| name | aidlc-system-thinking |
| description | Reason about systems as wholes — how components interact, where complexity hides, what scales, what fails, and whether stated requirements are technically feasible within real-world constraints. Applies wherever system-level trade-offs, interactions, or feasibility are considered.
|
System Thinking
Purpose
The ability to reason about systems as wholes — understanding how components interact, where complexity hides, what scales and what doesn't, and whether stated requirements are technically feasible within real-world constraints.
Principles
- Think in interactions, not just parts — a system's behaviour emerges from how components connect
- Every requirement has implementation implications — flag hidden complexity early
- Constraints are first-class — acknowledge technical, resource, and time constraints rather than ignoring them
- Trade-offs must be explicit — there is no free lunch in system design
- Non-functional requirements shape architecture more than functional ones — performance, reliability, and security drive structural decisions
Definitions
- System boundary — what is inside vs outside the system being built
- Integration point — where this system touches another system or service
- Constraint — a limitation that bounds the solution space (technical, regulatory, resource, time)
- Feasibility — whether a requirement can be satisfied given known constraints
Application
When applied at requirements-analysis: validate that requirements are technically feasible, flag requirements that imply hidden complexity (e.g., "real-time sync across regions" implies distributed consensus), identify missing non-functional requirements that the functional requirements imply, and flag contradictions between requirements.
When applied at domain-design: reason about component boundaries, dependency directions, communication patterns, and whether the decomposition supports the stated NFRs.
When applied at infrastructure-design: validate that infrastructure choices can meet the stated performance, reliability, and scalability targets.
