About

The idea

Most real problems do not come alone. Russell Ackoff called a set of interdependent, changing problems a mess: a system of problems that each stakeholder sees differently. In a mess, fixing one part on its own can make the whole worse. Ackoff’s answer was to plan together with the people involved and to redesign the system so the problem dissolves, rather than to keep treating symptoms.

The move from the pre-AI era to the AI era is that kind of mess. Work, companies, people and systems are changing at the same time, and they change each other. New kinds of systems appear, and old assumptions about roles, tools and decisions stop holding. mess.systems is an open project that works through this shift in public.

To go deeper into Ackoff’s thinking:

• Russell L. Ackoff, “The Future of Operational Research is Past”, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1979, the classic source of the term
• Systems Thinking Alliance overview of Russell Ackoff

What you will find here

mess.systems uses one organization, also called mess.systems, as a worked example. Instead of abstract advice, you see real artifacts: the standards it sets, the technologies it chooses, the decisions it makes and the reasoning behind them. Everything is published openly so you can reuse it, adapt it or challenge it.

Expect:

• Standards and templates you can copy into your own organization.
• Decisions with reasons, including what was rejected and why.
• Notes on change: how work, roles and systems shift once AI is part of everyday operations.

Current projects are listed on the projects page. Both are licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Who is behind it

mess.systems is maintained by Pavel Evdokimov.

A company is not the sum of its departments, processes and systems. Its behavior emerges from the connections between them. mess.systems is theory tested in practice: how to see these connections in complex and not always predictable systems, and how to change them so that problems are not solved one by one, but stop arising. Points of reference: Russell Ackoff, Stafford Beer and Michael C. Jackson.

Get in touch

mess.systems is also a way to find people who think about the same questions. If you are going through this shift in your own company, team or career, write.

• Telegram channel: t.me/mess_systems
• X: x.com/mess_systems
• Email: x@mess.systems

Comments on a specific standard or decision are welcome as issues in the naming standard repository or the tech radar repository.

Disagreement is welcome. A mess looks different from every seat, and that is the point.