Mind blown:

A history of simulation technology in the space program has yet to be written

Digital Apollo, David A. Mindell

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/3182/Digital-ApolloHuman-and-Machine-in-Spaceflight

#Histodon #HistoryOfTechnology #Sociotechnical #Systems

New blog post:

Given that work also produces people, in addition to products and services, how can we make sure that we create a work environment that makes the world a better place?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/work-produce-people-far-reaching-effects-design-trond-hjorteland-8tm5f
#SocioTechnical #OpenSystems #OrgDesign

Thank you so much to Sonya Natanzon and Vlad Khononov for their talk on Complexity and Modularity. An insightful talk linking the technical and the social. There were lots of 💡 ah-ha moments!

Get the slides here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7302701447433863170

#softwareDesign #softwareDevelopment #softwareArchitecture #software #ddd #domainDrivenDesign #programming #socioTechnical

"Whatever calamity strikes, we must never give up our human connections."

#ConnectiveLabor #AllisonPugh #Sociotechnical #Resilience #SRE

https://www.sounding.com/2025/02/21/sociotechnical/

Trond used these principles (the full set; i sampled from Cherns) to inspire and organize a thread that was originally on twitter, and I was sad to lose access to it, so I urged @trondhjort to bring it over here (and 🦋). Trond’s principles start with Cherns and then extend well beyond. Nice body of work collated, synthesized and extended there.

🐘https://hachyderm.io/@trondhjort/113487449064207618

🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/trond.hjorteland.com/post/3lawj3q5p222

See Trond’s posts on #sociotechnical

I badly need this shirt for my next software governance consultation.

#systems #sociotechnical

This concludes my thread on #sociotechnical design principles. If you like to have a look, use this as an entry point, as the threading was a bit tricky to get right. Click on each one for more details. There are so many valuable insights here that we need when establishing sociotechnical systems

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Discretionary coalition – a population engaged in deliberations.

The second pattern from Pava is the social artefact matching the technical one, the deliberation. It was a novel organizing principle where the formal organization chart became scaffolding.
https://stsroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/Pava-Redesigning-STS-Design.1986.pdf

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Deliberations – sequence of exchanges and communication

In the 80s, Calvin Pava felt that STS needed updating to keep pace with change and accommodate non-linear and non-routine knowledge work. He proposed extending the design practice with two patterns,
https://stsroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/Pava-Redesigning-STS-Design.1986.pdf

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Self-Regulating Work Groups

This makes an organisational pattern frequently used in STS explicit.
Berniker '96: "The self-regulating work group is the building block of the organization. Design work groups rather than individual jobs."

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Work as Problem-Solving Action and Motivated Behavior

Paradoxically, work can be seen as behaviour controlled by psychological needs and job satisfaction on one side, while on the other it is about autonomous capacities to adapt, control, and manage problems.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-GsDvi9hAZjaxrL1LkBA5TqsuNPW-IEz/view?usp=sharing

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

System design involves political processes.

"Design debates concerning values, choices, ownership, processes, task allocation, evaluation, and resources inevitably raise political issues in organizations."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Resources and support are required for design.

Not included in Cherns' but is implicit in his arguments. Resources here are interpreted very broadly, e.g. money, time, knowledge, skill, methods, techniques, and mechanisms.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Design involves multidisciplinary education.

Again Clegg makes what is implicit in Cherns' principles, highlighting the importance of multiple perspectives in design, with partial forms of expertise and views of the world.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Evaluation is an essential aspect of design.

Cherns covered this in Incompletion but it's dealt with explicitly here as evaluations are frequently omitted for human, political, and organizational reasons.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Systems and their design should be owned by their managers and their users.

This amends the participative design aspect, moving the focus from user participation to user ownership.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Systems should be simple and make problems visible

This new principle proposes that sociotechnical systems should be simple and promote their ease of use.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090

Finally I wrote up a piece about analyzing #sociotechnical systems that's closer to my practiced experience and I hope does the topic a bit more justice than some of my previous writings on it: https://www.alkoclick.space/joint-optimisation-on-sociotechnical-systems