Chaotic-Attractor

Chaotic-Attractor.com is not based on the the strange attractors of Chaos Theory, although we subscribe to the tenants thereof.

 

Humans are adept at bringing order amid chaos by focusing on a specific item of interest. To illustrate, walk into a room where many people are talking. You generally can focus on what one person is saying by looking at him or her. It seems simple, but is a major feat for a computer – although it’s relatively easy to discern a human voice, it’s vary hard to discern one voice among many.

Conversely, “digital infrastructure” (the way computers interact with users and each other through complex networks) presents challenges from a human perspective because of the sheer complexity, while the infrastructure components can focus easily on their specific items of interest. Within a large company, multiple organizations, in several tiers, are the operators and designers of the components. Often, no organization is responsible “from keyboard to display”, leading to a chaotic approach to problem-solving.

“Chaos Management” is a disciplined approach. The key first steps are defining the problem or problems in business terms, and finding a guide to lead to a pre-defined (tentative) solution.

In complex systems, problems usually present in “technical” terms: slow network, can’t reach a web site, file won’t open, etc. Generally, in any complex system, there will be many “failures” at any time. Some of these will affect the business, many will not. Because a technical problem exists does not necessarily mean a business problem exists.

So, step 1 defines a business problem and frames the troubleshooting and corrective process. Once defined, a “chaos manager” needs to be identified, who can oversee the technical efforts as they affect the business problem. Without this manager, trips down endless rabbit holes will prolong the path to a solution.