Systems Thinking: From Chaos & Complexity to Elegant Simplicity

The speakers are world-renowned, includes: Prof. Brian Wilson is the father of one of the most successful requirements elicitation and organizational change methodologies in the world along with Steve MacIntosh, Jeremy Hilton and Anas Tawileh from Cardiff Univaersity.

Workshop Synopsis

The unprecedented pace of change in today's business environment has brought many challenges -and opportunities- which business managers, strategists, government officials and information systems designers and developers are asked to tackle. The increased interconnectedness made possible by the e-revolution is transforming organisations and magnifying the complexity of every aspect of the business environment. Such developments have reduced the effectiveness of traditional requirements analysis and strategic planning methods and call for new ways to deal with the increasingly complex problematic situations characterizing management in the twenty first century.

Systems Thinking has emerged as an alternative approach to provide more effective ideas and tools for intervention in complex organisational issues. This workshop aims to equip business managers, strategy planners and information systems designers and developers with an essential understanding of the Systems Thinking paradigm. Participants will engage in interactive discussions, case studies and exercises to appreciate the concepts underpinning the paradigm and the value of methods based on it. They will their capacity to implement powerful Systems Thinking approaches, methodologies and techniques to understand and resolve complex business problems. They will also understand how Systems Thinking aids the identification and management of intended and unintended consequences upon which the future success or failure of the organisation will be based.

Time Framework for the Workshop

This is a 1-day, approximately 8-hour workshop. There is a 1 hour break for lunch and two short 15 minute coffee and networking breaks.

Maximum Number of Participants

24 Participants

Workshop Content

An Introduction to Systems Thinking

Tackling Complexity: Soft Systems

Methodology The Fifth Discipline: Finding the 'leverage', improving policies and Organisational Change Holistic Information Assurance Management

Speakers

Prof. Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson has a background in nuclear power engineering and control system design. In 1966 he became a founding member of the Department of Systems Engineering at the University of Lancaster, where he pursued the application of control principles to management problem solving. There he was involved in the development of the concept of Human Activity Systems and use of 'verbs in the imperative' in place of mathematics as the modeling language for the intellectual processes involved. He has maintained a particular interest in the application of Soft Systems Methodology to information and organisation-based analysis and the continuing development of the approach based on practical application in real-world organisations. This research was published as his first book in 'Systems: Concepts, Methodologies and Applications'.

In 1992 he founded his own consulting company, Brian Wilson & Associates, where he continued to develop and apply his unique brand of SSM. Not only did he lay the foundation for the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) standard Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), his work has also resulted in his second book 'SSM Conceptual Model Building and its Contribution'.

He has been involved with a number of organisations in both the private and public sector. Most recently, his involvement has been with macro issues and the transformational government agenda for central and local government organisations, including NHS, Children's Services and the Police.

Steve McIntosh

Steve McIntosh is an experienced business consultant and project manager specialising in the design and implementation of strategic information systems, change management, systems integration, and process improvement, with particular strengths in the early stages of requirements definition.

He has considerable experience in the management of complex business systems projects and his broad experience and excellent interpersonal skills have enabled him to achieve success both as a project manager and as a "troubleshooter" at later stages of projects.

Steve is also an experienced educator and trainer, and is currently employed as the Director of IS Programmes in the School of Computer Science, Cardiff University. He has published widely on systems thinking and the application of systems methods to real world problems. He maintains his technical and IS skills through his research, and active membership of the British Computer Society, where he was responsible for developing the management and Information Systems streams of the Industry Structure Model, and INCOSE and AFCEA.

Most recently, Steve has been involved with a business systems alignment study aimed at defining an IT strategy and replacing the IT to bring together the IT systems within the subsidiaries of a major publishing group, and has supported the UK MoD in developing a structured approach to identifying information requirements for logistics applications.

Jeremy Hilton

Jeremy Hilton is responsible for developing and delivering the MSc and BSc modules on Information Security and Adaptive Organisations, among others, within the School of Computer Science at Cardiff University. His involvement in the Jericho Forum is focused on the emerging security issues facing organisations due to the dissolution of traditional network perimeters that results from new ways of working and changes in technology; specifically new applications and methods of establishing value systems between organisations.

Additionally, he researches and applies knowledge on different methods of risk assessment and risk management and how they should be best applied in different organisations. A detailed understanding of realistic understanding of threats, vulnerabilities and incidents for IT-assets within different environments and usage scenarios is crucial. In addition to his research and teaching obligations, he consults in information security, has undertaken risk assessments for large and small organisations and has a particular sympathy for SMEs.

In his previous activities, principally as VP Practice at AddTrust and as Head of information Security at The Post Office, Jeremy gained significant experience and knowledge of methods and procedures to identify platform vulnerabilities. In addition, due to the positions held, he has considerable experience in and knowledge of the entire process of IT security management for an organisation, especially in the area of vulnerability scanning, threats identification and intrusion detection.

More recently, Jeremy has been involved with the Awareness Raising activities through expert input to the e-Crime Manifesto and Action Plan in Wales which builds on the experience gained in awareness-raising within AddTrust and The Post Office.

Anas Tawileh

Anas Tawileh acted as a consultant for several European Community (EC) funded projects within the MEDA programme, which included the design, analysis and implementation of Information Systems in different organisations in the Middle East. He has also developed and delivered several training workshops on the topics of security management and implementation.

His previous consultancy assignments included an advisory role to the Chairman of the Board of Nosstia Centre of Excellence (NCE) on Information Technology and Security topics and an Information Technology Consultant to Detecon GmbH for the TSSP project. He also worked as a consultant for several international organisations including the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Open Society Institute (OSI), Media Development Loan Fund and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

He has published many papers in scholarly journals and industry magazines and wrote two books: "Community Wireless Networks" and "Open Source: Unlimited Opportunities". He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Global Text project and a member of the International Editorial Board of iCommons. His vast portfolio of industry and professional certifications covers the areas of Project Management, Networking, Security and System Administration.

Anas is Diplo Foundation's delegate to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and is also a member of the UN Expert Meeting on Free and Open Source Software and the founder of the InfoSec Middle East and North Africa (InfoSec MENA) initiative. He also authored the Primer on Voice over IP (VoIP).