
6 n Designing Complex Systems
is composite approach is, essentially, the approach taken in creating com-
plex systems today, and there have been many notable successes (e.g., the public
telephone network and the Apollo project), but also many less successful projects,
and some disasters. e reason for this great variability in the outcome of the
process lies in the fact that there is no established methodology or theoretical
basis for the partitioning into interacting, physical objects; it is very much a case
of using previous experience and the skill of the system designer. So we are again
faced with a problem that is very similar to the