1. Public Services Information Management
7. Soft Systems Methodology

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

3. Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis

4. Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis
Software and Systems Development life Cycle

5. 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

6. Public Services Information Management 7: Soft Systems Analysis

7. 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)

8. 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’ 

9. 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.

10. 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)

11. 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.

12. Public Services Information Management
comp_ss.doc