Traditional dogfighting before Boyd reformed it at Nellis fighter tactics school when he was instructor was based in basically cookbooks of "maneuvers" based in nothing more than accumulated wisdom/superstition from 30 years of dueling in the air. There was no real theory to it.
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Boyd mastered that metis, but then went on to theorize and systematize it with physics. E-M theory reframes fighter tactics as energy and entropy management. This not only shapes how you fight (fast transients etc) but how you design airplanes.
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E-M theory led to understanding why, statistically, certain airplanes routinely beat other airplanes, regardless of the skills of "ace" pilots. And how to design planes to be winning. Gaps in E-M theory led on to the further innovations in the OODA loop theory.
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In fact, fast transients is an artifact of OODA theory rather than E-M theory. Boyd got there by applying E-M theory to sabres vs. migs in Korea and realizing the predictions were wrong because the model didn't include how the UX (stick, visibility, affected transients)
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So the way Boydian theory "automates" project management is a) transpose a domain of tactical heuristic metis onto a first-principles ground so a well-designed potential field replaces a body of arbitrary playbook knowledge b) fill the remaining "human factor" gaps with UX design
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The formula to automate a project management "caring" layer is simple to state but hard to execute:
1. Separate the PM into "science" and "human factors" components
2. Build a potential-field theory of the "science" part to get rid of the arbitrary playbooks
3. UX the rest
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Curiously, this formula goes back to... Newton! Newtonian mechanics is really annoying to apply directly. It's like project management. Lagrangian and Hamilitonian methods are technically equivalent, but far easier to use because they are grounded in potential theories.
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You have to be "clever" to solve classical mechanics problems using Newtonian methods, and I kinda prided myself on my cleverness through high school/college. But in grad school, my intermediate dynamics/advanced dynamics prof taught us a very important principle: don't be clever
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Using Newton means getting clever with coordinate frames and algebraic manipulations. But 80% of it can be automatically done by Lagrangian formulation. Occasionally you still have to use Newton's laws directly to incorporate tricky constraints and non-conservative forces.
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But as you get older and less good at being clever, applying Newton's laws no longer feels like virtuoso pleasure at doing an unnecessary difficult thing. You prefer plug-and-play brain dead easy of lagrangian equations. And as problems get harder, you *need* them to solve at all
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General project management is currently at the Newton level. Or pre-Boyd fighter tactics level. It needs to get to the Kane's equations/E-M+OODA level. And the effect of getting there will feel like "automating caring" (2) so you can devote all your energy to truth+pleasure (1+3)
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Now back to my regularly scheduled procrastination and neglect of PM backlog of activities and pretending doing a thread on twitter crosses off the "make this spreadsheet" to-do on that to-do list which is itself sinking under a pile of entropy.
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Addendum: this approach should be called "designing for cowpaths" as in the UX heuristic of "pave the cowpaths." That only works if the original design was sensible enough as a potential field that the emergent cowpaths finish the job. Design the project to need no management.
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Cowpath-only paving like crash-only programming.
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61. "Project managing" network effects twitter.com/vgr/status/140
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