| 1 | Continuing Change | Systems must be continually adapted else they become progressively less satisfactory in use |
| 2 | Increasing Complexity | As a system is evolved its complexity increases unless work is done to maintain or reduce it |
| 3 | Self Regulation | Global system evolution processes are self-regulating |
| 4 | Conservation of Organisational Stability | Unless feedback mechanisms are appropriately adjusted, average effective global activity rate in an evolving system tends to remain constant over product lifetime |
| 5 | Conservation of Familiarity | In general, the incremental growth and long term growth rate of systems tend to decline |
| 6 | Continuing Growth | The functional capability of systems must be continually increased to maintain user satisfaction over the system lifetime |
| 7 | Declining Quality | Unless rigorously adapted to take into account changes in the operational environment, the quality of systems will appear to be declining |
| 8 | Feedback System | Evolution processes are multi-level, multi-loop, multi-agent feedback systems |
