Techniques of soft system methodology

There are mainly three techniques used to represent soft systems. The first choice is using of rich pictures, then conceptual model and expanded conceptual model. Rich pictures use to capture much information as possible relating to the problem situation. Rich pictures can show boundaries, structures, information flows and communication channels. But mainly rich pictures used to illustrate human activities within the system. Rich picture is a simple use of actors and communications. There are no standard notation for rich pictures, but there are some commonly used notations such as cartoon characters, thinking bubble, eyeball, face expressions, etc.

The purpose of rich picture is to get a full view as possible of the factors involved in the problem situation. Especially elements related to environment of the problem. It may be used just by the system analyst or to discuss it with other managers as well. Some top level people may not impressed to see such cartoon characters or simplified drawings because they may expect something more attractive and complex while most of the top level managers will be impressed to discuss complex technical problems in a simplified drawings where none technical people also can understand.

In a rich picture we can root definitions as well. A root definition is individual view of a situation. It is always related to a character. For an example employees in a bank counter may see their main work as serving customers fast while the branch manager see his main role in the organization as maximizing the number of account holders. The marketing people of the bank may see their main role as to achieving sales targets. These are each actor’s root definitions in their own organizational environment. Now consider there is a significant level drop of saving accounts in the branch and the top management wants to find out the reason for the problem situation. In this case each actor in the counter, marketing and branch manager will give their own beliefs for the problem.

Root definitions expressed in short sentences rather using descriptive paragraphs. According to checkland, a root definition should follow CATWOE procedure.

C = customer

A = Actor

T = Transformation. Core activity of the system.

W = Weltanschauung (The underlying belief about the system)

O = Owner

E = Environment

When we apply this process to a customer support system:

Customer is the end user of the software. Actor is the IT support executive. Transformation or the core activity is to give support for the software system. The underlying belief about the system is that the system must be up and running always without errors. Owner of the system may be the IT manager. The environment is relative to the industry and standards. In this situation environment can be define as provide immediate customer support and resolve issue as soon as possible to keep the customer happy.

While the root definition is an important statement that managers can understand, but the most important thing is to eliciting the CATWOE elements from individuals. Compiling the root definition is the first stage in the system thinking strand and understanding human activity system.

Conceptual model

The root definitions represent an individual’s perspective of what the business system is trying to achieve. The next step is to propose an ideal model that is able to realize proposed perspectives. We built a conceptual model to understand what is happening in the real world situation. When drawing a conceptual model we first draw most broader view in then divide it into sub systems and analyze separately. The conceptual model has a very simple notation. A bubble to represent an activity and arrowhead line to link operations between activities. The conceptual model is known as first resolution model which gives high level activity descriptions and later divided in to second resolutions models or low level models.

Once the conceptual models and root definitions are completed, we compare it with the real world situations and propose possible solutions. This comparison could be done in many ways such as interviewing actors, documenting current activities and benchmarking, etc.

After the discrepancies have been identified, possible solutions are explored and their feasibility evaluated. These activities will have information needs, particularly for monitoring success. These are the first steps towards developing an information strategy / system for an organization.

SSM Framework

1. Problem Situation:

This is the situation before starting the studying the problem. At this stage the analyst will become a part of the problem to enable observation the system fully. In this stage analyst try to understand the key players in the organization / situation and how the current process works?

2. The problem situation expressed

In this situation the analyst express the problem situation / processes using rich pictures and any type of diagrams. There are know standard format for the diagrams, but it should be easy to understand the situation and explain it using diagrams. Generally data flow diagrams or object models are not sufficient to express the problems in soft system methodology.

3. Root Definitions

Roof definitions are different perspectives each participant / stakeholder look in to the problem situation. Each individual will have different views about the processes and problem situation. In this stage the analyst want to understand what is each stakeholders underlying belief about its purpose - basically asking "What" type of questions.

4. Conceptual Model

In conceptual model is to understand and provide conceptual answer to each root definition. Here describes "How to" type of descriptions for each root definition question. If one stakeholder has a particular perspective, then there must be a set of activities to be performed to meet the given perspective.

5. Comparison of conceptual model (step 4) with real world problem (step 2)

This is to compare the real world problem and conceptual model to identify similarities and differences. There are no standard way to do this comparison, and that is up to the analyst to decide based on his experience.

6. Identify feasible and desirable changes

In this stage, analyst identify and describe possible solutions for the problem situation. These can be organizational as well as environmental changes.

7. Recommendations

Provide recommendation on how to apply give solutions and improve the problem situation thereby. In this stage evaluating organizational capabilities and design ways to apply changes in the current system.

SSM (Soft System Methodology) is rather casual than formal. There are no hard rules to follow but the basic output is to eventually identify soft problems in to root causes then design solutions in formal methodologies.

Soft System Methodology (SSM) - Introduction

Problems that are complex and difficult to define clearly are known as soft problems. These problems are belongs to a large social environment. In this kind of situations we do not directly consider the problem itself but the nature of the problem. This kind of situation we try to understand what will be working and not and trying to understand opportunities to resolve intended problem situations.

For an example;

01. When we need to enter 200,000 customer orders throughout 1000 terminals in the country.
02. When customer complaints are increasing and customer retention is decreasing.

Above two situation, the first one is specific and we exactly know how to handle the situation or give solutions for the problem. But in the second one is unspecific, unclear and unable to define boundaries. It describes a problem with weak boundaries and unclear cause. In fact is is not describing a problem but symptoms. So, we need to understand what cause the symptoms and then only we can understand that are the problems and propose solutions.

The first problem is a hard problem and the second one is a soft problem.

Traditional system analysis is based on hard problems. These problems has clear boundaries and involved tangible factors such as staff, documents, procedures, equipments and structures. Therefore this can give a solution straight away.

But in the real business environment many problems are unclear and even hard problems becomes less relative to the cause of problems. Peter Checkland of Lancaster University developed soft system methodology (SSM) and recognized many problems occurred in an organization are affected by less tangible factors. Some of these includes culture, information interaction and attitude - that he defined as human activity system.  SSM's main purpose is to investigate, understand and identify problems in soft situations or in the human activity system. This is to address situations that cause problems rather than give a solution for the problem.

Soft System Methodology is based on system thinking. It views that problem domain in a holistic way rather than reductionist way. This means identify a system in components and their relationship to each other. Changes in one part will affect to the behaviour of other parts. Also in SSM problem domain itself is belongs to a larger system domain and changes in the problem domain will affect to the whole system as well.

Soft System Methodology is actually not a methodology because it doesn't define prescribe steps to be taken or set of rules to be follow. It suggests a framework with techniques to follow to understand the problem domain so deep study of the SSM can lead to understand hard problems causing the soft problem situation.