Learning Systems Thinking

Essential nonlinear skills for software professionals

3 hour hands-on workshop introducing essential nonlinear skills and practices for software professionals

Course outcomes

• Understand what systems thinking is, the qualities of a systems thinker, and how systems thinking skills can help your career

• Recognize the common mistakes you make when solving systems problems and how systems thinking can help

• Practice the three levels of systems thinking and develop a strategy for improving those skills over time

Course description

Software systems and the organizations that create them have become increasingly complex and interconnected, and yet our ways of thinking about them have not changed much.

Join expert Diana Montalion to explore systems thinking, a set of tools and practices that can help you holistically grasp how all the pieces of a software system or organization connect, interact, and influence outcomes. You’ll learn to identify systems goals that are meaningfully connected to the context, understand how interrelated and interdependent parts act together to create patterns, create conceptual models to guide impactful decisions, and much more.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

• Understand the fundamentals of systems thinking in the software systems context

• Use the iceberg model to dive deeper into events, patterns, and mental models that lead to recurring problems

• Improve your thinking through self-awareness and continuous learning

• Communicate well-reasoned ideas and theories in the midst of uncertainty

This live event is for you because…

• You’re a technologist who integrates differing expertise and experience into recommendations or solutions.

• You work with multiple teams, tools, or siloed software parts and want to create a cohesive understanding about the system and changes that benefit it.

• You want to become a trustworthy leader who thinks well with others.

• You want to foster an environment where people can arrive together at strong, cross-functional, insightful conclusions with little top-down governance.