Platform specification

The platform specification document is a specification for OrganicDesign (which is a trust group) so that it's members may engage in an ongoing process of alignment with its vision and core documents. The overall result of aligning with this specification is for the organisation or group to form into a platform, and for all the platforms to form into a global platform network allowing our civilisation to self govern as a single organism achieving its shared vision in a sustainable manner which looks after the well-being of itself and all its members.

OrganicDesign: OrganicDesign [more]

Platform: In the Organic Design context, platform refers to an organisation that is using the platform specification as the foundation of it's system design, so that it operates in accord with the values outlined in our charter and manifesto. Part of the platform specification is that all platforms have some common departments such as networking and deployment which allows them to share knowledge and create new Platforms through common interest and shared vision. The platform network refers to the collection of all the platforms connected together to form a global peer-to-peer network that achieve their goals together in alignment with each other and the common good using self governance. [more]

Platform network: The Platform network is the name given to the total of all Platform organisations as a whole. The Platform specification defines how to operate as a "Platform" (a node in the Platform network). [more]

Self governance: When a trust group collaborate on their shared vision and work together to actualise it in alignment with their defined values, they need to have methods and tools available for making decisions together, resolving conflicts and managing resources in their system. Self governance is the ability for a trust group to do these things without requiring any external parties, and in general, is how a group's system can undergo change in response to feedback from its members and stakeholders and from changes in the environment it operates within. The manifesto to which Organic Design is aligned follows the bottom-up principle that organisation at the global scale is achieved by organisation beginning with individuals and local regions, rather than being determined from larger centralised institutions downwards. From this global context, self-governance in alignment with the values allows the best known options to be found and selected for all aspects of the social mechanism. This is achieved by making more effective, unhindered use of the totality of available knowledge and expertise. [more]

The platform specification serves as a high-level technology-independent organisational system description. It's intended that it be a complete description of what it means to be a platform, and as such is the general document that is used as a starting point for more specific documents such as the software architecture which covers use-cases, technology decisions for how software can be developed to be support a platform. All system related concepts such as procedures and best practices are also directed by this specification.

Each trust group may have its own more specific and refined specification, but this document is the specification that OrganicDesign aligns to and serves as a default to help other organisations and groups better align to the common global vision of the planet operating as a single organism as described admirably in Bruce Lipton's book Spontaneous Evolution. These common global ideals are discussed in more detail in the OrganicDesign charter, manifesto, values and OrganicDesign vision.

Specification

As stated above, the specification must be complete and technology independent so that any variety of technological environments can have documents written to support the common specification. For example our software architecture document describes implementing the Platform specification in the context of our own Linux web-desktop operating system.

This technology independent approach also means that a group of people could begin working as a platform without the use of computers and this specification would describe completely everything they need to do to work in alignment with all other platforms and for a platform network together that moves toward an aligned global vision as a single holistic organism.

A technology independent description can still refer to things like documents, forms, records, requests, reports, events and messages without needing to refer to any concept about IT, computer hardware, operating systems or software packages.

The specification is divided into two sections, one for the architectural perspective which covers the functional aspects of a platform, and one describing the platform from the user's perspective.

Platform use

The entry point for describing the platform is a description of how it is used. The fundamental assumption is that individuals or groups are striving toward the achievement of goals and visions and are using a systematic approach to achieve them. So to speak of how the platform is used is to describe clearly the activities and procedures individuals or groups engage in when working toward goals using a system. The usage scenarios can form the basis of "epics" and "stories" that are used in agile software development.

Personal platform

Our entry point to using a platform, is the process often referred to as personal organisation describes the notion of creating clear Activities for personal organisation. If we want to describe a system for organisation, we should start with the persoanl perspective of people using such a system, then extend to group and

• Setup
• Direction and administration
• Communications
• Finance

Group platform

Activities and processes for group activities

• Setup - group formation and membership

Governance

• Group decision making
• TIPAESA
• Direction and administration
• Communications
• Finance

Setup & deployment

• Organisation
• Member

Scheduling

• Notifications
• Shared
• Resource booking
• System (roles, people, processors)

Forms & records

• Reports

Trading

• Payment methods
• products and services
• subscriptions
• invoices

Platform architecture

This is the architecture of the system that platform members work within. The trust group is the concept which forms the foundation of what a platform actually is.

trust group: A trust group is a group of people, called members, who all trust each other to a certain degree across a particular spectrum of resource access and responsibility. This division of responsibility will often divide membership into distinct categories which get given names like roles, departments or divisions and gives and overall organisational structure to the group. The most fundamental distinction between kinds of members is into those who are engaged in the group's governance aspects and those who are involved in a passive sense such as subscribers of the group's information or consumers of it's products. [more]

In terms of the platform specification, the trust group is essentially a collection of members, resources, documents and tools, and acts as a kind of portal for the members to organise and govern these resource together, usually with the aim of achieving a shared vision. Since the groups can be further divided within into a hierarchy of trust-groups, it follows that all the groups forming this internal structure should work the same way and therefore also act as portals of organisation and governance.

See also

• Platform
• Specification
• OrganicDesign
• Spontaneous Evolution