mess.systems
An open organization used as a worked example of how work, companies, people and systems change in the move from the pre-AI era to the AI era.
A mess is a system of problems
Russell Ackoff used the word mess for a situation made of interdependent, changing problems. It is not just a large or disorganized problem, and it is not a backlog. It is the set of relationships that produces the problems and keeps them going.
Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes.
Russell L. Ackoff, The Future of Operational Research is Past, 1979
A mess has a few traits:
- Interdependence. Changing one problem changes the conditions around the others.
- Continuous change. The situation keeps moving, through outside events and through the effects of our own actions.
- Different perspectives. People describe the same situation differently. A problem for one group can be an opportunity for another.
- No simple addition. Improving each part on its own does not necessarily improve the whole. Local optimization can make the whole worse.
Dissolving problems
Take a familiar loop. Security adds approval gates. Delivery slows down, so teams build workarounds. Workarounds create inconsistent infrastructure and shadow IT. Inconsistency brings incidents and audit findings, and the findings bring more approval gates.
You can call these four separate problems and give each to a different department. More controls, more autonomy and lower costs can each look right locally and still make the loop stronger.
Ackoff’s answer was to plan at the level of the whole system, together with the people involved, and to aim for dissolution: redesign the system or its environment so the problem no longer arises in its current form. The question moves from “how do we approve faster?” to “how do we build delivery so the necessary controls are part of it, instead of being negotiated every time?”
Why mess.systems
The move from the pre-AI era to the AI era is a mess in exactly this sense. Work, companies, people and systems change at the same time, and they change each other.
mess.systems is an open organization used as a worked example of that shift. Its standards, technology choices and decisions are published with the reasoning behind them, so you can reuse them, adapt them or argue with them. Read more about the project.
To go deeper into Ackoff’s thinking, start with his paper The Future of Operational Research is Past (Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1979) and the Systems Thinking Alliance overview of Russell Ackoff.
Projects
Naming standard
One grammar for DNS names, hosts, repositories, secrets and identities, including AI agents. Every name is derived from the same few axes, so names can be predicted and reviewed mechanically.
Tech radar
Which products and specifications the organization uses, how firmly and why. Three rings (adopt, trial, hold) and one short card per technology.