Notices by Ruth — of systems & design (ruthmalan@mastodon.social)

And “good, right, successful” is from Dana Bredemeyer:

Good: technically sound
Right: addresses stakeholder cares and concerns
Successful: delivering value (so all the org, ops, and other challenges have been addressed)

We bring a lot together in a framework of
Context, System-in-Context and System. This provides the scaffolding for design practices and heuristics. And it’s fun to see folk drawing on the learning, years later.

From this week — Webs tying in Polarity Mapping with a hat tip. 💜

I was introduced to Polarity Mapping by @kenny_baas but then remembered I was using a form of it via @estherderby :)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116381283686926955

I put a few tickets on 🌸🌸flash sale🌸🌸 so only tell the folk you really care about (getting design righter) :)

It's a really good and worthwhile workshop, and worth investing the time in, to buoy a sense of why what we do (together!) is important. We're co-shaping value, intent and (yes) constraint, and how our systems evolve -- their impact, and consequences.

We need to read women, to quote women. And when you read my work, you get all kinds of pointers to additional women — writing in tech, systems, social dynamics and leadership, more.

Other people are woven in too, of course. :)

Dropped her off for her radioactive iodine treatment. She is going to feel so sad and abandoned 💔

Worth a watch I think: Dave Farley and The Real Threat of AI

"help guide [..] is part of our duty of care as software professionals"

"you just need three things: capability, autonomy, and our own carelessness"

"whether the software understands what it is doing is a philosophy seminar question. Whether it can do damage is an engineering question"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRF99to28sA

"When you treat human beings as interchangeable typing machines, you forget what software engineering actually is. THE HARD PART OF BUILDING SOFTWARE WAS NEVER THE TYPING. It is understanding the problem, designing a coherent solution, and taking responsibility for the result."

- Modern Software Engineering on LI (Dave Farley)

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/modern-software-engineering_softwareengineering-techleadership-teambuilding-activity-7488552748091863040-cdJn

Is systems understanding, system design and architecture more valued in Europe? I get several invites a year to talk and even keynote there, but not the US.

A great summer/winter read? In good part because it pulls on various threads, that open up various rabbit holes to explore, in that Alice sense??

Oh alright, here you go: https://www.ruthmalan.com/systems/2025SystemDesignOverview.pdf

Hehe. but seriously, it’s regrounding to remind ourselves that we’re developing and evolving these theories:
theory of (our role in) the ecosystem(s) we impact/are impacted by
theory of value (“the problem”)
theory of “the solution”
and how these interact.
(p146)

It’s about the matter of the matter.

Which invites us to make connections to Margaret-Anne Storey’s “Triple Debt Model”

https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3807966

:)

We have Naur:
“The programmer having the theory of the program can explain why each part of the program is what it is, in other words is able to support the actual program text with a justification of some sort.”

and Brandolini:
"It's developer's (mis)understanding, not expert knowledge that gets released in production"

and his Law.

And we have: “theories of why the system matters and what matters (to users) and how”

Of course, even “the matter of the matter” unfolds in multiple directions: how and why does it matter? what matter is it made of? (And yes, conceptual matter matters too.)

“I am a bit allergic to the idea that we can disregard industry resilience while pushing the individual to cover for this lack of resilience through their own means. I argue that accessibility is one of the characteristics of any critical national infrastructure providing essential services to the population.”

— Andra Sonea

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/activity:7484557470317608961

“Burnout is surging, and optimism is fading. Significant burnout rose from 44.7% to 55.7% of respondents, while career optimism fell from 54.8% to 48.7%. Those who feel destabilized by AI are feeling the least optimistic and the most burned out. A worrisome trend.”

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-tech-workers-are-feeling-in-2026

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116731403327287836

I also once did a talk titled “How is Design Like a Comic” and the DDD Belgium host was willing to run with it, but with feedback that it was “too cute” (paraphrasing) we made that the subtitle…

I tend to have colorful titles (like Architect’s Cluebucket)…

because? Folk gonna be hella judgy… Warn some of those away with the title ;)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116716698139901664

Created by a human, weaving in the work of other humans, for humans. 💜

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116681228817975106

Weird that @Mastodon doesn’t show this being boosted in my notifications… Reply-guy stuff starts up when boosted … so it is useful to have (at least batches) in notifucaltions …

“We’re accumulating code faster than we’re accumulating trust. This phrase hit me hard today. We thought, narrowly, that code was what we produced. That was only half of it. We also produced, one safe deployment at a time, one needed improvement at a time, we produced trust.”

— Kent Beck (on LinkedIn)

#PapersInSystems, June 1 (Monday), 2pm Eastern: Scaffolding Conversations (see upthread) with @donaldegray and @roundcrisis

PapersInSystems, July 8 (yes, Wednesday), 1pm Eastern:
“Theory of Troubleshooting” by Arty Starr and Margaret-Anne Storey, and discussion will be led by @art3starr (Arty Starr)

https://ti.to/bredemeyer/theory-of-troubleshooting

The reading to support the discussion is at:

- Container Differences Exchanges Model (pdf): https://www.hsdglobalservices.org/assets/documents/5.1.1.3.cde-30apr16.pdf

- Decision KP Maps: https://www.roundcrisis.com/2026/02/04/making-of-a-decision-5/

And participants will have an opportunity to share other canvases/models/maps/etc. that we find useful in supporting socio-technical teams and system design.