Below is from a recent Facebook posting of mine. It is another example of the need to bring systems thinking to the masses as few envision what leveled stories (i.e., activities) are about.
LEVELS OF STORIES UNDERLIE CAUSAL LOOP DIAGRAMS
I recently presented (see above) an example Data Flow Diagram to illustrate how stories as uniquely told by DFDs’ underlie causalities (ref. Causal Loop Diagram). The example DFD has four internal activities (i.e., story parts) on it and it spawns a single feedback loop.
I was told (outside of OGM) that my example was too trivial to represent a real world situation. Not so; the diagram is very relevant. A Data Flow Diagram is supposed to have only from four to seven activities on it. And, typically four to seven activities will spawn 0 to maybe 2 feedback loops (my experience).
The principle is that larger than 4 to 7 activities per diagram makes walk throughs for verification difficult. And complex systems require many iterations of verification.
What needs to be understood is that DFD’s for complex systems are a leveled set. A high level DFD will have four to seven activities. Then, each one of those activities can have a diagram showing four to seven sub-activities. Then, each one of those sub-activities can have four to seven sub-sub activities. And on and on. Complex systems begin at five levels.
Doing the math, it don’t take long to generate many hundreds of activities across a leveled set of lets say fifty integrated diagrams. And therefore, looking across the set, we will have many feedbadk loops.
We don’t see all the feedback loops in one big-hunker diagram - but we are not supposed to… We can not hope to validate big-hunker diagrams.