Soft systems methodology (SSM) is a technique developed by Peter Checkland at Lancaster University for looking at complex organisational problems. It is derived from an area of study called systems thinking, which seeks to analyse aspects of the world around us into systems of inputs, transformations and outputs.
Another approach derived from systems thinking is SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology), which is a rigid process for analysing such things as manufacturing processes and software design.
In contrast, soft systems methodology has been developed specifically to be suitable for considering organisational and people-related issues, which cannot so readily be broken down into simple inputs and outputs. It is important to realise that the real value of the SSM methodology lies in the process you follow, not necessarily the answer that you get.
To see how SSM is used, let us consider
the example of the unsuccessful implementation of an intranet. The first step
is to draw a rich picture, which illustrates what you have
found from your initial research.
Rich pictures need not be works of art. Their purpose is to summarise what
is happening and to illustrate relationships. The act of drawing the rich
picture usually acts as a powerful stimulus to thinking about underlying issues.
The next stage is to think about what systems can be identified within the picture. For example, the following could possibly describe the system above:
- A system to make information available throughout the organisation.
- A system to demonstrate that the organisation is technologically up to date.
- A system to develop new skills in the organisation.
- A system to market the organisation internally.
- A system to make it easy for employees to find information.
- A system to improve communications within the organisation.
- A system to reduce the amount of paper used.
- A system to ensure that information circulating within the organisation is always up to date.
- A system where Webmasters repackage information from other departments for use within the organisation.
Developing these definitions illustrates one of the most important aspects of SSM. None of these definitions are totally correct, and you could carry on developing more and more definitions. The power of the method lies not in finding the right answers, but in the process of thinking about what is going on. Involving owners of the performance and other stakeholders in the methodology will make the process more effective.
Having come up with a number of possible definitions, we now look at the list and try to identify what key principles and systems seem to underlie them. These are then incorporated into a root definition of the entire system. For example, a root definition incorporating all of the above could be:
- An internal communications system owned by the IT Department and managed by the Marketing Department in which the Intranet Webmaster collects information from other departments and programs it for use on the intranet where employees within the organisation find the information they need, read it and use it.
Again note that this is not necessarily
the definitive description of what the intranet is. Deriving the root definition
forces us to think about what is important and what processes are at play.
In fact, an important part of the SSM process is to work backwards and forwards
through this process a number of times, coming up with alternative systems
and root definitions. Each root definition that you develop will suggest other
possible solutions.
A complete root definition should contain a number of different elements.
These are often summarised by the acronym CATWOE, which stands for the below:
- Customers, people who will be affected by the system.
- Actors, people who play a part in the system's transformations.
- Transformation, how the inputs are changed to the outputs.
- Weltenschaung, the 'world view', or standpoint from which you are examining the system. This will be implicit within the whole Root Definition.
- Ownership, the agency that has the power to close down the system.
- Environment Features of the environment that have an effect.
The next stage is to use this root definition to build
a conceptual model of the system. This is a model of what
we think the real-life system might look like.
The first step in doing this is to extract all of the transitive verbs from
the root definition, which are:
- collect
- program
- find
- read
- use
This diagram should also indicate which activities are dependent on others. A dependent activity requires significant amounts of information, materials or energy from another activity. This diagram shows how we might represent the conceptual model in this example.It is likely that at this stage you will need to go backwards and forwards between the Root Definition and the conceptual model in order to construct a model that seems like a reasonable representation. When you have a model that seems to work, you should compare it with the rich picture. The idea now is not to use the conceptual model to identify problems in reality, but to use the two diagrams to open a discussion about what is happening. |
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You can do this by asking questions such as:
- Does this activity in the model happen in real-life?
- Who does it?
- Who gives them feedback?
- How is this feedback used?
- What else depends on this activity?
Such a discussion will identify changes that will help
real-life processes to work more effectively.
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(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005