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Question - what is happening in the top-most loop (B1)?

• (starting from B2) An increase in traffic volume increases the travel time
• increased travel time increases pressure to reduce congestion
• increased pressure to reduce congestion increases road construction
  
• increased road construction increases highway capacity after delay
• increased highway capacity decreases travel time

An increase in travel time creates pressure in this feedback loop for the expansion of roads by increasing highway capacity but there is a delay caused by road construction. As there is only one negative link on this loop, it is a balancing loop suggesting that after delay there will be a decreased pressure to reduce congestion hence decreasing road construction.

Task

Add any phrases or metaphors you can think of to the list above. These will help you identify situations where system dynamics effects may be in play.

(from my chosen situation of interest)

Phrases of explanation

IT Consultant’s perspective

• It drained me 
• It wore me out
• We managed to pull it off
• I lived to work
• We were wasted  

IT Consultancy’s perspective

• We nailed it
• We exceeded all expectations
• We went the extra mile
• The team was fully committed

Context

• Activity P1.2 - Metaphors in my situation of interest
• Activity P1.3 - Using metaphors in my situation

Task

Continuing with the metaphors you identified in activities P1.2 and P1.3, consider the entailments of the metaphor and make notes on: 
a.aspects of the situation that the metaphor highlights
b.aspects of the situation that the metaphor possibly hides or makes less open to discussion.

A. Aspects of the situation that the metaphor highlights

By spinning up a cell or team there is the implication of something mechanical which is inert and awaiting a command to (get ready for) action. It does not consider human aspects like willingness and motivation. Additionally, it does not take into account latency as it assumes that resources (i.e. people in this case) are sitting, maybe assembled or coordinated for action, and awaiting to be called into play. A metaphor for this metaphor could be players sitting on the bench during a match, already warmed up and waiting to be called into participation or play.

B. Aspects of the situation that the metaphor possibly hides or makes less open to discussion

There are two aspects in this metaphor. The perspective which is internal to the consultancy and the second aspect is the external or perspective as seeing from the client's viewpoint.

Perhaps the most pivotal in this case is the client's perspective as it might lead to false and unfulfilled expectations. For example, by continuing to use the metaphor of "spinning up a team" we leave open to interpretation the collective experience of the team. We are explicitly saying that gathering the IT Consultant does not guarantee their ability to immediately gel and effectively work together as a team. They might have never worked together until that point and this lack of collective experience will increase the time needed to have a team performing successfully. In other words, this metaphor leaves client interpretation open for assuming that the (outsourced) team is using the client's money and time to learn how to work together. 

Consider situations of interest associated with your chosen area of practice. 
Identify and list some of the metaphors that are in regular use.

Situation of Interest (SoI) - How IT Consultants manage work-life balance when allocated to client sites

Metaphors

Since my situation of interest relates to IT Consultants and the problematic behind managing work-life to achieve a healthy and sustainable balance, I have chosen phrases used to describe commercial agreements (leading to IT Consultants being allocated) that represent metaphors where the human aspect as either abstracted or altogether disregarded.

• "Spin up a delivery cell" - suggests machinery, human resources available as parts that can be assembled when required
• "Resource augmentation" - de-humanises by shifting considerations, from human to resource
• "Fixed Time and Materials (type of contract)" - when used in the context of software delivery, this term again de-humanises by not including people and their efforts

Area of Practice -> Resourcing Teams for Agile Delivery

Situation of Interest -> The challenges of maintaining a healthy balance between work and life for people allocated to projects away from home - ‘The need to work less is a matter of life and death’

Interrelationships

Read the section 'Perspectives on systems thinking' of Chapter 1 in the Systems Approaches reader. Draw up a table contrasting each of the four perspectives on systems thinking. For each perspective note the relative emphasis given to the:

My initial education as an engineer and then as a business analyst trained my mind to work in terms of processes, circuits, and the discreet description of components that would always meant to fit neatly within a map (scope). However, during the experience accrued as an analyst and within the context of strategy-making, I have encountered many situations where process-thinking and process-oriented approaches have not completely addressed the problem(s) before me.

One could say that I have dealt with messes by addressing the individual interlocking components separately and expecting the mess to be resolved. But that approach has never been able to deal with the uncertainty that characterises the mess, it has simply dealt with the difficulties identified at the time. To use the language from section 1.2.3, the dogmatism inherited from process thinking can be described by the belief that I could address situations as if they were processes so that my engineering-mind could apply reductionism (or Cartesian approaches, as in Cartesian Mechanism) to solve the individual, isolated components.

Additionally, and to support this new mindset,  I have started a glossary with definitions and will continue to add new terms and concepts as the course progresses. The 29th April 2018 versión attached here.