Stage Five. Definition of Configurator
A configurator is a minimal set of professional languages that allows you to give a complete (adequate) description of a problem situation and its transformations. We emphasize that the configurator can help decide which third-party specialists should be involved in solving our problem: those whose professional languages from the configurator are the stakeholders themselves and the analyst himself speaks insufficiently professionally for our purposes. Such a situation would require external experts.
A prerequisite for successful solution of the problem is the presence of an adequate model of the problem situation: with its help it will be possible to test and compare the options for the proposed actions. This model (or set of models) must inevitably be built using certain language (or languages). The question is how' many and which languages are needed to work on this problem and how to choose them.
For example, in case of a traffic accident, then the resolution of the problem may require different languages: legal (who is responsible for what), medical (condition of the road accident participants before and after), technical (condition of the road and equipment), administrative (organization of all consequences), economic (financial security), etc.
It is important to emphasize that real-life problems are not single-disciplinary, that is, described in the language of only one specialty. Only learning tasks can be single-disciplinary, and even then not always (e.g., physical tasks require knowledge not only of physics but also of mathematics and other colloquial languages).
A configurator is a minimal set of professional languages that allows you to give a complete (adequate) description of a problem situation and its transformations.
All work in the course of solving the problem will occur in the languages of the configurator, and only on them. Defining configurator is the task of this stage. We emphasize that the configurator is not an artificial invention by systems analysts but invented to facilitate their work.
On the one hand, the configurator is determined by the nature of the problem. Take, for example, the geometric case. Suppose there is a line on which a point is marked (Figure 5.6a) and it is required to describe where it is. For this, we need a language in which we describe it. The elements of the language are a certain point of origin 0 and a unit interval (Figure 5.6b). Having introduced grammar and syntax (operations of postponing unit intervals and working with them), we can say that the point of interest lies in the fifth unit interval (Figure 5.6c).
If necessary, more accurate statements are introduced by the fraction of a unit interval. Thus, our configurator for this problem consists of one language. If you need to describe the position of a point on a plane, you will have to build a configurator from two languages, and for a three-dimensional task from three languages.
On the other hand, the configurator can be viewed as another property of the system by which the system solves its problem. For example, two eyes and two ears are given to us as the material carriers of the configurator for determining the location of the source of light or sound on the plane. The third language, for solving volume problems, is the possibility of turning the head and, accordingly, changing the orientation of the plane of definition. Dragonfly, unlike a bat, cannot turn its head when chasing midge, so nature has put on its “forehead” a triangle with small eyes in its corners.
Let’s return to our main task of defining the configurator of our problem situation. Practitioners are often guided by intuition, commonsense, experience, and expert advice. Like any subjective decision, it may turn out to be true, but it may also contain errors. At the same time, we already have an objective information that does not depend on someone’s opinions for building the configurator of our problem.
FIGURE 5.6 Languages of different exactness for describing the place of a point.
However, in an implicit form, it is contained in the minutes of conversations with stakeholders about the problem situation. The fact is that each of them spoke only about what he considers important, that is, spoke the languages of his configurator for this situation. Therefore, we have the opportunity to “calculate” his configurator by analyzing its text from the problematic mess, but not in terms of what he was talking about, but in what languages he spoke. Someone paid attention to financial aspects and discussed health problems. In its configurator, there are economic and medical languages. For other mentioned legal issues and relationships witli other people, legal language and the language of psychology are part of its configurator; and so with every stakeholder. Consequently, we will have a set of configurators of all stakeholders. The configurator of the situation as a whole is their union. It may include several, and maybe many, languages. There can be a common language that everyone speaks, on the other, the majority, on the third, a minority, or even only one stakeholder.
We have to use them all; no language can be thrown away; otherwise, the relevant aspect will not be taken into account, which will not allow claiming an improving intervention. Of course, it would be unwise for all stakeholders to build models in all languages. When designing an improving intervention, it is necessary to tailor it individually for each stakeholder by building and using models only in the languages of its configurator.
A good example of this is the story of the inclusion of an astronaut from Malaysia in the crew of the International Space Station. The young astronaut, perfectly prepared for space flight, turned out to be a Muslim, which required the inclusion of the language of Islamic culture in his configurator. It instructs the devout Muslim to pray five times a day. The question arose how often and at what moments should he perform a prayer if the ISS orbits around the Earth 18 times a day? Further, the prayer is supposed to be performed by the person oriented by head toward Mecca. It demanded to create a special program so that the computer determines the direction to Mecca at the right time. Finally, the hierarchs of the Islamic faith had to allow an astronaut to use paperwork after the toilet, since under the conditions of weightlessness the Muslim custom of washing away with water is not feasible.
We emphasize that the configurator can help decide which third-party specialists should be involved in solving our problem: those whose professional languages from the configurator are the stakeholders themselves, and the analyst himself speaks insufficiently professionally for our purposes. In such cases, external experts will be required.
The need to attract information from various areas of knowledge creates a serious difficulty in the practice of systems analysis: it is necessary to use the languages of the configurator, which are not understandable to all participants in the development of improving interventions. The situation becomes similar to the biblical parable about the construction of the Tower of Babel, which failed because the builders spoke different languages.
The problem of communication of all members of the group can be solved in different ways. For example, the integrated science and technology group, which developed the automated control system for the Tomsk region’s economy, included economists, cybernetics, engineers, lawyers, philosophers, programmers, managers, and administrators, and spent about a year of heated discussions about the essence of the project until the group members developed something like a common language and began to understand each other. Such a common language is based on sharing the different representations of information: verbal, graphic, mathematical, tabular, etc. An important role was played by a clear and explicit understanding which particular models are being considered at the given moment, static or dynamic, an analytical or synthetic consideration of the issue is carried out.
Questions and Tasks
- 1. Why is it necessary to define a configurator?
- 2. How to determine the configurator of a separate stakeholder?
- 3. How to work with configurators of different stakeholders in the design of improving intervention?
Stage Six. Revelation of Stakeholders’ Purposes
Total non-negative assessment of improving intervention by all stakeholders is possible, if it doesn’t move them away from their purposes.
To strive for the implementation of improving intervention, we must ensure that none of the stakeholders consider the intervention to be negative. People give a positive assessment of change if it brings them closer to the goal, and negative if it moves them away from it. Therefore, to design interventions, it is necessary to know the goals of all stakeholders. Of course, the main source of information is the stakeholder himself.
We again come to the need to have an interview with each stakeholder. Though the work will be similar to what we did to figure out their attitude to the existing situation, we will now ask them about what they would like to achieve. As a result, by analogy with the problematic mess, we will determine what can be called a target mess. Knowing it will allow you to design an improving intervention. Let us explain this using the scheme in Figure 5.7.
Let the situation be characterized by two parameters — “qf and The assessment of the situation by the stakeholder will be indicated on the diagram by a point. The problem mess is depicted by a group of points in the lower left corner of the scheme, and the target mess is in the upper right. It is now clear that any progress (positive change in the situation) along the path that brings us closer to the target
FIGURE 5.7 Improving intervention is any approach to purpose.
mess is an improvement. There are many such interventions. You can stop at any of them, but you can try to find the one that gives the greatest improvement.
In identifying the target mess, we face serious difficulty. If there are erroneous, untrue goals in the target mess, their subsequent implementation will naturally cause discontent and disappointment, and the resulting intervention will be not improving.
The difficulty lies in the fact that the goals declared by the stakeholder may be different from his true goals. It is unlikely that we will face deception or concealment of goals: the stakeholders understand that it is in their interest to help with the implementation of improving interventions and that they will harm themselves by giving incorrect information. But even with full and voluntary cooperation with and in good faith trying to properly state their wishes, the stakeholder may have difficulty and make mistakes. There are several reasons for this, and our task is to get to the true goals, taking into account all of them. We will discuss the main reasons for the discrepancy between the declared and true goals and some ways to overcome them.
