches, The Lorax, The Old Ladies Who Liked Cats, Anno’s Magic Seeds, Zoom, traditional Native American stories, The Butter Battle Book, and If You Give Mouse a Cookie. Each chapter outlines the age range (generally 4 to 8 year-olds), the relevant systems thinking concepts, a quick summary of the plot, teaching tips, personal accounts from people who have used the stories with kids, the questions to stimulate thought and conversation, and a short list of related books. The book comes complete with several appendices-a guide to reading systems thinking diagrams, tips for choosing your own systemic children’s stories, and guidelines for using the book in trainings with adults.

Linda Booth Sweeney is a Harvard-trained educator and researcher who is dedicated to helping children and adults understand how the natural and social worlds function through the field of systems thinking. As a researcher and consultant, Linda has worked with the Society for Organizational Learning, and has helped member companies-including AT&T, Ford and Visteon, and other for- and non-profit organizations-to develop capacity in systems thinking and its related disciplines. Linda lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children. She is currently at work on several “systems-oriented” stories for children.

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Book : Writing Better Requirements (2002)

Summary

From the publisher:

Well-written requirements are crucial to systems of all kinds: you are unlikely to get what you want unless you ask for it. This book explains and demonstrates exactly what requirements are for, and how to write them.

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