TOC 4 Software: Turning the UDE into a cause-effect-cause tree

Having converted UDE 40 into a cloud Jim then showed me how to convert the cloud into a fragment of the current reality tree. You've already seen the current reality tree I ended up with in my dissertaiton - this is similiar, but a fragment.

1. This is the cloud we started with:

2. The first steps in converting it to a cause-effect-cause tree is to rotate it 90 degrees anti-clockwise, remove the conflict arrow, and change the direction of the arrows, and reword the boxes a little.

3. Then we add in assumptions that make the IF ... THEN logic make sense.

As it's shown above it doesn't read very logically. For example, starting with entity B and reading alound 'IF "We must deliver the best product" THEN "There is pressure to comply with allowing changes to the spec as we learn" doesn't make a lot of sense, unless we ask "Why?". The why is because of learning.

So, I add in that "Often improvements to the original specifications are discovered while doing the project" and then link them up like this:

and I repeat for all of the original entities in the cloud

4. Then we need to show how the conflict causes the UDE. Like so:

So, here we are saying that:

IF "Thereis pressure to comply with allowing changes to the spec as we learn" and "There is pressure to avoid making changes to the spec as we learn" THEN "There is conflict between client and doers ..."
IF "there is conflict between client and doers ..." and "There is pressure to avoid making changes to the spec as we learn" then "040 The software produced misses many high priority features that weren't included in the original requirements specification".

I think these need a little bit of rework and rewording, but I need to talk to Jim about this offline later today

5. Here's the complete tree fragment. You'll notice that we also managed to include the 2 UDEs about conflict between customers/doers/budget holders etc.