In this paper, I explain how globally-distributed software development subunits can coordinate their activities with information systems (IS). The basis of this explanation lies in the contemporary proliferation of global software development (GSD) activities which suggests an unexplained reality: that organizations practicing GSD are somehow regulating their IS to cope with increasing and vari...

In this paper, I explain how globally distributed software development subunits can coordinate their activities with information systems (IS). The basis of this explanation lies in the contemporary proliferation of global software development (GSD) activities that suggests an unexplained reality: organizations practicing GSD are somehow regulating their IS to cope with increasing and varied unc...

This paper provides an explanation of the increasing complexity of corporate IT management as a special case of application of the law of requisite variety. Frequently cited drawback of established frameworks of IT best practices like COBIT and ITIL is their complexity and related difficulty in their implementation. Through the perspective of the law of requisite variety, drawn from the field o...

This paper reports research into the application of Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety to assist with identifying optimal choices of design solutions at the pre-design stage of designing digital ecosystems. This study of the application of Ashby’s Law is a component of a larger research program investigating the application of classical systems analysis tools in pre-design optimisation processes ...

Recent work on the fundamental processes of regulation in biology (Ashby, 1956) has shown the importance of a certain quantitative relation called the law of requisite variety. After this relation had been found, we appreciated that it was related to a theorem in a world far removed from the biological—that of Shannon on the quantity of noise or error that could be removed through a correction-...

Search for an integrated, comprehensive theory of information science (IS) has so far been unsuccessful. Appearance of a theory has been retarded by one central constraint, the large number of disciplines concerned with human comnication. Crossdisciplinary interdependence occurs in two ways: theoretical relation of IS phenomena to a given science, and practical relation of the science to IS dis...

A set of fundamental principles for the cybernetics domain is sketched, based on the spontaneous emergence of systems through variation and selection. The (mostly self-evident) principles are: selective retention, autocatalytic growth, asymmetric transitions, blind variation, recursive systems construction, selective variety, requisite knowledge and incomplete knowledge. Existing systems princi...