Seattle Method

The comic strip below helps one understand the need for a shared set of goals and objectives for a system and the consequences for not agreeing on such shared goals and objectives.  Effective communication between stakeholder and by stakeholders to those creating the system is critically important.  Testing is a tools for verifying agreement and determining if a system is adequate to meet specified goals and objectives. For contrast, consider this project where everyone agrees with the project. If agreement is achieved it is relatively easier to move a project from one state of agreement to some other state of agreement. Additional Information: Overview  

In his book Saving Capitalism , Robert Reich describes three categories that all modern work/jobs fit into: (Robert B. Reich, Saving Capitalism , Alfred A. Knopf, page 204-206) Routine production services which entails repetitive tasks, In-person services where you physically have to be there because human touch was essential to the tasks, Symbolic-analytic services which include problem solving, problem identification, and strategic thinking that go into the manipulation of symbols (data, words, oral and visual representations). In describing the third category, symbolic-analytic services, Mr. Reich elaborates: (emphasis is mine) “In essence this work is to rearrange abstract symbols using a variety of analytic and creative tools - mathematical algorithms, legal arguments, financial gimmicks, scientific principles, powerful words and phrases, visual patterns, psychological insights, and other techniques for solving conceptual puzzles .  Such manipulations improve efficiency-ac...

A medium is a tool used to exchange information related to some subject matter between an information bearer and an information receiver. Below are some examples of traditional mediums used during the industrial age and I added a couple of new mediums that will very likely be more prominent in the information age. In order to make use of an information media effectively, the following three conditions must be satisfied: Easy for information bearer to represent information : The effort and difficulty required for the information bearer to successfully formulate the information in the medium must be as low as possible. Clear, consistent meaning : The meaning conveyed by the information bearer to the information receiver must be clear and easily followed by human beings and be consistent between different software applications. The result cannot be a "black box" or a guessing game and users of the information should not be able to derive different information/understanding simp...

Why represent information from some area of knowledge (a.k.a. body of knowledge, corpus) in the form of a machine-readable knowledge representation? How do you eliminate "wild behavior" of the stakeholders of system which make use of the knowledge representation? How is an area of knowledge created, used, and managed today? Might a machine-readable knowledge representation be superior to current approaches to representing an area of knowledge? Think about some specific area of knowledge such as a financial reporting scheme such as US GAAP or IFRS. The following tasks take place: Define: Description/specification/explanation of the terms, associations, structures, assertions, restrictions, constraints in the area of knowledge by a standards setter, regulator, or someone else creating an area of knowledge; the area of knowledge could be human readable, machine readable, or preferably machine readable form from which a human readable representation can be automatically generated...

The world is complex.  But sometimes humans can come together, leveraging the power of agreement, and agree enough to create something useful in meeting some specific important aim and satisfying some agreed upon set of goals and objectives. A kludge is an engineering/computer science term that defines what is best described as a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is typically clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain; but it gets the job done. The nautical term for a kludge is jury rig. By contrast, elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness, grace, and simplicity. The alternative to being a kludge is  elegant simplicity . Elegant simplicity is achieved through complexity via hard work an, clever ideas, etc. It is easy to create a system that is complex.  It is hard work to create a system that is simple.  People commonly confuse the terms "simple" and "simplistic". They do not describe the same thing. ...

An agent performs a specific task, work tasks , on behalf of another.  An agent could be a person or a thing such as a machine that takes an active role or produces a specified effect. A computer program that acts for a user or other program or platform in a relationship of agency to perform some action is an agent, a software agent.  An agent is a software program designed to automate tasks by mimicking human decision making processes. Agents are good at handling repetitive workflows, process data/information, and interacting with other agents or software applications to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort. An agent is an entity capable of sensing the state of its environment and acting upon it based on a set of specified rules and perhaps a model. Remember that an agent performs specific tasks on behalf of another in order to achieve some agreed upon goal established by the principal that employs the agent and the agent which will act in behalf of the principle. A co...

Imagine it.  Freedom from drudgery. The toil of tedious, repetitive, mundane, monotonous tasks. This overview is an attempt to take the work that I have done to understand XBRL-based reports and back into a framework for explaining those reports to accountants and software engineers building software for accountants.  The sources of the information provided below are my " lab notebook " from December 2007 to October 2022; my Digital Financial Reporting blog from October 2022 until January 2025; Mastering XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting ; and finally my Seattle Method  documentation. What I have tried to do is take the seemingly hundreds of incomplete, far too technical, typically nonstandard explanations that I have come across; take the good/best ideas from each, make improvements to those explanations, and resynthesize the information into a form that is useful to me and perhaps useful to other business professionals which have a liberal arts education (i.e. not...

Logic is a formal communications tool that defines the rules of correct reasoning.  Logical reasoning is about arriving at a conclusion in a rigorous way.  Inference is the steps in logical reasoning.  There two broad categories of logical reasoning: deductive and non-deductive. Deductive reasoning provides a result that is guaranteed to be certain, therefore the result can be relied upon without doubt and humans need not be involved in a process because of the certainty of deductive reasoning. However, humans are necessary to make sure that the logic represented in the rules is correct. Non-deductive reasoning , on the other hand, is not certain, meaning it could be correct but it could also be incorrect.  Non-deductive reasoning is based on probability.  And so non-deductive reasoning approaches must have a human in the loop to deal with that uncertainty.  There are three types of non-deductive reasoning: inductive, abductive, and analogy. The elements ...

The elements of logic are the fundamental building blocks of logical theories that describe the logical conceptualization of some system that is natural or designed (a.k.a. man-made). A logical system is a type of designed system.  The elements of logic can also describe knowledge within some area of knowledge using these building blocks. Here is a list of those building blocks, the elements of logic: Logical statement : A logical statement is a proposition, claim, assertion, belief, idea, or fact about or related to the area of knowledge to which the logical conceptualization relates.  A logical statement is a declarative sentence.  Not all sentences are statements; for example, a question such as "What is your name?", or a command such as "Stop!", are not statements.  There are five broad categories of logical statements: (these can be thought of as logical molecules) Terms : Terms are important logical statements that define ideas or "things" used by a...

A system is a set of interrelated and interdependent elements (a.k.a. parts, things), groups (a.k.a. types, categories, sets) into which the elements fall, and interaction patterns that describe the interactions between the different types of elements within a system. A system has a nature and structures. A system act according to a set of known rules to form a unified whole.  A system has boundaries.  A system can be natural, such as the solar system, or designed by humans, such as a bicycle. Or, a system can be a hybrid having natural and designed aspects.  Modern systems theory also acknowledges hybrid systems (e.g., urban ecosystems shaped by both natural processes and human design). A system tends to have some deliberate, intentional aim; the goal(s) and/or objective(s) of the system. A natural system is a system that occurs naturally (i.e. no human involvement in the natural system).  A designed system is a system intentionally created by humans (i.e. does...

Knowledge representation is simply organizing knowledge related to some area of knowledge into some physical form.  A knowledge representation provides an explanation of or description of the nature and structure of something. There are a number of different approaches that a knowledge representation might take, each approach having a different level of expressivity and reasoning capability.  These different knowledge representation approaches form a spectrum.  The following is a graphic which shows the expressivity and reasoning capability of different knowledge representation approaches: The following is a brief description of each of the different knowledge representation approaches which will help you understand the relative expressivity and reasoning capability of each approach: Name authority : A name authority provides what amounts to a dictionary or list which amounts to a flat inventory of terms with no relations expressed between the terms. This can be thought...

An area of knowledge is a highly organized socially constructed aggregation of shared knowledge (a.k.a. corpus) for a distinct subject matter.  Subject matter experts (SMEs) create, use, and maintain an area of knowledge. An area of knowledge has a specialized insider vocabulary, underlying assumptions (axioms, theorems, constraints, assertions, restrictions), and persistent open questions that have not necessarily been resolved (i.e. flexibility is necessary).  You can think about an area of knowledge as being characterized in a spectrum with two extremes: Kind area of knowledge: clear rules, lots of patterns, lots of rules, repetitive patterns, and unchanging tasks. Wicked area of knowledge: obscure data, few or no rules, constant change, and abstract ideas. Stakeholders of a system need to be in agreement as to an undisputed core knowledge of an area of knowledge. Sensemaking is the process of determining the knowledge, or deeper meaning or significance or essence, of the c...

Knowledge is a form of familiarity with information from some specific area or corpus. Knowledge is often understood to be awareness of facts, having learned skills, or having gained experience using the things and the state of affairs (situations) within some area of knowledge. They call people familiar with knowledge within some area of knowledge a subject matter expert (SME). Knowledge is facts and information.  Knowledge of facts is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification or proof.  Knowledge is objective.  Opinions and guesswork are subjective.  Skills are reliable patterns of behavior and action.  Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. There are different types of knowledge.  Propositional knowledge relates to propositions or claims or facts.  Practical knowledge relates to skills. Knowledge by acquaintance relates to familiarity of something through experience, training, or research. In our...