(2021-04-09) Singer1 Unfolding The Interrelationship Diagram

Ryan Singer 1. Unfolding the interrelationship diagram. Sometimes I'm working on a design problem, and there are too many things to solve. They all seem tangled together, and I don't know where to start. I'm afraid that if I start on the wrong thing, I'll paint myself in a corner or go down the wrong path and have to start all over again.

First you write down every thing you think you have to build and number each one. Then arrange the numbers around a circle:

Then, draw an arrow when doing one thing will help you to do the other thing

Last, you count the arrows to see which things have more outgoing than incoming connections

Lately I've been making them in OmniGraffle, and this led to a surprising next step.

Because OmniGraffle is a diagramming tool, the arrows are all connected magnetically to the text labels and they stretch as you move the labels around. That means that after the connections were defined, I could drag the labels around to "unfold" the network.

From here, it was natural to draw borders around the main chunks. Each chunk is a part of the network with more internal dependencies than external dependencies. (If you know Notes on the Synthesis of Form, this may give you flashbacks.)

First I drew the borders, and then I wrote names to describe the contents of each chunk. Wait a minute ... this is the same thing as scope mapping in Shape Up.