Public Services Information Management 7. Soft Systems Methodology

Public Services Information Management Many computer systems fail to realise their potential… why ? Insufficient systems analysis Not congruent with user expectations Hardware/software incomptabilities

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis Software and Systems Development life Cycle http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~tdrewry/Lifecycl.htm

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis Soft Systems Analysis (SSM) is particularly associated with the work of Peter Checkland: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice Soft Systems Methodology in Action (with Holwell) Information, Systems and Information Systems

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis CATWOE components of the root definition   C Customer The client, benficiary or victim of the system  A Actors The agents who carry out, or cause to be carried out, the activities or the transformations of the system  T Transformations The core of the root definition. A process carried out by the system i.e. the changes that take place within/ because of the system (conversion of input  output)

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis  W Weltanschaung The (often unquestioned) outlook or taken-for-granted framework which makes this particular root definition a meaningful one  O Ownership The owners of the system, control, concern or sponsorship (i.e. to whom answerable)  E Environment Environmental impositions. Wider systems in which the transformations must operate’ 

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis Soft systems are used when we are not sure what the problem is i.e. the problem is vague or ill-defined. Many organisational problems come into this category The solutions may or may not involve computers! SSM is often used to help us define the problem.

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis · Systems thinking looks at the emergent properties of the whole – more than the sum of the parts  · Systems thinking sets system models (abstract wholes) against the real world in order to learn about it  · ‘Hard’ tradition assumes that the world is a system · ‘Soft’ tradition creates the process of enquiry as a system ·  SSM (Soft systems methodology) makes use of systems models and subsumes the hard approach ( which is a special case of it)

Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis  The word ‘system’ can be ambiguous : is it what actually exists in the world out there? a conception that we have in minds of how to model the world out there ? Because of this, Checkland suggests that we use the term holon for the second meaning (and reserve the use of the word system for the first meaning) ·       SSM uses a particular kind of system which is a human activity system ·       There is never only one relevant holon but several.

Public Services Information Management comp_ss.doc