Joep Schuurkes (Posts about systems thinking)https://smallsheds.garden/categories/systems-thinking.atom2023-11-26T10:50:54ZJoep SchuurkesNikolaDEWT3 experience reporthttps://smallsheds.garden/blog/2013/dewt3-experience-report/2013-04-28T15:32:02+02:002013-04-28T15:32:02+02:00Joep Schuurkes<div><p>Last weekend the third Dutch Exploratory Workshop in Testing (DEWT3 for short) took place. The ingredients were: a very nice hotel in the woods, lots of talk about testing, beer, whiskey, a small to moderate amount of sleep, stickies and a group of fun and interesting people (You can see them <a href="http://dewt.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/dewt3-experience-reports/">here</a>.)</p>
<p>On Saturday the talks (and thus discussions) were about systems thinking. A few years ago I did read Jerry Weinberg's "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" and although a very interesting read, w.r.t. to applying it to testing I never got further then: Software is (part of) a system, so you can apply systems thinking to it. Of course, that's very much true, but it's also quite a vague piece of advice.</p>
<h3>A primer on systems thinking</h3>
<p>Enter James Bach, who kicked off DEWT3 with a primer on systems thinking. Systems thinking is just a way of thinking - just like logical thinking, analogical thinking, creative thinking, etc. - in which we approach a situation as being a system. So what's a system? It's a set of things in a meaningful interaction with each other.
This definition raises all sorts of questions relevant in systems thinking:</p>
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