Soft Systems Methodology

Historical Development: The Three Versions

The first version of SSM is called the seven-step model, developed in the early 1980s. Checkland felt that this model was simple to understand, made it easy to teach the process and helped in its early usage. The seven steps, briefly, are as follows:

• 1.
  Experience a situation in everyday life that is considered problematic.
• 2.
  Express the problem situation (often using ‘rich pictures').
• 3.
  Develop a root definition of relevant purposeful activity systems that could help improve the problem situation.
• 4.
  Develop conceptual models of the (purposeful activity) systems identified through the root definitions.
• 5.
  Compare models developed to the real-world situations expressed earlier.
• 6.
  Consider feasible and desirable changes as a result of the comparison.
• 7.
  Take action to improve the problem situation.

Activities 3 and 4 were expected to be carried out during systems thinking about the real world, whereas the other activities were expected to be carried out in the real world. This delineation of the ‘real’ and ‘systems-thinking’ worlds was not carried forward to the later versions of SSM.

Checkland urges the use of the word problematical instead of problem when a situation being investigated is messy and needs a systemic inquiry process to learn more about it. The term purposeful action or activity is used to describe deliberate actions that human beings decide willingly to take in response to their own experience of the world.

As SSM started being used by practitioners, it was felt that reading situations culturally and politically was also important. In the second version of SSM, which has been explained in a book by Checkland and Jim Scholes, two streams of analysis were suggested: (1) a logical stream and (2) a cultural stream. While the logical stream resembled the analysis carried out in the seven-step version, the social and political systems were added to consider the ‘roles', ‘norms' and ‘values' that influence the behaviour of the people involved. The political stream considered the issue of power that affected decision-making. In the second version, Checkland also advised identifying ‘clients', who caused the intervention to happen; ‘practitioners', who carried out the SSM intervention, and ‘issue owners', who took ownership of the issues addressed, as sometimes more than one role could be taken up by the same party.

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