Systems

There is some discussion about systems, how systems work or don't work, and possible fixes for broken system going around the discussion boards and some Blogs.
    Before anyone starts proferring opinions about systems, they need to read - several times over - John Gall's book The Systems Bible: The Beginners Guide to Systems Large and Small. This is the anchor book for any discussion of systems and the interaction of humans with systems.
    Gall's principle concept is:

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system." (p. 71)

That's really all there is...

Oh, one more concept from a long lost work from my past in fault tolerant process control systems...

In a complex system, malfunction and even total nonfunction may not be detected for long periods, if ever.