Introduction to Complex Systems

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Introduction to Complex Systems
New material
Loose-coupling acquisition taking the notion of
capability seriously
Russ Abbott
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What drives system acquisition?

• An organization initiates an acquisition activity
  when it decides that it needs to be able to do
  something that it either cant do now or wont be
  able to do in the futureeither at all or not as
  well as needed.
• Acquisition is driven by the need to be able to
  do something, i.e., to have an ability to perform
  a service i.e., the need to develop a
  capability.
• How does/should an organization decide it has
  such a need?
• Thats a very difficult question, which Im not
  going to attempt to answer.

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Traditional acquisition the static view

• Traditional acquisition starts with a capability
  needs statement
• from which system requirements, specifications,
  and design documents are derived.
• From requirements on down these provide a static
  view of a system to be acquiredwhat will be
  built and delivered.
• Its static even though it describes the
  functions that the system will be able to
  perform.
• Its static because its a description of a
  system, a thing to be delivered.

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An dynamic view of acquisitionwould describe

• the capability as a service, i.e., what the
  capability consists of.
• the plan for how that capability is expected to
  be made use of by the acquiring organization,
  i.e., the concept of operations (CONOPS) and the
  organizational structure within which it occurs.
• In other words, if the capability were available
  how would it be usedwhen/if it is activated.

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The gotcha in system acquisition

• One wants a capability, the ability to do
  somethingto perform a service
• either as needed or (more importantly) in an
  ongoing way.
• But one is forced to describe a thing.
• At best the thing (the system) along with its
  concept of operations (CONOPS) can provide the
  capability.
• But the system is not the capability!
• No matter how well one integrates a CONOPS into
  an acquisition process, the contractor is
  committed to build the system, not its use and
  not the capability that the system has the
  potential to provide.
• So the acquiring organization is stuck. It can
  only buy at best a means to an endfor what it
  really wants.

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It gets worse

• There is no good answer for how to decide what
  capabilities one should develop.
• The customer is not clairvoyant.
• So although one has to make a decision to do
  somethingor no capabilities would ever be
  developedone also wants flexibility.
• If the situation changes or if one develops a
  better understanding of what one needs, one
  doesnt want to be locked into something too
  restrictive or burdensome.
• In other words, not only does one want services
  (rather than systems) one wants flexibility in
  those services.

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The customers predicament

• But flexibility is not for sale.
• Contractors (understandably) want certainty.
• They want to know what they will be held to.
• So one writes a set of requirements.
• But fixing requirements reduces flexibility.
• Any time one writes a requirement, an element of
  flexibility is lost.
• Thats true no matter how well written the
  requirements are with respect to flexibility.
• Even the act of requiring a certain kind of
  flexibility, often precludes other kinds of
  flexibility.

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Owning hardware is like having a ball chained to
your ankle
I bought this thing 5 years ago. Now what do I do
with it?
System
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The answer

• Stop doing it that way.

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But sometimes close coordination is important
Computational thinking
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An alternative approach has two components

• CONOPS-based acquisition.
• Keep the acquisition effort focused on the
  capability as a service and its place in the
  organization (CONOPS)not on a system that one
  may be able to use to provide that service.
• Internal outsourcing.
• Create a market that supplies the service.
• Minimize commitment by buying term contracts.

Dynamic specification
Loose coupling
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CONOPS-based acquisition
Dynamic specification specify the dynamics

• CONOPS-based approachnot a new idea!starts (and
  stays!) with the desired capability.
• Terrible as he was as a foreign policy advisor,
  Rumsfeld had some good ideas with respect to
  defence acquisition.
• Two layers of CONOPS how will it work?
• If hardware is actually going to be acquired, how
  will the organization use the hardware to realize
  the capability?
• How will the organization that says it needs the
  capability make use of it once it is being
  provided?
• Although neither is necessarily easy, working out
  these plans areor should bea standard
  management task.

Provider
User
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Outsource the service two elements
Loose coupling

• Establish and maintain the distinction between
  the service and the means by which it is
  provided.
• This is the distinction between specification and
  implementation.
• Establishto the extent possiblea market for the
  service with both buyers and sellers.
• This will be an internal (military) market on
  both sides.
• Once a specification exists, there are
  potentially many ways in which a service can be
  provided.
• Lets see how creative a market-oriented solution
  can be. The bigger the market, the more likely
  creativity is to emerge.

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Create a market for the service

• Write a preliminary description for the desired
  service.
• Shop it around.
• Create a community of interest of potential
  users.
• Invite potential users to help write the
  services functional specification.
• The objective is to build as large a potential
  customer base as possible for the service.

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Find potential suppliers

• Create or recruit one or more (preferably more)
  organizations whose mission it will be to provide
  the service.
• Just as the goal on the user side was to build a
  large a customer base as possible, the goal here
  is to build as large a supplier base as possible.
• The supplier organizations will still be within
  the overall buying organizationthe military.
• The idea is to create a market place for the
  desired service with large numbers of buyers and
  sellers.

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Flexibility

• The bigger the market (the more buyers and
  sellers) the more flexibility both buyers and
  sellers will have with respect to possible
  variants of the service.
• Buyers will also be able to negotiate different
  agreements reflecting their desired level of
  commitment
• Rent-as-needed vs.
• Lease over a longer term vs.
• Commit to buy a certain amount of the service
  over an extended period of time.
• Depending on the commitment of their customers,
  sellers will know what sorts of capital
  investment to make in developing the service.

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Using organization
Department of Defence
Using organization
Providing organization
Providing organizations
Using organizations
Functional Specification Service Contract
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The ultimate providers

• It will be up to the providing organizations to
  determine how the service will ultimately be
  provided.
• Build an internal capability.
• Outsource some or all of it commercially.
• This disengages the using organization(s) from
  making that decision. All they have to decide is
  what the service is and how committed they are to
  having it.
• This is loose-coupling acquisition
• The coupling between the user and the (internal)
  service provider is contract-based both in terms
  of functionality and time commitment
• Not tightly coupled to owning hardware.

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Using organization
Department of Defence
Using organization
Providing organization
Providing organizations
Using organizations
Functional Specification Service Contract
Contract
Contract
Contract
Contract
Contractor
Contractor
Contractor
Contractor
often for systems
Commercial contractors
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Introduction to Complex Systems How to think
like nature
Unintended consequences mechanism, function, and
purpose
Russ Abbott
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A fable

• Once upon a time, a state in India had too many
  snakes.
• To solve this problem the government instituted
  an incentive-based program to encourage its
  citizens to kill snakes.
• It created the No Snake Left Alive program.
• Anyone who brings a dead snake into a field
  office of the Dead Snake Control Authority (DSCA)
  will be paid a generous Dead Snake Bounty (DSB).

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The DSCA mechanism
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A fable (continued)

• A year later the DSB budget was exhausted. DSCA
  had paid for a great many dead snakes.
• But there was no noticeable reduction in the
  number of snakes plaguing the good citizens of
  the state.
• What went wrong?

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The DSCA mechanism
What would you do if this mechanism were
available in your world?
Start a snake farm.
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Moral unintended consequences

• A mechanism is installed in an environment.
• The mechanism is used/exploited in ways
• which may not be that for which it was originally
  intended.
• This is especially important when the mechanism
  is a source of energy
• which is fundamental.

The fundamental relationships in complex systems
are among entities, their environments, and
energy.
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Dicrocoelium dendriticum

• D. dendriticum spends its adult life inside the
  liver of its host. After mating, the eggs are
  excreted in the feces.
• The first intermediate host, the terrestrial
  snail (Cionella lubrica in the United States),
  eats the feces, and becomes infected by the
  larval parasites. The snail tries to defend
  itself by walling the parasites off in cysts,
  which it then excretes and leaves behind in the
  grass.
• The second intermediate host, an ant (Formica
  fusca in the United States) swallows a cyst
  loaded with hundreds of juvenile lancet flukes.
  The parasites enter the gut and then drift
  through its body. Some move to a cluster of nerve
  cells where they take control of the ant's
  actions.
• Every evening the infested ant climbs to the top
  of a blade of grass until a grazing animal comes
  along and eats the grassand the ant and the
  fluke.
• The fluke grows to adulthood and lives out its
  life inside the animalwhere it reproduces, and
  the cycle continues.

See also, Shelby Martin, The Petri Dish The
journeys of the brainwashing parasite, The
Stanford Daily, April 20, 2007.
http//daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/4/20/thePet
riDishTheJourneysOfTheBrainwashingParasite
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Toxoplasma gondii

• The life cycle of T. gondii has two phases.
• The sexual part of the life cycle (coccidia like)
  takes place only in members of the Felidae family
  (domestic and wild cats).
• The asexual part of the life cycle can take place
  in any warm-blooded animal.
• T. gondii infections have the ability to change
  the behavior of rats and mice, making them drawn
  to rather than fearful of the scent of cats.
• This effect is advantageous to the parasite,
  which will be able to sexually reproduce if its
  host is eaten by a cat.
• The infection is almost surgical in its
  precision, as it does not impact a rat's other
  fears such as the fear of open spaces or of
  unfamiliar smelling food.

See also, Charles Q. Choi, Bizarre Human Brain
Parasite Precisely Alters Fear, Live Science,
April 2, 2007. http//www.livescience.com/animals/
070402_cat_urine.html
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Spinochordodes tellinii

• The nematomorph hairworm Spinochordodes tellinii
  is a parasitic worm whose larvae develop in
  Orthopteran insects.
• When it is ready to leave the host, the parasite
  causes the host to jump into water, where it
  drowns, but which returns the parasite to the
  medium where it grows to adulthood.

See also, James Owen, Suicide Grasshoppers
Brainwashed by Parasite Worms, National
Geographic News, September 1, 2005.
http//news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/09
01_050901_wormparasite.html
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Ophiocordyceps unilateralis

• The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus infects
  Camponotus leonardi ants that live in tropical
  rainforest trees. Once infected, the
  spore-possessed ant will climb down from its
  normal habitat and bite down with a "death
  grip" on a leaf and then die. The death grip
  occurred in very precise locations. Most had

a) found their way to the north side of the
plant, b) chomped on a leaf about 25 centimeters
above the ground, c) selected a leaf in an
environment with 94 to 95 percent humidity and
d) ended up in a location with temperatures
between 20 and 30 degrees C. These are exactly
the condition the fungus needs to spore.
Text and image by Katherine Harmon, Fungus Makes
Zombie Ants Do All the Work, ScientificAmerican.
com, July 31,2009.
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Locomotion in E. coli

• E. coli movements consist of short straight runs,
  each lasting a second or less, punctuated by
  briefer episodes of random tumbling.

• Each tumble reorients the cell and sets it off in
  a new direction.
• Cells that are moving up the gradient of an
  attractant tumble less frequently than cells
  wandering in a homogeneous medium or moving away
  from the source.
• In consequence, cells take longer runs toward the
  source and shorter ones away.

Exploration
Exploitation
Gain benefit
Harold, Franklyn M. (2001) The Way of the Cell
Molecules, Organisms, and the Order of Life,
Oxford University Press.
Microcosm, Carl Zimmer
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Mechanism, function, and purpose

• Mechanism The physical processes within an
  entity.
• The chemical reactions built into E.coli that
  result in its flagella movements.
• The internal bureaucratic DSCA mechanism.
• The chemical mechanisms stimulated by the
  parasites.
• Function The effect of a mechanism on the
  environment and on the relationship between an
  entity and its environment.
• E. coli moves about. In particular, it moves up
  nutrient gradients.
• Snakes are killed.
• The actions of the hosts.
• Purpose The (presumably positive) consequence
  for the entity of the change in its environment
  or its relationship with its environment. (But
  Nature is not teleological.)
• E. coli is better able to feed, which is
  necessary for its survival.
• Snake farming is encouraged?
• Survival and reproduction.

Compare to Measures of Performance,
Effectiveness, and Utility
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Teleology building purpose
Designed
Nature

• E.g., E. coli locomotion to food
• Evolve a new mechanism
• Experience the resulting functionality
• If the functionality enhances survival, keep the
  mechanism
• Purpose has been created (and by definition
  achieved) implicitly

• E.g., Reduce snake population
• Identify a purpose (need)
• Imagine how a function can achieve that purpose
• Design and develop a mechanism to perform that
  function
• Deploy the mechanism and hope the purpose is
  achieved

In both cases, the world will be changed by the
addition of the new functionality. The purpose
is more likely to be achieved by nature since
its only a purpose if it succeeds.
Most of the design steps require significant
conceptualization abilities.
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An unusual platform-based design

• E. coli can produce lactase which digests
  lactose.
• But for efficiency sake it should produce lactase
  only when lactose is present.
• Imagine that you were asked to design a system
  that would produce a product only under certain
  conditions.
• How would you do it?

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A (quasi-top-down) functional analysis solution
Lactose sensor
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E. coli lets lactose flip its own switch
Wheres the platform?
The DNA ? protein processing system.
Once that processing cycle was built, nature
found out how to turn it on and off with gene
switches. It then became possible to use that
mechanism to allow lactose to turn on the
generation of its own digestive enzyme.

• Its often said that a first step in systems
  engineering is to agree on the system boundaries.
• What are the system boundaries in this case?

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Connecting the organization
From Hussein Abbass
Vision
Mission
ZITE8411
Values
Objectives
Constraints
Strategies
Effects/activities
ZITE8403
Capabilities
Resources
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Generations of Effects
From Hussein Abbass
Effects
Capabilities
FIC
Resources
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Fundamental Inputs to CapabilitiesFIC
From Hussein Abbass
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Effects Based Planning
From Hussein Abbass