Principles of Discovery and Use
Like other patterns, organizational patterns aren't created or invented: they are discovered (or "mined") from empirical observation. The early work on organizational patterns at Bell Laboratories focused on extracting patterns from social network analysis. That research used empirical role-playing techniques to gather information about the structure of relationships in the subject organization. These structures were analyzed for recurring patterns across organization and their contribution to achieving organizational goals. The recurring successful structures were written up in pattern form to describe their tradeoffs and detailed design decisions (forces), the context in which they apply, along with a generic description of the solution.
Patterns provide an incremental path to organizational improvement. The pattern style of building something (in this case, an organization) is:
- Find the weakest part of your organization
- Find a pattern that is likely to strengthen it
- Apply the pattern
- Measure the improvement or degradation
- If the pattern improved things, go to step 1 and find the next improvement; otherwise, undo the pattern and try an alternative.
As with Alexander-style patterns of software architecture, organizational patterns can be organized into pattern languages: collections of patterns that build on each other. A pattern language can suggest the patterns to be applied for a known set of working patterns that are present.
Read more about this topic: Organizational Patterns
Famous quotes containing the words principles of, principles and/or discovery:
“The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“My country is bleeding, my people are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am bound to tell the North, go on! go on! Never falter, never abandon the principles which you have adopted.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)