--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections
The Hidden Treasures of System Dynamics
While Mr. T. is in Rome to check if Morovia actually does pay him as they had promised (yes, he´s apparently still suspicious and he still cares about the money, despite the fact how much he obviously likes his new job), he gets to meet Dr. Abdul Jamid, an acquaintance of an old friend. Dr. Jamid is working on management dynamics, something that will prove helpful for the tasks to be done in Morovia…
When first looking at the functionality of management dynamics, Mr. T. is overwhelmed by all the information and reluctant to acknowledge the usefulness of modelling management dynamics… something I can relate to better than anyone, after completing a whole module on system dynamics in my previous semester at university.
My professor back then introduced us to system dynamics with the classic „Chicken & Eggs problem“.
If we think that no other variables other than chicken and eggs exist, we have a system consisting of one reinforcing loop, that is „More chicken “ –> „More Eggs “ –> „More Chicken“ –> „More Eggs“ …… (you should understand it by now)
This would lead to exponential growth in the stock of chickens…however, in reality, growth is limited by a certain carrying capacity, e.g. the size of the farm where chicken live. At one point, the farm will be full and chicken will start crossing the road next to it – which inevitably leads to lots of (dead chicken ). This actually represents a new feedback loop, which is balancing the total stock of chicken.
Depending on variables such as growth rate, death rate, carrying capacity and time delays, the total number of chickens could take different sizes over time.
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