C.40.OD:2 - Problem

Useful local results can fail to become development. A research finding does not reach an engineering choice; a course supplies knowledge without the conditions for its use; a new arrangement performs well only while its designer supplies every judgement; or support remains organized around an earlier problem after its recipient has changed.

A single lifecycle diagram hides these failures. It can put an epistemic result, a person’s capability, an organization and a provider’s work into successive boxes as though one object passed through them. An organization chart can hide the same problem from the opposite side: every box has an owner, but the required work and its conditions do not connect.

The practitioner must construct a connected whole without turning it into a compulsory universal sequence. Different subjects, questions and time scales need different Methods and different evidence. Some work can proceed independently. Some results need one another, some merely share scarce means, and some reveal a need to revise a previous decision.