As we are beginning our transition to Workday, yet again, the issues surrounding data integrity, definitions etc. which I am fond of writing about, are surfacing. Despite the fact that Chaos theory in itself is a huge field and I don’t necessarily understand all aspects of it, its vastly simplified definition struck a chord with me.

“Chaos theory is the field of study in mathematics that studies the behavior and condition of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. […] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[3] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.”

and

a quote from Edward Lorenz “Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.”

The take home lesson (a stretch, I understand!) from this is “We are beginning a major administrative systems project and we are essentially dealing with a lot of (deterministic) dynamic data and we have a golden opportunity to get our initial conditions right so that at least for a long time to come we can avoid divergence and chaos”.  (more…)