Talk:Design principles for managing complexity

Granularity: not sure, but reducing the granularity to me means coarser grains. Is this the recommendation? Also, I would instinctively suggest not to use the word "optimise" here (reminds me of Operations Research...). Maybe use "vary", instead? The point here being that you may find more distinct interesting things at different levels of granularity, without one being "more optimal" than the other. -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 21:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

In the KM session, referring Knowledge objects, granularity at the right level so they can be repurposed. So as to recombine to new exaptive patterns. -----Uma 8:55, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

That sounds intuitively clear. And I would add knowledge objects are not the only ones for which granularity is relevant. Rephrasing my 2 points here: 1) is "reducing granularity" clear, unambiguous, and accurate? 2) Is the word "optimize" adequate to this context?

1. Reducing granularity can be mis-interpreted, not always understood as granularity reduction is higher level of detail. 2. I instinctively took Optimize as the right level of granularity (could be less or more). Maybe use "adequate"? ----Uma 16.26, 4 Mar 2021 (UTC)

I would support "adequate". On granularity, not being a native speaker, I might easily be wrong, but for me a higher granularity implies finer grains, and vice-versa in the case of lower or reduced. -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 20:04, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

I think I am partly responsible for some of the confusions as I get it wrong in the heat of the keynote. I've started to talk about finer grained and clumping as an alternative. Interesting comments on optimize, needs an alternative really and the thesaurus doesn't help. There is a right range of granularity, or maybe coarseness? -----Snowded ^TALK 09:52, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Approproaite is another term that can be used and reflects this contextual in nature --Gregb^talk 11:30, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Adding one more element of thought on the ambiguity of the term "granularity", here. As mentioned in the corresponding Wikipedia article (16 Mar 2021): "Note that, although the modifying terms, fine and coarse are used consistently across all fields, the term granularity is not", and "In investing: more granularity refers to more positions of smaller size", but "In photography: more granular photographic film has fewer and larger chemical "grains" (similarly, more granular sugar has fewer and larger grains)". Of the two examples, my opinion is that the latter is only apparently opposite to the former. In fact, in photography the term "granular" refers to a picture in which grains are visible, meaning that they are there, as opposed to one in which they are not visible, then they are not ("te video/sentio ergo es" applies, and the fact that they could be spotted microscopically is pragmatically irrelevant here). Equally for sugar. -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 14:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Agree that we need consistency - would you be happy with our use to be more granular means larger and therefore easier to recognise?

Luca see the example I've added which I use - does this make the idea clearer? - --GregBro (talk) 11:13, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Interesting example, @Greg Brougham. I'm not convinced though, based on the short summary, that it is really representative of a complexity-informed approach. I suppose it depends on how the 900 were involved in the process. Without such explanation, it seems to me closer to a "complicatedness-informed" approach. -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 12:41, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Luca, I think this is one of the challenges as practices like this could be described as ordered/complicated but they still observe the principles of being fine-grained in nature, leverage distributed cognition and disintermediation so can be described as complexity informed - this, interestingly harks back to one of the reason's Dave wanted to rename the 'simple' domain which was to avoid confusion with simple techniques related to cynefin --Gregb^talk 15:25, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm with Luca, it is a component based approach which is mostly complicated. If we had several other examples with more variety it could be one of them, but on its own I think its problematic -----Snowded ^TALK 09:41, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Dave not arguing that is it not component-based but that it demonstrate the concepts - to date it the best example I've come across --Gregb^talk 10:44, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I still believe it's a very good example to illustrate the Granularity concept. I would consider moving it to the newly created page for that. What do you think? -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 07:31, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

I created a concept stub page for Granularity, with an illustration intended to help clarify doubts. Feedback (here or there) very much welcome. -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 21:15, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Need for commentary

The page needs some commentary added bring the points together into a cohesive whole - --GregBro (talk) 11:13, 11 March 2021 (UTC)