From the category archives:

complexity

Majority Rule in Social Networks

by Pete Abilla August 11, 2010

In popular culture, there is much talk of social networks. Indeed, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Linkedin are ubiquitous – how did we ever live without them? One interesting property of these social networks or social graphs that isn’t talked about much is the concept of Majority Rule. While I haven’t seen much written about Majority Rule [...]

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Purposeful Simplicity, Unthoughtful Complexity

by Pete Abilla April 15, 2009

Most people or organizations do not, by design, create a product or service with the goal of “making the most complex product that nobody can use”.  In other words, rarely do we see purposeful complexity but instead we see much unthoughtful complexity. i am going to create the most complex product or service and nobody [...]

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Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

by Pete Abilla November 7, 2008

Team size can make a big difference in the success of your service or product.  What is counter-intuitive for most people is that the larger the team size, the lower the likelihood of success for your service or product. Why? Communication Entropy can set in and large teams are inherently bad vehicles for communication. More [...]

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Not Accountable, Not Responsible

by Pete Abilla August 9, 2008

Team size can make a big difference in the success of your service or product. What is counterintuitive for most people is that the larger the team size, the lower the likelihood of success for your service or product.  Why? Entropy can set in and large teams are inherently bad vehicles for communication. More insipid, [...]

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Maintain Forward Tension

by Pete Abilla July 20, 2008

One principle in Wing Chun is the maintaining of forward tension.  To explain, I’ll draw the distinction between Tension and Energy and show how this principle in Wing Chun can be applied to Change Management. Tension is a type of Energy A Wing Chun maxim goes as follows: soft and relaxed strength will put your [...]

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Fast Food Congestion

by Pete Abilla July 9, 2008

Every system has constraints — sometimes several — minor bottlenecks and major bottlenecks.  What makes managing constraints even more challenging is that bottlenecks move: up-and-down the process paths. I saw this phenomenon recently during a visit to a fast food restaurant, which I discuss in this post — but, my application of the Theory of [...]

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Student Loan Debt, Pizza, and The Supply Chain

by Pete Abilla June 17, 2008

Several months ago my wife mentioned, in a subtle way, that she misses Giordano’s Pizza. Giordano’s is our favorite pizza joint and we used to eat there daily while I was a graduate student at The University of Chicago. I’d say most of my graduate student loan debt went to Giordano’s in exchange for their [...]

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Attitude and the Pyschology of Queueing

by Pete Abilla February 2, 2008
This entry is part 20 of 28 in the series queueing theory

I took the kids to see a movie at a nearby dollar theater many weeks ago.  We saw Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and some parts of that movie has stayed with me.  I thought that the movie was actually very good: it was an overall very good feel-good movie, with a very good message.  One [...]

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Representing an Idea with Visual Identity

by Pete Abilla January 9, 2008

My daughter recently turned 10 years old.  So, because her friends have email and communicate via email, I recently helped her obtain an account.  In the process, we both learned something very important about abstract ideas and the icons we use to visually represent them. My daughter attempted to create a "Contact List" of people [...]

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