24th Annual INCOSE International Symposium (IS2015) Seattle, WA, July 13-16, 2015
An Integral Approach to Systems Engineering Kevin Devaney SRC, Inc.
[email protected] Copyright © 2015 by Kevin Devaney. Published and used by INCOSE with permission.
Abstract. Integral Theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all human knowledge disciplines into a single “content-free” framework. Because of its general and comprehensive nature, Integral Theory has been successfully applied “in over 35 distinct academic and professional fields, such as art, healthcare, organizational management, ecology, congregational ministry, economics, psychotherapy, law and feminism.” (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2009). Leaning on some pioneering work in the field of architecture, this paper looks at ways to apply Integral Theory to the discipline of systems engineering. A major benefit of Integral Theory is that it enables us to look at the world with a broader perspective. Using this perspective, we can develop improved methods in how we design systems, solve problems, improve engineering organizations and build stronger technical leaders.
Introduction Integral Theory. Integral Theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all available human knowledge disciplines into a single “content-free” framework. Because of its general and comprehensive nature, Integral Theory has been successfully applied “in over 35 distinct academic and professional fields, such as art, healthcare, organizational management, ecology, congregational ministry, economics, psychotherapy, law and feminism.” (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2009) Integral Theory has its roots in the work of the German philosopher Jean Gebser (1905-1973) who developed a theory of the structures of human consciousness, and Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), whose work on the Inner and Outer Being is regarded as the foundation of Integral Psychology. Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Theory. He began his work in the psychology field, integrating the major schools of psychology in his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977). He followed this with integrative works in other areas, including philosophy, religion, physics, healthcare and environmental studies. Wilber has published more than twenty books, which have been translated in more than 24 languages. In 2001, Wilber published an introduction to Integral Theory, titled A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. (Wilber, 2001) The foundation of Integral Theory is the four quadrant model, often referred to as the AQAL model, with AQAL an acronym for “all quadrants, all levels.” The quadrants represent the four irreducible perspectives that must be examined to fully understand any issue or aspect of reality – subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective. The quadrants also represent dimensions of reality – these dimensions are represented by four basic pronouns: I, we, it and its. The four quadrants are shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Integral Theory’s Four Quadrant Model Integral Theory claims that this is the most accurate model of reality; all four quadrants are real, and all are essential for understanding the world. For convenience, sometimes the two right-hand quadrants are combined, since they both are characterized by objectivity, resulting in three value spheres. This model of reality has appeared in various forms throughout history, from Plato’s True, Good and Beautiful, to Kant’s critiques of pure reason, judgment and practical reason. Wilber refers to these as “the Big Three.” This arrangement is shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Wilber’s “Big Three” Integral Theory insists that you can only understand each domain through its own perspective. Trying to view one domain through the lens of another distorts much of what is valuable in that unique perspective. For example, trying to reduce first and second-person perspectives (the
Beautiful and the Good) to a third-person perspective (the True) takes away much of the richness, texture and meaning that is present in those experiences. In addition to the four quadrants, another major element of Integral Theory is its model of levels of development or consciousness. In the left-hand quadrants, development proceeds in increasing levels of depth, while in the right-hand quadrants, development occurs in increasing levels of complexity. Levels of development are also represented as levels of altitude, as a way of comparing levels across different domains. Moving up in levels of development involves decreasing egocentrism, and increasing perspective. This means the ability to see others’ points of view, and to think more universally, with a longer term perspective. Higher levels of consciousness also imply the development of new capacities and the ability to handle higher levels of complexity. For ease of reference, a color is assigned to each level; for example, Modern is referred to as “Orange.” The different levels of consciousness are listed in Figure 3 below. For each level, the color label is listed, as well as the perspective associated with it.
Figure 3: Integral Levels of Consciousness Another important part of Integral Theory is its model of complexity. It sees the world as made up of cascading hierarchies, using the term “holon” (coined by Arthur Koestler) to represent an entity that is simultaneously both a whole by itself, as well as a part of some other whole. Examples of holons include the physical world (atoms, molecules, land, air, water, etc.) and biological world (cells, tissues, plants, animals). Everything is composed of holons. Each level up in the hierarchy (or holarchy) involves a process of both differentiation and integration. An example of a biological holarchy is shown in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4: A Biological Holarchy
In summary, there are several key aspects to understanding Integral Theory. For one, it includes all perspectives – first, second and third-person perspectives, through the use of the four quadrants. In addition, it includes a model of human stages of development, recognizing that individuals at different levels of psychological complexity will have different perspectives for the same phenomenon. Integral Theory also has a model of complexity (holons) which can be applied across disciplines and domains. An Integral View of Systems Engineering. In the view of Integral Theory, systems engineering approaches the world from a purely scientific and technical viewpoint, limiting its perspective to the right-hand side of the four quadrant model (AQAL). Systems engineering activities are largely limited to things which can be externally measured and verified. The perspectives of the left-hand side of the AQAL model (subjectivity, individual experience, feelings and values) are largely ignored. Wilber calls this limited perspective “flatland”, and argues that it is a major cause of society's problems. This paper proposes that expanding the perspective of systems engineering to make use of all four quadrants of the AQAL model will result in improvements in both the theory and practice of the field. In addition, the levels of consciousness model in Integral Theory can help provide insights into how to improve our organizations and develop stronger technical leaders.
Applications System Requirements and Design. Two areas where Integral Theory concepts could be applied to systems engineering are requirements and design. Some important work in this area has been done by Mark DeKay in the field of architecture. (DeKay 2011). DeKay has had great success in applying an Integral approach to the design of sustainable buildings. His work is an excellent example of the value of taking an Integral approach to requirements and design, and his approach can be easily applied to other technical domains. DeKay claims that much of the work on sustainable design focuses its attention on technical parameters and performance related to reducing the building’s environmental footprint and long term impact. The problem with this approach is that it is too limited, because it only uses the objective perspective of reality found on the right-hand side of the AQAL model. It ignores the value in the subjective perspective of the left-hand quadrants. “As an example,” DeKay relates that “there are no LEED credits for creating experiences of beauty, none for creating or fitting to ecological order and none for placing people into rich symbolic relationships with Nature.” This purely technical, “flatland” approach has tended to result in LEED certified buildings which are boring or ugly, and lacking in connection with nature or the local culture. DeKay’s work demonstrates that using an Integral approach to architecture results in much more effective and satisfying designs. His approach to applying the four quadrants to sustainable design is illustrated in Figure 5 below. It shows how he gathers requirements and design goals from both the left side (subjective) and right side (objective) perspectives.
Figure 5: The Four Sustainable Design Perspectives The Integral approach to sustainable design shows that we can design systems that provide richer and more meaningful experiences if we preserve the information that is present in the left-hand perspectives of the AQAL model. DeKay achieves this by using subjective language in his requirements and design goals. Examples include: Design spaces for human rituals to fit natural rhythms Engage the metaphoric power of Nature Light a fire with beauty Create opportunities for silence Another example of the value in the subjective, left-hand perspectives of the AQAL model can be seen in the design principles used by Steve Jobs during his leadership of Apple Computer. A popular description of Jobs’ approach to design is offered by Cliff Kuang in his blog article The Six Pillars of Steve Jobs’ Design Philosophy. Kuang assigns the following principles to Jobs’ leadership at Apple: Craft Above All. An emphasis on craftsmanship and making exquisitely beautiful products. Empathy. Making an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. Focus. In order to excel, we must eliminate everything that is not important. Impute. Everything you do should be congruent with the desired company image. Friendliness. High-tech devices can be friendly. Metaphors. Simplicity and user-friendliness can be achieved by using metaphors (e.g. desktop) that are already part of the culture and well understood. Mapping these principles to the quadrants of the AQAL model, it turns out that five of the six principles are from the subjective, left-hand side of the model. This is shown in Figure 6 below.
Figure 6: Mapping Apple Design Principles to the AQAL Model From an Integral point of view, the secret of Jobs’ success was his ability to effectively utilize the interior, subjective, left-hand perspectives, instead of ignoring them or trying to transform them into the exterior, objective right-hand perspectives. More recently, user experience expert Pamela Pavliscak has called for a more positive approach to system design. (Pavliscak, 2015). Like Steve Jobs’ approach, Pavliscak’s positive design philosophy calls for greater attention to left-hand quadrant perspectives. Her four principles of positive design are: Autonomy. Create technologies where people can feel a sense of mastery. Trust. Provide safe spaces where people are treated with respect and empathy. Connection. Foster connections between people and help build communities. Meaning. Enable people to engage with the world in new ways. Depending on the type of application, some aspects of design are more subjective than others, but all aspects of engineering appear to have some element of artistry to them. This is alluded to in Figure 7 below (Horvath 2004).
Figure 7: Art vs. Science for Different Design Domains
Even at the implementation level, some subjectivity remains. In the software domain, one of the major themes of Steve McConnell’s classic book Code Complete is that software code should be readable (McConnell 2004). Note that the inclusion of the left-hand quadrants goes against the grain of classical systems engineering, which strives for requirements that are objectively clear and therefore easy to verify. Subjective, vague requirements are discouraged. An Integral approach to requirements would encourage use of subjective, “fuzzy” requirements where appropriate, in order to capture all of the meaning available in the left-hand side of the AQAL model. An example of this are the requirements related to the “ilities” which tend to be hard to quantify. These include usability, safety, flexibility, durability, scalability, adaptability, interoperability, maintainability, testability, modularity, resilience and extensibility. Allowing for “fuzzy”, subjective requirements has several positive aspects. One has already been mentioned before; it helps to preserve the richness, texture and meaning that are present in the left-hand quadrants. Another is that fuzzy requirements allow room for creativity that might get squeezed out if they are transformed into more clear, objective and measurable requirements. Consider Steve Jobs’ requirement that the Macintosh computer be “insanely great.” Trying to objectify this requirement and make it measurable would be a waste of time and effort. Getting rid of it would have gone against Jobs’ deepest desires. Job’s example shows that having daring, challenging, but fuzzy goals can sometimes inspire people to think in new and creative ways. Fuzzy requirements are currently being used in the world of agile software development, where requirements are often captured in the form of stories, rather than formal objective requirement statements. These stories capture the who, what and why of a requirement in a simple and concise way. Verification and Validation. If we make room in the systems engineering process for fuzzy requirements, then we also need to think differently about how we perform verification and validation. The world of architecture provides some insight into this issue, with its use of fuzzy requirements in areas such as beauty, connection with nature, and resonance with the local culture. Peter Buchanan, writing in The Architecture Review, points out that each quadrant in the Integral AQAL model has its own criteria of validity, its own intellectual disciplines and associated thinkers. (Buchanan, 2012). To illustrate his point, Buchanan provides an overview of the different disciplines and leading thinkers in the field of architecture. “In the UL [Upper Left] is aesthetics and phenomenology, currently written about by Juhani Pallasmaa. LL [Lower Left] is semiotics (Charles Jencks) and the cultural realm, including anthropology, associated with Joseph Rykwer. UR [Upper Right] is function and ergonomics, Neufert Architects’ Data and the Metric Handbook, form and construction. Kenneth Frampton’s studies of tectonics are concerned with the aesthetic qualities invested by attention to this UR quadrant. The LR [Lower Right] quadrant is the realm of contracting, industrialized systems, returns on investment and so on.” Therefore, in each domain and discipline where we find subjective, fuzzy requirements, we can look to their leading thinkers for assistance in developing appropriate methods of verification and validation. DeKay has also provided additional insight into how validation is accomplished in the four quadrants in the field of architecture. (DeKay, 2015). In summary, validation: In the upper right quadrant is based on measurement In the lower right quadrant is based on mappings and design patterns
In the upper left quadrant is based on subjective experiences In the lower left quadrant is based on collective interpretation
These validation methods are described in a little more detail in Figure 8 below.
Figure 8: Validation Methods in Architecture in each of the Four Quadrants Agile software development also provides a possible solution for validation of fuzzy requirements. Frequent customer collaboration is a key component in agile software processes. An iterative development lifecycle and frequent conversations with customers may be key enablers in performing successful development and validation using fuzzy requirements. Systems Engineering Process. Systems engineering is a process-oriented discipline. The INCOSE Handbook (INCOSE, 2011), for example, devotes a majority of its content to describing systems engineering processes. The traditional approach to systems engineering process is represented by the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) and its variants, developed by the CMMI Institute (CMMI Institute, 2010). The CMMI, as typically implemented, often results in a heavyweight, document-centric engineering process, and as a result is perceived by many as too expensive, burdensome and regimented. Because of the perceived shortcomings of the CMMI approach, in the 1990’s the software community developed a different way of building systems, known as agile software development. Agile software development was designed to be a more lightweight, efficient and people-friendly method of building software. The term “agile” refers to the fact that its iterative life cycle allows projects to respond more effectively to change than the plan-oriented CMMI approach.
Agile software development started to take off in 2001, when seventeen leaders in the agile movement came together and developed a statement of their principles, known as the Agile Software Manifesto (Agile Alliance, 2001).
Figure 9: Agile Software Manifesto In the years since the publishing of the Manifesto, there has been much discussion about which is better – the heavyweight, disciplined CMM waterfall-oriented approach versus, the lightweight, iterative agile approach. An Integral approach to this argument would be to say “you’re both right” and find a way to integrate both approaches into a single process framework. Barry Boehm and Richard Turner provide some insights into integrating CMMI and agile in their book, Balancing Agility and Discipline. (Boehm & Turner, 2004). Their top six conclusions are:
Neither agile nor plan-driven methods provide a silver bullet. Agile and plan-driven methods have home grounds where one clearly dominates the other. Future trends are toward application developments that need both agility and discipline. Some balanced methods are emerging. It is better to build your method up than to tailor it down. Methods are important, but potential silver bullets are more likely to be found in areas dealing with people, values, communication and expectations management.
Looking at the CMMI from a four quadrant AQAL perspective, Integral Theory would also suggest that the CMMI approach takes a very limited perspective in measuring an organization’s engineering capability. The CMMI approach has a decidedly limited, objective, upper right quadrant perspective. A mapping of CMMI to the AQAL model is shown in Figure 10 below.
Figure 10: Mapping CMMI to the AQAL Model The Agile Software Manifesto uses a more balanced approach than the CMMI. Two of its statements suggest left-hand interior perspectives. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Customer collaboration over contract negotiation The content of the Manifesto is mapped into the four quadrants in Figure 11 below.
Figure 11: Mapping the Agile Software Manifesto to AQAL Model As mentioned above, an Integral approach to measuring and building organizational capability would make full use of all four quadrants. In addition to the agile perspectives mapped above, a more holistic, Integral approach to process improvement would take into account more left-hand perspectives, including leadership and culture. Some topics to consider in developing a four-quadrant approach are listed in Figure 12 below.
Figure 12: A Four Quadrant Approach to Measuring Engineering Capability Looking at the CMMI through the lens of the Integral AQAL model brings to mind the Abraham Maslow quote: "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." (Maslow 1966). If the only tool in the toolbox is process, then it will seem like the only way to improve capability is to add more process. Using a more balanced approach, we may find that if there are strengths in the other quadrants, then less process is needed. For example, in Good to Great, Jim Collins suggests that having a culture of discipline (lower left quadrant) is much more valuable than having rigorous processes (upper right quadrant). (Collins 2001). Organizations. As described earlier, an important element of Integral Theory is its levels-of-consciousness model. Organizations can be classified by the levels of consciousness that they operate at. In the table below, some of the different levels of consciousness identified by Integral Theory are described, along with examples of organizations at those levels. Table 1: Levels of Consciousness for Organizations of Characteristics Examples Key breakthroughs
Level organization Power God Constant exercise of power by (Red) chief to keep troops in line. Fear is the glue of the organization. Highly reactive, short-term focus. Thrives in chaotic environments. Mythic Order Highly formal roles within a (Amber) hierarchical pyramid. Top-down command and
Mafia Street gangs Tribal militias
Division of labor Command authority
Catholic Church Formal roles Military Processes Most government
Scientific Achievement (Orange)
Post Modern (Green)
Integral (Teal)
control (what and how). Stability valued above all through rigorous processes. The future is the repetition of the past. Goal is to beat competition, achieve profit and growth. Innovation is the key to staying ahead. Management by objectives (command and control on what, freedom on how). Within the classic pyramid structure, focus on culture and empowerment to achieve extraordinary employee motivation. Less driven by fear and ego. Inner rightness as a compass. Mission oriented as opposed to goal oriented. Builds on strengths. Wisdom beyond rationality.
agencies Public systems
school
Multinational companies Charter schools
Innovation Accountability Meritocracy
Culture driven Empowerment organizations Values driven culture Southwest Airlines Stakeholder model Ben & Jerry’s AES Patagonia
Self-organizing Wholeness Evolutionary purpose
Engineering organizations tend to operate at the Orange or Scientific Achievement level. They tend to be hierarchical and bottom-line oriented. Organizational improvement and process improvement activities tend to be data driven. Most of the organization’s attention and effort is focused on the objective, exterior, right-hand quadrants, with little regard for the subjective, left-hand quadrants. Moving an organization to a higher level of consciousness has multiple benefits. As with people, organizations at higher levels are able to take wider and longer term perspectives. Such organizations are better able to handle more complex issues, solve more difficult problems and achieve better performance than those at lower levels. In the last several years, there have been more and more discussions in organizational development circles about the next level of organization beyond Green, known as Integral or Teal. This type of organization is said to correspond to Maslow’s “self-actualizing” level. While Achievement-Orange organizations speak of organizations as machines, and Pluralistic-Green organizations as families, the metaphor for an Integral-Teal organization is a living system. Moving engineering organizations up to the Teal level would allow them to apply Integral principles more easily to their engineering activities, as they would be part of the fabric and the consciousness of the organization. In addition, moving above the Orange level would enable engineering organizations to achieve greater sustainability and resilience. Frederic Laloux presents the results of his research on Teal organizations in his book, Reinventing Organizations (Laloux 2014). In his research, Laloux identified over a dozen companies which exhibit Teal characteristics. These are listed in the table below.
Table 2: Businesses Exhibiting Teal Characteristics Company Sector Country AES Energy US BSO/Origin IT consulting Netherlands Buurtzorg Health care Netherlands ES8Z School Germany FAVI Manufacturing France Heiligenfeld Health care Germany Ternary Software Software US Morning Star Food processing US Patagonia Apparel US RHD Social services US Sounds True Media US Sun Hydraulics Manufacturing US Some of the Teal organizations are technical companies, such as AES (Energy), BSO/Origin (IT Consulting) and Ternary Software (Software). In his study of the different Teal organizations, Laloux shares several key differences in how they are managed. These include:
Self-management. Teal organizations are able to operate using a system based on peer relationships, without a need for either hierarchy or consensus.
Wholeness. Teal organizations encourage people to bring all of who they are to work.
Evolutionary purpose. Teal organizations have a life and sense of direction of their own. The organization follows its own path toward what it wants to become, and what purpose it wants to serve.
Being “Teal” turns out to be good for business. Laloux reports that the Teal companies in his study demonstrated superior growth and financial performance to their peers. According to Laloux, the reason for stronger performance is that the Teal paradigm helps liberate energy. The ways that Teal organizations liberate energy include: stronger purpose, distribution of power, greater learning, better use of talent, and less energy devoted to such things as servicing egos, attending meetings and monitoring compliance. Leadership. Leadership is the most important factor in moving an organization to a higher level of consciousness. This is because organizations cannot operate at a higher level than their leaders. Therefore, organizational development cannot progress very far without leadership development. Given this fact, it is worthwhile to explore one of the most popular Integral leadership models, known as Leadership Agility (Joiner 2007). This leadership model is aligned with the Integral levels of consciousness. A summary of the characteristics of leaders at the different levels is shown in the table below.
Table 3: Levels of Leadership in the Leadership Agility Model Leadership View of Agility in Agility in Agility in Level Leadership Pivotal Leading Leading Conversations Teams Org. Change Expert Tactical Style is either to More of a Organizational (Orange) orientation. strongly assert supervisor than a initiatives focus Leaders are opinions or hold manager. largely on followed because back. Tends to Supervises incremental of authority and avoid asking for individuals rather improvements expertise. or giving than leads teams. inside unit feedback. boundaries. Achiever Strategic Primarily Operates like a Organizational (Orange) orientation. assertive or full-fledged initiatives include Motivates others accommodative, manager. analysis of by setting but can also use Meetings often industry challenging goals. less preferred orchestrated to environment. style. Sometimes gain buy-in to Seeks buy-in from asks for or gives own views. stakeholders. feedback. Catalyst Visionary, Adept at Intent on creating Organizational (Green) facilitative balancing a highly initiatives include orientation. assertive and participative culture Leaders share an accommodating team. Seeks open development. inspiring vision styles. Likely to exchange of Proactive and get people to question views and engagement with transform it into assumptions. empowers direct stakeholders for reality. Interested in reports. Develops their input and diverse teams and leaders. buy-in. viewpoints. Co-creator Oriented toward Integrates Develops a Organizational (Teal) shared purpose assertive and collaborative initiatives include and collaboration. accommodative leadership team, corporate Leadership is styles. Able to where members responsibility and service to others. process negative take collective deep feedback in responsibility for collaboration. emotionally organizational Develops strong charged goals. relationships with situations. stakeholders. Synergist Holistic Centered Capable of Able to transform (Turquoise) orientation. approach to style. moving fluidly conflicts into Leadership is Able to stay between various mutually following a life connected with leadership styles beneficial purpose that others in as the situation solutions. Deep benefits others. emotionally demands. awareness of charged stakeholder situations. interests. Note that in engineering organizations, leaders tend to be at the Expert or Achiever levels, which map to the Orange level in the Integral model. To move to higher levels, leaders need to develop stronger mental and emotional capacities. Joiner identifies eight capacities essential to
leadership: situational awareness, sense of purpose, stakeholder understanding, power style, connective awareness, reflective judgment, self-awareness and developmental motivation. The table below gives a description of each capacity, and also the levels of awareness and intent typically seen at the Expert level.
Leadership capacity Situational awareness Sense of purpose
Stakeholder understanding Power style
Connective awareness
Reflective judgment
Self-awareness
Developmental motivation
Table 4: Leadership Mental and Emotional Capacities Description Expert level The quality of the leader’s attention to larger contexts The loftiness of the goals where the leader focuses their efforts
Tends to focus on local situation with little attention to larger contexts Tends to be more tactical than strategic. Focuses more on accomplishing technical tasks than managing their team. The ability to understand others’ Limiting understanding of other perspectives perspectives and normally assumes own judgments are correct. The ability to integrate both Focuses on power based on expertise assertive power (advocating for or formal organizational authority. own views) and receptive power (willingness to listen to and consider other perspectives) The ability to hold various ideas Weak ability to hold more than one and experiences in mind, idea or experience in mind. Not likely compare and contrast them, and to connect related experiences from make connections different times. The ability to use multiple frames Tends to use an analytical approach to of reference when making solving problems. Little ability to decisions notice own biases or mental frameworks The quality of the leader’s Has a basic capacity for introspection. attention and reflection on own Able to recognize recurring inner thoughts, feelings and behaviors modes. Has an independent sense of self. The quality of what motivates the Strongly motivated by what others leader to develop as a person and think of them. Takes own personal a leader goals and standards seriously.
As noted above, an Orange organization’s leaders would need to raise their leadership capacities in order to move their organization to higher levels, like the Teal (Integral) level. In order to raise one’s leadership to higher levels, Joiner proposes the following process: 1. Set some personal leadership development goals. 2. Use everyday experiences to practice new leadership behaviors. 3. Use a “reflective action cycle” to improve experiential learning and reflective judgment. The reflective action cycle has a five step process: 1. Assess situation and results. 2. Diagnose.
3. Set intentions. 4. Take action. 5. Assess situation and results. Management. Management is an area that is only recently beginning to get attention from the Integral community. Some Integral insights about management can be gleaned from Laloux’s research on Teal organizations. In his book, Laloux identifies several management practices that help make the Teal organization work more effectively. One key practice is decision making. In this area, there often seems to be a choice between hierarchical (the boss makes the decision) and consensus (all must agree). Instead of choosing one of these, Teal organizations tend to use what AES calls “the advice process” for making decisions. In principle, any person in the organization can make a decision. However, the person must first seek advice from all affected parties and from people in the organization with expertise on the matter. Another principle is that the bigger the decision, the wider the net the person needs to cast in asking for advice. Another key practice is related to internal communications. In Teal organizations, everyone has access to all information at the same time. There are “no secrets”; even the most sensitive data is available to all employees. People are trusted to handle both the good news and the bad news. Conflict resolution is another important area. Teal organizations tend to have a well-established conflict resolution process that all employees are trained in. Role definition and allocation are handled differently in Teal organizations as well. Instead of rigid job descriptions and job titles, each employee has a number of roles that they have agreed to and are committed to execute. Teal management concepts can be applied to systems engineering by applying Teal concepts to how we manage our system development projects. Some of the ways proposed to do this include:
Self-managing and self-organizing project teams. Team-building practices. Leaders act as coaches. Advice process for decisions. Share data with everyone. Conflict resolution processes.
Another idea about how to apply Integral Theory to project management is to broaden the scope of how we measure success and gauge progress on our projects. An Integral approach would use a balanced scorecard which includes all four quadrants. This is illustrated, in general terms, in Figure 13 below.
Figure 13: An Integral Project Scorecard
Conclusion Areas for Further Investigation. This paper has only scratched the surface of potential applications of Integral Theory to systems engineering. For one thing, we have only used a small part of the Integral Theory model - the four quadrant AQAL model and the levels-of-consciousness model. There are other elements to the theory, such as lines (capacities that develop across levels), states (temporary conditions), types (styles that arise in domains) and zones (different ways of knowing). At the same time, systems engineering is a very broad field, offering many different areas for further investigation. Some possible areas include: Improving the requirements elicitation process using the AQAL model Improving integration between project management and systems engineering Improving integration of cross-functional teams on engineering projects Applying the AQAL model to Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 1981) Mapping the evolution of the systems engineering field over time Developing an Integral approach to systems engineering education Applying Integral Theory’s holon model to systems-of-systems engineering Another area that deserves attention is sustainability. Systems engineering has an important role to play in building sustainable systems. At the same time, the Integral community has also done a lot of work in the field of sustainability. (Brown, 2007). Integral Theory can help us to expand our perspectives from a purely scientific/technical approach to a combination of scientific and psychological-social perspectives. Integral Theory and Systems Engineering. Integral Theory has the potential to help improve both the theory and practice of systems engineering. It can help widen our perspective by using all four quadrants of the AQAL model. This can have a positive impact in how we solve problems, develop products and improve our organizations. In this paper, we have shown a couple of ways to apply Integral Theory to systems engineering. One application is to use the four quadrant AQAL model to improve how we design our products. The AQAL model can also be used to guide how we measure engineering capabilities and it gives us a new perspective on the CMMI/Agile process debate. Finally, Integral Theory’s levels-of-consciousness model can help us build stronger organizations and better leaders.
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Biography Kevin Devaney is a systems engineering manager at SRC, Inc., a small defense electronics company headquartered in Syracuse, NY. He has spent 27 years at the company, in different roles including intelligence analyst, software developer and systems engineer, mostly in the areas of radar and electronic warfare. His education includes a BS in Physics from Georgetown University, MSEE and MSCE degrees from Syracuse University, and an MA in Management and Organizational Development from Fielding Graduate University. He received the CSEP certification from INCOSE in 2014.
