This post begins my series of thoughts about the nature of Living System Software. The thoughts in this series of posts are inter-related to the posts I am making on my Personal Blog about the nature of Living Systems.
The writings of Paul Graham in his essays seem to apply quite closely to the discussions on living system software that Paco Moreno and I began last month - and that have now been joined by Al SantaLuca.
A very few things seem crystal clear to me about Living System Software:
1) The process begins with direct human interactions between creator-developers with at least one end-user and this human relationship continues throughout the development and the use of the software solution- With NO middlemen or agents or distributors or "suits", etc. ever being in the picture - This is a pure application of what I call "Alignment Marketing" - or business operations without conventional selling
2) The software solution is Web Based (the Morphic field) - Not desktop or local Intranet based
3) The bridge to the end-user-partner is a "Browser like" UI (this is how the Morphic Field is personally customized and used on the Operating Plane of the Living system) - This means that probably more uniqueness is in the UI that may be beyond the normal browser and its well known limitations - But current browsers are "good enough" for now and we should not delay to develop better UI's at first
4) The application is paid for by a member subscription with client value developed in terms of membership in a network of users
5) The software at the server network (Morphic field) is never at equilibrium - in continuous development with no formal "Release" process where the software process is frozen and then un-frozen and then re-frozen - It is a continuous process
6) The software at the UI is also in dynamic process of user customization under the chosen control of the end-user with the help as needed from the developer-administrators
7) The thing that is relatively static is the structure and process of the server based knowledge and data base - again designed by collaboration of the developer-administrators and the end user
8) This means that the knowledge and data structure has a standard underlying Morphic structure that can then be customized - This means that all knowledge and data inputs go into the server base in a standard way and THEN customized by collaboration based on the standard While keeping the original structure as the start of the input channel - Space is cheap and database mapping to the customized structure is not difficult
9) This means that the Help-CustomerService, the Development and the Systems Administration are NOT separate as they are in conventional deskbased software operations - they are integrated - because all three functions are done by the same persons - As operations scale up in size there are more teams created in a network of teams so that each team still has these integrated functions for some segmented group of clients and/or some portion of the application
There are more points to come - but I hope this is a start for us.
The basic point is - That we work out the details of our living system software model AS WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CREATING AND WORKING WITH REAL CUSTOMERS ON REAL APPLICATION NEEDS. This means that we DO NOT try to Plan Out a Project first - THAT IS NOT THE LIVING SYSTEM WAY. We learn the most while doing together with a client.
John Clayton Caris
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