Designing Constraints: Enabling Emergence in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

Co-creating Frameworks for Adaptive Systems
Dr. Jabe Bloom

Designing Constraints: Enabling Emergence in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

Designing Constraints: Enabling Emergence in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

Dr. Jabe Bloom
🇬🇧 English
Advanced

Antwerp, Belgium
Carnot Wing
Total duration: 14h00

Timezone: Europe, Amsterdam
Monday June 2 09:30 - 17:30
Tuesday June 3 09:30 - 17:30


Summary

Design principles can serve as a scaffold in complex, dynamic systems, offering structured yet flexible frameworks that guide the iterative creation of sociotechnical architecture. Principles establish foundational enabling constraints to shape and refine the interplay of interactions, technologies, and organizational dynamics. By fostering coherence and enabling strategic adaptability, effective design principles empower systems to evolve responsively to changing requirements and environments.

The development of such principles is often under-theorized, and the processes for establishing them via action research and co-design, overlooked. Instead architectural/design principles are often handed down within a hierarchical system. This leads to impoverished understandings of how they are intended to be engaged with, which itself has a tendency to lead architects towards overly detailed specification, frustration and in the end half hearted attempts at compliance.

Consider how Bezos’ memo impacted the sociotechnical architecture within Amazon. How can teams and organizations identify, design and implement contextually appropriate Design Principle frameworks for themselves?

Join Dr. Bloom for an exclusive, small-group workshop. This two-day session dives deep into the design of design principles. The workshop will use a combination of a seminar format, group exercises and a canvas designed to capture design principles.

For who?

This workshop targets Architecture and Product Management practitioners.

This workshop is intended to be run prefiguratively, in other words the participants will be engaged in the active creation of new knowledge together. Materials will be pre-digested and provided in order to allow rapid acquisition. As such participants should be practitioners interested in the co-design of principles that will inform their own future exploration and practice of the design of design principles.

This is a unique opportunity to work with a design theorist on the development of new principles, and therefore, it is not intended as a passive learning experience: minimal lectures, maximum dialogue, and exploration. Join us to co-derive insights that can be leveraged to create context-aware constraints that enable emergent sociotechnical architectures.

Learning Objectives

Participants will explore and synthesize key design and systems theory frameworks, including:

  • Cherns' sociotechnical principles, foundational for aligning systems and human contexts.
  • Ostrom's principles for governing commons, offering insights into collaborative, decentralized design.
  • Meadows' systems thinking approaches, crucial for identifying leverage points in complex systems.
  • The Unix philosophy, providing powerful heuristics for modular and scalable design.
  • Organizational principles like the Bezos memo, enabling decision-making and team autonomy.
  • The cohort will tease out actionable heuristics tailored to the challenges of designing enabling constraints.
Dr. Jabe Bloom

About Dr. Jabe Bloom

Ergonaut. Jabe Bloom has been transforming and researching the organizational dynamics and interactions of management, design, development, and operational excellence for over 20 years as an executive, academic and consultant.

All workshops by Dr. Jabe Bloom
@cyetain

Designing Constraints: Enabling Emergence in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

Dr. Jabe Bloom
🇬🇧 English
Advanced

Antwerp, Belgium
Carnot Wing
Total duration: 14h00

Timezone: Europe, Amsterdam
Monday June 2 09:30 - 17:30
Tuesday June 3 09:30 - 17:30


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