Whatâs the biggest blocker that stops you from becoming a systems thinking specialist?
Bonus points for community commentary, whatâs your lived experience?
This poll and the commentary is used to guide our conversations with the next Testing Planet episode on Systems Thinking, save your spot!
Visibility. Its hard to practice systems thinking when you canât see or have access to the whole system. This includes decisions being made by c-suite on areas like sustainability or Accessibility.
After looking up systems thinking I learned that itâs a ting I do, but thatâs about it. No one has ever named it in this way and I donât know how to teach it to others or grow in systems thinking
I think there is some confusion between the terms systems thinking, holistic testing and contextual thinking. All of which promote looking at the whole âthingâ. Therefore it is hard to see a systems thinking specialist who isnât also knowledgable in those other areas too.
If I were to dedicate time to being a specialist in this, Iâd be taking time away from being a specialist in something else. Whilst this is useful, I donât know if I need to be any better than I am already.
If only there were some upcoming free event that could teach me, and might change my mindâŠ
Definition:
I donât really know what is considered a âspecialistâ in thisâŠfor me, it feels like a skill that you apply to other specialties, rather than something I necessarily want to specialize in.
It can be not taking the time to understand all the pieces to the impacted change. For instance, if the change impacts multiple source systems, ensuring that you understand the big picture and impact, which will help in overall understanding, the why", and what might impact your specific area.
Hence, enabling you to be strategic and more intentional about your testing strategy and execute accordingly.
I need to distill my learnings from the concept of systems thinking to:
âHey, hereâs how you can apply this to your real-world project situationâ.
Once, I can do this, which I am sure can be done if I invest some time in this topic and of course from the learnings from this edition of The Testing Planet event; I think I can sell this as a value proposition and help teams unblock themselves.
That could be the first step towards me becoming a systems thinking specialist.
Tradeoffs are a reality of life. Most people think of tradeoffs as contradictions.
I think events like these can open up a wider possibility for testers. Thanks, MoT!
The biggest blocker that could stop someone from becoming a systems thinking specialist might just be whether or not they have the availability to do so. That is, if theyâre already assigned to and working on a prioritized and very specific project solution (thatâs a part of the whole system), they may not have the bandwidth to squeeze in additional knowledge-stretches outside of this.
In general, I think most of us see the benefits of being a systems thinking specialist. Whether or not time and circumstances would afford us this, is another consideration.
I would say itâs 2 closely related things: time and training/documentation.
Time because it just takes a while to become truly expert-level on a project and environment youâre working in. Most people that Iâve worked with who could be considered âsystems thinking specialistsâ had been on a project for at least a couple years. In a larger sense that could apply to your career in general, it takes time to build a strong knowledge base.
Training/DocumentationâŠIâve worked on several projects where there was none. Often if documentation did exist, it was scant and out of date. Experts on the project are often the only real knowledge source and sometimes they donât want to share that knowledge. So this feeds back into the time factor - becoming a systems thinking specialist is difficult under the best of circumstances but now itâs even more difficult and time-consuming.
Systems Thinking is basically just Thinking. Everything around us are systems, which are part of systems. Free yourself from the idea that with Systems Thinking an IT system has to be involved. The company you work in is a system, your family is a system, your house, your car, your bike, your country. All systems. The supermarket around the corner.
@adystokes Every aspect of other thinking notions is just a certain perspective of systems thinking. I havenât heard of contextual thinking, which sounds like a weird term. Because context is a big box that describes the system the system we look at is embedded in. e.g. Critical thinking is systems thinking with the perspective and goal to identify potential flaws and issues in the system. And so onâŠ
@jane_d_cruze it might be hard to do with a system with restricted vision. But you are already thinking about the system, and you know that there are boundaries that you have an issue with looking into from your perspective. So you have to put some black box elements into your personal model. But you know that from the perspective of someone else, you would see more/different parts.
@parwalrahul think about anything around you and treat it as a system. I recently made a systems thinking exercise with my daughter, looking at the kitchen door. Systems are everywhere around us. You might just lack the terminology of the aspects of a system to look for, but you are doing it already.
@mr_styx you think about a very specific system at hand. But systems thinking happens all the time, if you have training or documentation at hand or not. You build a mental model of the system in front of you. You donât need outside input for everything. Your goal of systems thinking is to close the gap between your mental model and reality. So, just do it and build and continuously improve your mental model.
I agree with several of the responses above. What even is a systems thinking specialist. Professors and other academics at university who study systems thinking, conduct experiments and write books about it, these are specialists. The rest are just systems thinkers. Systems thinking is a skill. Skills need practice. So practice thinking.
Look at any system around you. Identify what it is and what it is not. (Boundaries, differences, etc.) Identify the parts, can you dissect the parts into parts, are the parts part of parts? Relations, are the parts related? Does someone have a specific relation with the system? Perspectives. Take any perspective on the system and see how the model changes. Choose different stakeholders of the system or even parts or relationships of the system. Look at the system from the perspective of a part and repeat the exercise of distinction, parts and relations.
Thanks @patrick, I like the approach of putting anything unknown, and potentially unknowable into a black box which is part of the testing world anyway so it makes absolute sense to me.
I am sat in my office which desperately needs reorganising while reading your thoughts on looking at any system to identify what is is, and what it is not. It got me thinking as I looked aroundâŠ
My office is a collection of useful and not so useful information, in piles, and book cases, and folders, with pens, and random items I use daily, that could be better organised but I can find everything, except I need a clearer desk, so my model needs to change so I can obtain that. 
The same could be said of my system within my system (my laptop and kit).
If I look at it from the perspective of other stakeholders - my husband would prefer there is more room while the cats only want to ensure the steady supply of dreamies continue.
I definitely have some work to do 
Appreciate your insights and thought triggers. Gotta love thinking!