Most software engineers are likely familiar with functional programming. The idea of functionalism, focusing on the “what” rather than the “how”, doesn’t just apply to programming. I was reminded of how powerful a functionalist approach is this week as while I’ve been attending the STAMP workshop. STAMP is an approach to systems safety developed by Nancy Leveson.
The primary metaphor in STAMP is the control system: STAMP employs a control system model to help reason about the safety of a system. This is very much a functionalist approach, as it models agents in the system based only on what control actions they can take and what feedback they can receive. You can use this same model to reason about a physical component, a software system, a human, a team, an organization, even a regulatory body. As long as you can identify the inputs your component receives, and the control actions that it can perform, you can model it as a control system.
Cognitive systems engineering (CSE) uses a different metaphor: that of a cognitive system. But CSE also takes a functional approach, observing how people actually work and trying to identify what functions their actions serve in the system. It’s a bottom-up functionalism where STAMP is top-down, so it yields different insights into the system.
What’s appealing to me about these functionalist approaches is that they change the way I look at a problem. They get me to think about the problem or system at hand in a different way than I would have if I didn’t take a deliberately take a functional approach. And “it helped me look at the world in a different way” is the highest compliment I can pay to a technology.
Surfing Complexity 