Strategic Plan
Mission, governing rule, invariants, falsifiers and objectives: the part of the plan that changes at annual review, not in response to this week's priorities.
| Document | Strategic Plan |
| Organisation | Systems In Practice (SiP) |
| Period | September 2026 – August 2028 |
| Status | In effect |
| Revision cycle | Stable between annual reviews |
| Next annual review | August 2027 |
Why this body of work exists, restated in full from the mission.
To advance the understanding and practical application of complex systems through structured, repeatable research models and the dependable computational tools derived from them.
Systems In Practice holds that a model and its implementation are not two artefacts but one, expressed twice. The model is normative and the tool is derived from it. Where the two disagree, the model is correct and the tool is defective.
SiP exists to reduce the gap between systems concepts and their practical implementation. It seeks to make complex system behaviour easier to define, reason about, test, and maintain by developing methods that preserve coherence as systems evolve.
Execution is one of the ways a model is tested. A model that cannot be executed has not been fully tested, and a tool that cannot be traced back to a model has not been fully specified. SiP treats the distance between the two as the thing being reduced.
A future in which complex systems can be designed and operated using explicit, testable, and reusable models that support reliable decisions, transparent reasoning, and sustainable technological development.
In that future, the specification is the audit. A system's behaviour can be reconstructed from its published model by someone who has never seen its source, and its conformance to that model can be demonstrated rather than asserted.
The model is normative. The tool is derived. No rule may exist only in code.
Any behaviour a tool exhibits that its model does not specify is a determinism failure, and is evaluated as such. This rule is the boundary between building tools and automating thinking, and it applies to every executable artefact SiP produces or accredits.
We call this derivation integrity: a model is published, an implementation is derived from it, and the derivation can be inspected by someone who has seen neither the code nor the author. It is the distinguishing claim of this body of work, and every objective and gate below is written against it.
Conditions that must remain true. Each carries the response required when it is breached. An invariant with no breach response is only a preference. Six of these, restated as checkable commitments with how you can verify each one yourself, are set out in full in Core Principles.
No tool is published, shared or used in delivery without a published model from which it derives.
No rule exists only in code. A rule found only in code is treated as a determinism failure and corrected in the model first.
Every published artefact has passed validation against the standard current on its publication date.
We do not describe our output as a method until it has been demonstrated in a second domain.
No substitute is produced or accredited: no tool decides something its model leaves undefined, even where the decision is accurate.
Financial systems: obligation and repayment architectures, state consistency, and computation under incomplete transaction observability. It is a proving ground, not the destination: we commit to a second domain before we describe our output as a method.
A thesis that cannot fail is not a research position. Our thesis is that model-normative development, applied under a strict validation standard, produces systems whose behaviour is reconstructable and demonstrably correct, and that this discipline transfers across domains. Four falsifiers are defined, each with a response that is a genuine change of direction, not a restatement.
Tested when. Tested when, after a second-domain proof of concept, transfer requires redefining core framework terms rather than parameterising existing ones.
If triggered. Stop describing the work as a general method. Reposition as a financial systems discipline.
Tested when. Tested when, across three published specifications, independent implementers diverge on conformance fixtures more than once.
If triggered. Halt new specifications. Revise the specification format before any further publication.
Tested when. Tested when derivation and conformance work consumes more engineering capacity than agreed, without a measured reduction in defect rate.
If triggered. Reduce mandatory derivation to a defined artefact class rather than all executable output.
Tested when. Tested when no external party adopts, extends, cites or independently validates any published artefact within twenty four months of first publication.
If triggered. Treat as a distribution failure first and a substance failure second. Reallocate toward engagement for one cycle.
Over 2026 to 2028, Systems In Practice moves from a research and development activity into a research, engineering and publishing organisation of deliberately modest size, carried by five objectives.
A coherent body of research defining how complex systems are modelled, how states and transitions are represented, and how the correctness of those models is evaluated.
See where this lives in the map →A technical foundation reusable across applications, in which no component may redefine the underlying model. Every implemented rule traces to a named model clause.
See where this lives in the map →Demonstrating that the models solve consequential problems, using financial systems as the initial testbed and recording where they are insufficient.
See where this lives in the map →Moving the body of work into use, and exposing it to criticism that internal review cannot provide, through a sequenced publication programme.
See where this lives in the map →Sustaining rigorous research and dependable engineering without dependence on a single project, funder or person.
See how you can support this →This page holds what changes only at annual review. The full plan adds the roadmap, the capacity model, the risk register, and everything else that moves on a different cycle.
Complex systems, made legible.
Mission, governing rule, invariants, falsifiers and objectives sit here because they hold between reviews. The Knowledge Map shows the intellectual structure underneath them, and Core Principles restates the invariants above as commitments you can check yourself.