This is a starting point for an EATS Development Journal. The point of the journal is to provide something along the line of a historical timeline treatment to the documentation of software development activities and status as I begin the redevelopment of EATS related code under an Eclipse framework.
This blog entry is a re-post of a posting that I made in the LinkedIn Systems Thinking World discussion group under the Systems Thinking and Enterprise Architecture topic. The context of the dialog was an ongoing discussion concerning the relationship between Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Systems Thinking (ST). Whether EA was a process that dealt with 'hard' or 'soft' systems, and whether such activities were essentially the subject of a 'functional' systems approach. A related blog entry by David Alman describing what is meant by a 'functional' systems approach can be found at systems-thinking-approaches.blogspot.com.au. [Note. David passed away from a battle with cancer on the 18th of July, 2014. If the links fail after a time, that is probably the reason.]
As part of the tools catalog we have started to identify and document a series of tools. Some of these will become candidates for inclusion in EATS, others represent some form of alternative (aka competition) to EATS, or an EATS feature. This effort should continue and should include an entry for each of the EA tools identified by parties like J.
Schools of ST are broadly cast - as of today - into three main 'streams of intellectual virtues' - episteme, techne and phronesis.
Here's a short summary of the ST 'gurus' associated with each 'stream' and the disciplines they support.
The work in the systems sciences can be categorized along the lines of intellectual virtues, as described by the ancient Greeks: (i) systems theory (as with episteme); (ii) systems methods (as with techne); and (iii) systems practice (as with phronesis).
The concept of "What is a System?" takes on different meanings in different contexts.
Our definition is adopted from Dana Meadows as defined in her book Thinking in Systems[bib]Meadows2008[/bib]:
A set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its 'function' or 'purpose'.
As an inaugural post for this public website I thought I'd start with some historical context. Where did some of the ideas for this site come from? What is the origin for the Element Architecture Tool Suite (EATS)?
Since I was very young, I've always been interested in the future. What does it hold? What will it look like? How will it come about? In the 1950's, as a young child, I was a big fan of Willy Ley and his books depicting rockets and space stations. The idea of space travel and exploring the planets and stars fascinated me. As I grew older Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark became favorite authors. The technology was interesting and exotic. And there was adventure in exploring new worlds, new ways of living, and an aspect of a new era of "Manifest Destiny" — except this time the expansion was outward to the solar system and beyond. But the other part that intrigues me was the planning, the design, the engineering. Given the vision, how did you go about making it happen? What would be involved in making it work? How do you get there from here?
