This paper discusses the coordinated use of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) learning cycle with additional bodies knowledge. approach furthers focused understanding and appreciation for taking action within social systems. Adapting SSM extends richness real-world situation understood from an analytic soft systems perspective to encompass a problematical using knowledge explain explore. Examples ...

A simulation project for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system design and Business Process (BP) design in an organisation usually starts with an unstructured problem situation. We have already outlined a simulation meta-methodology addressing the situation. Now, we give a detailed description of the proposed simulation meta-methodology dealing with both the hard and the soft asp...

This chapter will briefly introduce the principles of General Systems Thinking (GST) as defined by classic literature on the subject (Ackoff, 1971; Battista, 1977; Bertalanffy, 1968; Boulding, 1956; Churchman, 1968; Waelchi, 1992; Weinburg, 1975). In particular, this chapter will contrast two opposing operational research (OR) views about systems thinking; the ‘reductionistic’ (‘hard’) approach...

Due to the global competitive environment in the mobile app market, traditional problem-solving methods in examining the problem of accepting stores offering these digital products have ignored the important role of human factors and therefore this weakness necessitates research on relevant policies by governing bodies from another perspective based on a soft systems thinking approach. This pro...

This paper reports on an innovative combination of hard and soft methods—soft systems methodology (SSM) with data envelopment analysis (DEA). Problems in defining and agreeing appropriate inputs and outputs for DEA led to the use of SSM as a way or producing a comprehensive and systemic database of performance indicators. The contributions of the paper are: the use of SSM to improve DEA specifi...

This paper describes the development of a senior and a graduate level course on Systems Engineering and Design for Industrial Engineering students. Students are first taught ‘Classical Systems Engineering’ topics, and they are then exposed to Sociotechnical System Theory (SST), Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). These methodologies are treated as complementa...

This paper describes research into utilising a Group Support System (GSS) to enable the use of the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in distributed situations, which prohibit face-to-face application of SSM. The design goals, issues, major decisions, and initial pilot evaluation of a prototype GSS for SSM are described. 46 subjects and 2 facilitators participated in an experimental application to ...

Systems approaches such as Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) have influenced information systems development (see Mingers & White, 2010; Checkland, 1999; and Petkov, Edgar-Nevill et al., 2008). They have been recognized also in Software Engineering and in particular by Boehm (see Boehm, 2006; Lane et al., 2008). Following Mingers and White (2010) and Jackson (2006), we recognize that t...

Systems thinking is very much in vogue, in the public services especially (Wastell, 2011). The term embraces a plethora of specific meanings, methods and affiliated sects. Flood & Jackson (1991) provide a handy overview of 8 distinctive approaches, including Soft Systems Methodology and Systems Dynamics, as well as their own ‘Total Systems Intervention’. In this essay, I provide an overview of ...