Complex systems that persist are organised as loosely coupled hierarchies of tightly coupled parts.
Simon's 1962 argument in The Architecture of Complexity, illustrated by two watchmakers: the one assembling in subunits recovers from interruption, the one assembling serially does not.
In practice
- An organisation of ten tight teams with clean interfaces survives a failure in one; one where everything talks to everything does not.
- A city with distinct neighbourhoods absorbs a local shock; one with a single integrated transport dependency does not.
- Subject
- Design & Systems
- Essay
- Why systems behave against intuition