Learning Systems Thinking Essential Non-Linear Skills and Practices for Software Professionals (Diana Montalion) (Z-Library)

Praise for Learning Systems Thinking The book sells itself short. “Your life is not about to get easier”—yes, it is. You’ll learn how to stop making things worse by trying to make them better. —Kent Beck, chief scientist, Mechanical Orchard; author of Tidy First? When changing code becomes easy enough, yet changing software only gets harder—it is time for this book. —Jessica Kerr, symmathecist As with the best learning books, the learning set out in this book isn’t about instruction; it’s about being shown the road, the map, and the stories you may come to tell. Deeply insightful, reassuringly practical, delightfully real, and staggeringly well written. —Kevlin Henney, independent consultant, trainer, and thought provoker; editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and co- editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

This book is a reality call: we need to face the fact that modern software development is a complex endeavor that we can’t fully control and plan. Diana does an exemplary job of giving us language and practices to help us improve our approaches. —Dr. Eduardo da Silva, independent consultant on sociotechnical architecture modernization Systems thinking is an essential mindset for anyone working in software engineering. In Learning Systems Thinking, Diana Montalion takes a brilliantly layered approach that delivers practical guidance at every stage. —Matt McLarty, CTO of Boomi; co-author of Unbundling the Enterprise and Microservice Architecture

In a world so interconnected by software, systems thinking is an essential skill for navigating the compounding sociotechnical complexity in software development. Diana’s brilliant book makes the ageless wisdom in systems thinking relatable and actionable for software professionals. —Xin Yao, independent consultant, domain- driven designer, sociotechnical architect, and practitioner of systems thinking I love how the MAGO case study examples throughout the book show how all of the concepts can be applied on real modernization projects, and in fact can be vital in achieving successful modernization outcomes. —Nick Tune, author of Architecture Modernization

Systems are an inherent part of our lives, from the systems we design to the companies we build. Systems thinking is essential to understanding the dynamics of systems’ behavior, and even ourselves. The book you are holding is an excellent learning resource. —Vlad Khononov, author of Learning Domain- Driven Design and Balancing Coupling in Software Design To successfully design systems, you need to think in systems. Nothing happens in isolation. Through practical exercises and relatable examples, Diana Montalion will open up your understanding of systematic thinking and reasoning and help you become comfortable with uncertainty. Everyone working in technology needs the skills learned from this book. —Jacqui Read, author of Communication Patterns; principal consultant

This book transcends paradigms. By combining great wisdom with deep humility, Diana not only shows, but also models, how to practice systems thinking, with examples from across her wealth of experience. In doing so, this book finally offers us a worthwhile heir to the work of Donella Meadows. —Andrew Harmel-Law, technical principal, author of Facilitating Software Architecture: Empowering Teams to Make Architectural Decisions Montalion has captured the warp and woof of systems thinking. I was particularly encouraged by her focus on the role systems thinking plays in business success. Read this book, share it with your team, and be ready to think differently. — Mike Amundsen, writer, speaker, trainer, and author of RESTful Web API Patterns and Practices Cookbook

Diana offers us a book with practical insights and tools for the quest of designing, building, and maintaining software. It is definitely not a linear journey! Also, her jokes rock. — João Rosa, independent consultant and Team Topologies valued practitioner The perfect tool to expand your thinking, Learning Systems Thinking is essential reading for anyone with hard problems to solve. —Alexandra Paskulin, technical writer For sustainable cultural transformation in software development, understanding and collaboratively designing the system is crucial. Diana Montallion’s provides software engineers with a pragmatic approach, equipping them with the tools needed to collaboratively pivot a system for change. — Kenny Baas-Schwegler, independent software consultant, tech lead, and software architect; coauthor of Collaborative Software Design

Learning Systems Thinking is essential for anyone thinking about thinking. This isn’t just a book to read; it’s a guide to changing how you think, offering practical advice and real- world examples to help you create more impactful software systems. —Avraham Poupko, principal architect at Forescout Technologies This is a rescue manual for anyone trapped in the morass of linear thinking that cripples software delivery. Journey into perspectives and practices that can powerfully reshape your imagination, your work, and perhaps even your organization, in radically nonlinear ways. —Paul Rayner, author of The EventStorming Handbook and founder of the Explore Domain- Driven Design conference

Learning Systems Thinking provides insightful practices to creatively tackle and make an impact on nonlinear, sociotechnical challenges. It enables everyone to have conversations and create decision-informing models, whilst dancing with uncertainty. —Dawn Ahukanna, design principal and front- end architect As you become more experienced, your intuition grows about what works, yet you do not always know exactly why. Learning Systems Thinking will help you understand most of the whys and give you extra tools and vocabulary for clearer thinking. —Andrea Magnorsky, programmer; creator of Bytesize Architecture Sessions In an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, linear deterministic thinking by the few is no longer sufficient. The full power of all the people in an organization, the whole system, must be fully engaged to be able to adapt and thrive. —Trond Hjorteland, IT consultant with Capra Consulting and sociotechnical practitioner

Learning Systems Thinking Essential Nonlinear Skills and Practices for Software Professionals Diana Montalion

Learning Systems Thinking by Diana Montalion Copyright © 2024 Mentrix Group LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Acquisitions Editor: David Michelson Development Editor: Shira Evans Production Editor: Clare Laylock Copyeditor: Liz Wheeler Proofreader: Kim Wimpsett Indexer: WordCo Indexing Services, Inc.

Interior Designer: David Futato Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Illustrator: Kate Dullea Chapter-Opener Image Designer: Lisa Maria Moritz July 2024: First Edition Revision History for the First Edition 2024-07-11: First Release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781098151331 for release details. The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Learning Systems Thinking, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The views expressed in this work are those of the author and do not represent the publisher’s views. While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without

limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights. 978-1-098-15133-1 [LSI]

Preface It became apparent that communications and computing served each other so intimately that they might actually become the same thing. —Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (Little, Brown and Company) From Nowhere to Everywhere Sixteen years ago, I owned an independent bookstore, Mooncougar Books, near the University of Montana in Missoula. The building once housed Freddy’s Feed and Read, where you could nibble tofu shepherd’s pie while browsing books by local authors. Eight years after Freddy’s closed, I bought the business from the penultimate owner in a long line of struggling booksellers. On July 20, 2007, twelve kids were nestled in the second-floor reading nook, wearing pajamas and reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At midnight, the book was officially released, and they left to continue reading it at home. Downstairs on the purple counter, there were Read Banned

Books buttons in a basket next to the bookmarks. The next morning, the enticing smell of Bears Brew coffee seeped in through the door shared with the coffee shop. The bookstore, and Missoula itself, was surrounded by 1.6 million acres of national forest land. During time off, I’d shrug on my backpack and disappear into that forest, hiking alongside fresh moose tracks. I rode my motorcycle (BMW F650, for the gearheads) across hundreds of miles of logging roads, sleeping in a tent overlooking the valley while the occasional bear sniffed at my stuff. Everywhere, indoors and out, I was reading. One afternoon, I was avoiding boring inventory work, reading an essay by Anne Patchett published in (if memory serves) Real Simple magazine. Beauty, she said, depends on our geography. She wasn’t beautiful in preppy Massachusetts towns. She wasn’t beautiful in towns where black eyeliner and tattoos were common. As that article progressed toward the Big Reveal, the place where she felt truly beautiful, I knew exactly where we were going—the Bitterroot Valley. Where I lived. In the Bitterroots, being fresh-air tousled, friendly, and smart with some mud on your boots was beautiful. I rarely wore makeup, unless Chapstick counts.

Who you were, authentically, mattered. In winter, getting up the mountain to home mattered. (Learning to put chains on your tires so you didn’t slide off the mountain mattered.) In April, not getting stuck in mud mattered. Every shift in weather, especially during fire season, mattered. Bears mattered and moose occasionally meandered into my yard. My dogs played hide-and-seek with the deer. (I didn’t know deer played hide- and-seek, did you?) Reading and learning mattered. People said that Missoula had the highest per capita percentage of waitresses with master’s degrees. People mattered. When those waitresses asked you how you were, they actually wanted to know. In Missoula, 16 years ago, there wasn’t technology. Not compared to, say, every town in the Northeast US. Before moving there, I’d studied programming and web engineering. In Montana, I had dial-up internet access. (Remember when we called the internet on the phone?) After a year or so of living down in the valley, I moved up a mountain and had no internet access at all. Turns out, when you stretch a wire up the side of a mountain to provide phone service, it won’t (later) carry the internet to you. Amazon’s home page, such as it was then, took almost six

minutes to load. Sure, I could check my email, if I was very patient, but basically I was cut off. I didn’t mind. I had internet access in the bookstore. There was a receptor attached to the second-floor roof, installed in winter, that stopped working when the leaves came back. At home, I was surrounded by trees and wind and time to write. I did more writing then, though I didn’t publish much. I was the source of my own entertainment. Books and words, mountains and rivers. Life wasn’t all peaceful and idyllic. There were dysfunctional interpersonal dramas, heartbreak, and difficult decisions to make. The relational part of my life was a mess. Still, when I remember Missoula, I remember beauty. For many years, I planned to return when I could afford to stay. (Missoula has broadband internet access now.) Eventually, an internet service provider came up the mountain and sunk a tall metal pole into wet concrete near the hot tub. The installer stuck a receiver on top of the pole and pointed it toward a new transmitter. I bet you can guess what happened next….

Within a month, I had moved into Second Life, a virtual world of endless…enjoyment? Creativity? Time squandering? I rediscovered being plugged in. I say rediscovered because before Montana, there was Merentha, a text-based role-playing game my son and I spent too many hours exploring together. One afternoon, he, as a centaur, had taken me, a half-elf monk scholar, for a ride on his back to places where I could hunt dragons. I needed their skin to make sturdier gloves. Missoula evenings became less about reading books; mornings became less about writing. I refilled my coffers from digital oceans. I surfed. Increasingly, I connected with people elsewhere. The rich beauty, the endless possibility, of Montana faded into the (boring) distance. sigh I don’t know, writing this now, which decision was the chicken and which was the egg. After a local competitor refurbished and expanded their bookstore in some wonderful but impactful-to-me ways, I closed the store. I sold my inventory to Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. Visits there still feel like visiting a loved one buried in a cemetery.

One winter weekend, in the midst of closing the bookselling business, I rented the Star Meadows Guard Cabin from the Forest Service in Whitefish, Montana. I’d recently finished a yearlong, creative nonfiction writing mentorship with Diana Hume George (which remains one of my most valuable investments). Simultaneously, I was building custom software (retrospectively, for shockingly little money) and mastering PHP, the programming language that, up until recently, powered most internet software. I brought Kelly James-Enger’s book Six-Figure Freelancing (Improvise Press) determined to make a choice. Writing or programming? I was the only “techie” I knew in Missoula, which felt increasingly frustrating. The digital world was speeding up—I could hardly keep up from the middle of the forest. From Software to Systems Six months later, I moved to Austin, Texas. I’d never been to Austin, but my Spreadsheet of Relevant Statistics told me that it was The Place to Be if you wanted to ride the wave of tech into the next decade. I choose to ride that wave. Spoiler alert: it was the place. I rode the wave. And here I am…

…living 90 minutes north of New York City, in a big house on four acres with my also-a-techie husband, three dogs, two cats, a ferret named Merry, and eleven chickens. I’ve written code for smallish and medium-sized websites. I’ve written code for Really Big digital properties. Nowadays, I architect systems of interdependent software and cloud-native platforms for entire organizations. I’ve helped build and design the digital traps that entangle your attention. I give talks and trainings at conferences, wearing those fancy headsets. I (sometimes) create healthy, happy teams that enjoy solving hard problems together. I pay more in annual income tax than I earned selling books in Montana. When I first arrived in Austin, I built tools for clients like TXMPA, a nonprofit advocacy group that brings millions of film dollars into Texas. I spent a weekend, alone, moving lists of differently structured data into their new CRM (people information) software. The expertise I developed led to a meeting with a professional services team. I joined, and we built big websites. I became deeply involved in open source. Big websites, at the time, generally meant installing a piece of open source software and extending it with (lots of) PHP. We built themes for styling, code that organized colors and fonts