Thriving Systems Theory and Metaphor-Driven Modeling

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.

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.