A toolkit of five essential clusters of heuristics for promoting innovativeness and wisdom in systems architecting the strategy and structure of organizations

Systems architecting is crucial for the successful creation and development of complex, unprecedented systems. Large global business organizations, whose success is most strongly determined by their strategy and structure, exemplify such systems. The most critical contributions of architecting to acquiring successful systems often occur during the conceptualization and certification phases. During system conceptualization, innovativeness is key to effectively mediate among competing interests and synthesize disparate elements, using ill-structured inputs, including hopes, dreams, unclear needs, and undetermined resources. During system certification, wisdom and abilities to anticipate potential troublesome outcomes are key to effectively demonstrate system suitability to all primary stakeholders. The required approaches to systems architecting are often less about science, analysis, and deduction and more about art, synthesis, and induction. Heuristics are indispensable tools that capture the insights gained from past experiences and allow those insights to be deployed to promote innovativeness and wisdom for architecting complex, unprecedented systems. The present article develops a toolkit of five clusters of heuristics that are essential for promoting innovativeness and wisdom in systems architecting the strategy and structure of global business organizations in dynamic environments.