What is "systemantics"

General Systemantics (retitled to Systemantics in its second edition and The Systems Bible in its third) is a systems engineering treatise by John Gall in which he offers practical principles of systems design based on experience and anecdotes.

It is offered from the perspective of how not to design systems based on system engineering failures. The primary precept of treatise is that large complex systems are extremely difficult to design correctly despite best intentions and so care must be taken to design smaller less complex systems and to do so with incremental functionality based on close and continual touch with user needs and measures of effectiveness.