Welcome to the autochthony wiki!

The autochthony improvement model and autochthonal design methodology have been used to structure assessment and improvement in multiple domains such as project management, software development methodology, and business architecture. Its strength lies in its ability to show how foundational aspects (i.e., history, meaning and intent) combine with bounding and energizing aspects (i.e., definition, integration and management), and execution aspects (i.e., process, roles and tools & methods) to define a holistic approach for realizing potential in the four essential dimensions that constitute a domain architecture. These four dimensions are:

• Organization, which captures why a group exists and how it structures itself for success
• Offerings, which capture the output (products, services, experiences, systems, etc.) of the group
• Relationships, which capture the context of the group in terms of its environment -- for example, relationships could be with markets, suppliers, employees, and nature
• Learning, which captures the group's knowledge, its process know-how, its ability to learn how to learn what it doesn't know already

Each dimension represents a type of debt or capital that will either advance or detract from the organization's ability to improve its adoption of a given paradigm. As an example, lack of trust (Relationship dimension) will diminish an organization's ability to benefit fully from agile processes defined by the software industry. Lack of transparency and/or communication in the area of learning will result in diminished productivity and lower product quality (leading to worsening relationships with customers) as employees wrestle with problems that have been solved before by others in the organization or decisions are made without the necessary data.

The autochthony model for realizing potential in any dimension

Although the dimension template may resemble maturity models like the CMM, SPICE, or Bootstrap, it is meant to be used as a "focus of attention" model whose value lies in its utility and its ability to foster insight generation. As such, it would benefit a project retrospective to help answer questions about what should be done differently next time. As an example, organizations with process problems often add additional processes to fix the problem instead of looking at how, why, and by whom the process is being selected, evaluated, monitored, and executed. There may be nothing wrong with the process itself except that nobody is motivated to follow it because they had no part in selecting it or committing to it.

Our current research aims to characterize organizational, pedagogical, and organizational change patterns in terms of autochthony's aspects and dimensions to help groups choose their next improvement experiments. While some patterns improve a specific aspect, some of the most effective patterns facilitate improvement across several dimensions by fostering improved communication or empowerment. Organizations with a passion for action research will find autochthony is a powerful tool for groups needing to visualize the progress they are making.

The name autochthony derives from the Greek autochthon, "of or from the earth or land itself," from auto-, "self" + chthon, "earth" and describes the state of being formed or originated in the place where found, aboriginal, indigenous, native, as illustrated by this sentence: "For cultures are not monoliths. They are fragmentary, patchworks of autochthonous and foreign elements." --Anthony Pagden, "Culture Wars," The New Republic, November 16, 1998. (See http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2001/12/10.html when autochthonous was the word of the day.) The name was chosen because it captures the optimistic view that the possibility of improvement is inherent in every environment. That environment thus becomes the “ground” for improvement, and the desired outcome, when reached, is autochthonous because it was generated out of those particular circumstances.

The purpose of this site is to get feedback on the content. Although content pages are currently locked, the discussion pages await your comments. Clicking on the button that says "Login to edit" will take you to the login screen where the contributor password is displayed.

autochthony's four dimensions

diagnosing and planning with autochthony

where autochthony came from

autochthony's aspects

navigating autochthony -- from chaos to complex adaptation

This website is published under the terms and conditions of this creative commons license. If you choose to copy or use any part of it, please include a reference to "Pam Rostal and Dave Williams' autochthony wiki -- http://autochthony.pbwiki.com." Contact pmrostal@comcast.net or diw.williams@gmail.com for more information.