Bring a Deeper
Understanding of Systems to Software and System Development
About the Book
Originally titled On the Design of Stable Systems in its first, hardcover
incarnation in 1979, General Principles of Systems Design does not just
focus on computer systems, but systems of all kinds—human, natural, and technological.
In a highly readable, original presentation that embraces everything from depletion
curves to the Feedback Principle (the method of controlling a system by reinserting
it into the results of its past performance), the Weinbergs here explore the subtle
art and science of regulating systems, projects, and people in the most efficient
and logical manner possible. The authors draw on their respective backgrounds
in technology and social science to offer fresh insights and translate them into
a language that anyone can understand.
In the course of this presentation,
the Weinbergs introduce a host of laws and theorems derived from the best thinking
of systems thinkers over the past century.
In addition to being a reference
book for professional and lay people alike, General Principles of Systems Design
is suitable as an undergraduate text in the humanities, social, natural, and engineering
sciences. It is unique in its approach, highly readable, and offers practical
ways of solving problems.
Features 100+ figures.
Reviews
"The authors combine the views of their disciplines and look
at larger issues such as the interplay between systems and people, the abstract
and concree, and the theoretical and practical . The authors' style is light and
sometimes humorous with a large number of quotations from literature. . . . Never
dull . . . the book bears evidence of a global view in which systems design is
a means if organizing ideas, structures, things, and experience."
—Ann
R. Prentice Library and Information Science Annual
"The
book is good at . . . the explanation of imaginative approaches to the organization
of systems (of humans or of machines)."
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