Engineering Intelligent Systems

9Solving Hard Problems with Systems Thinking

As introduced in Chapter 3, the main purpose of systems thinking is the solving of problems that occur in systems. Systems thinking can be applied to natural systems, engineered systems, and human activity systems, the three types described in Chapter 3 but is most often applied to human activity systems and natural systems. This is likely because when considering a problem in an engineered system, the most logical approach is to refer to the original intended operation of the system and compare its observed, problematic behavior to its designed, intended behavior. Any discrepancy, known as a failure, defect, or bug can be traced, using the engineering designs, to a particular part of the system. Engineers dive down into subsystems, components, and finally individual parts to find the issue and fix it by repairing or replacing some part. This is the normal break‐fix process used to correct problems in an engineered system. If the system ever functioned correctly but is not now functioning correctly, the problem can only be the failure of one or more parts. While it's possible for two unrelated parts in a system to fail at the same time, in most cases a newly appearing problem is caused by the failure of a single part or a set of closely related parts, and even then, it is probably just one part that was the origin of the failure. A failing part can certainly “take others with it” so engineers learn to look for the original cause, ...