Thriving Systems Theory and Metaphor-Driven Modeling

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Thriving Systems Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7

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3. Thriving Systems Theory and Metaphor-Driven Modeling

   1. Introduction

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 1-6

4. Thriving Systems Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7

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   2. Christopher Alexander’s Nature of Order

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 9-14

   3. Wholeness and Center Properties Mapped to Modeling

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 15-26

   4. Achieving Versus Observing Strength in Choice Properties

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 27-37

   5. Building Life into Information Systems

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 39-45

   6. A Vision of Thriving Systems

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 47-80

5. Thriving Systems Theory in Systems Development

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

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   2. Metaphorology

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 83-89

   3. Metaphor-Driven Modeling

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 91-98

   4. Protecting Life in System Life Cycles

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 99-103

   5. Metaphor-Driven Systems Engineering

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 105-114

   6. Thriving Systems and Beauty

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 115-121

   7. Promoting Life Using the Object-Oriented Paradigm

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 123-138

   8. Promoting Life Using the Relational Paradigm

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 139-151

   9. Thriving Systems Through Metaphor-Driven Modeling

      • Leslie J. Waguespack

      Pages 153-161

6. Back Matter

   Pages 163-167

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How is it that one system is more effective, appealing, satisfying and/or more beautiful than another to its stakeholder community? This question drove Christopher Alexander’s fifty-year quest to explain great physical architecture and gave birth to pattern-languages for building that underpin much of modern systems engineering. How is it that so many individual stakeholders consistently recognize the same quality, the same beauty in a system? This question led George Lakoff to research the role of conceptual metaphor in human understanding. What is essential to stakeholders’ satisfaction with systems? Fred Brooks, in his publications, addressed this question. This monograph fuses these diverse streams of thought in proposing Thriving Systems Theory by translating Alexander’s properties of physical design quality into the abstract domain of information systems and modeling. Metaphor-Driven Modeling incorporates the theory while examining its impact throughout the system life cycle: modeling, design and deployment. The result is holistic and innovative, a perspective on system quality invaluable to students, practitioners and researchers of software and systems engineering.

• Architecture
• Metaphor-driven modeling
• Software engineering
• System
• Systems engineering
• Thriving systems
• systems theory

• , Computer Information Systems, Bentley University, Waltham, USA

  Leslie J. Waguespack

Dr. Waguespack is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (formerly USL) with degrees in Computer Systems and Software, MIS and Computer Architecture. After five years in the USAF, headquarters personnel, directorate of the computer systems, modeling branch, he taught in the Computer Science department at LSU. Since 1984 he has been teaching in the Computer Information Systems department at Bentley University - systems EAD (engineering/analysis/design), object-oriented systems EAD, software project management and database.

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