The number of spectacular development failures in, for example, large software projects remains at an alarmingly high level. In spite of fierce efforts to advance current methods and tools supporting such tasks, there seems to be no radical improvement in sight.

This book suggests an alternative approach to the development of complex systems. Technology, methods and tools are still important, but human-centric aspects like common understanding, coordination, visualization, and reduction of complexity, need to be brought to the forefront.

The core of the alternative approach is the system anatomy, a means that was invented in the early 1990s by Jack Järkvik, who at that time was working for the Ericsson telecommunication company. Since then, Ericsson has been using the anatomy extensively for managing extremely complex system development tasks. The system anatomy is a simple but powerful image showing the dependencies among capabilities in a system, thereby representing a novel way of conceptualizing systems.

The book is a collection of chapters from authors who, in one way or another, have been working with the anatomy concept. The intended audience is both practitioners and researchers, who are interested in exploring new perspectives and theoretical frameworks for managing complexity in system development tasks.