Soft Systems Methodology*

Abstract

One of the intellectual legacies of the 50s and 60s was the approach to tackling real-world problems embodied in such methodologies as Systems Engineering and RAND Corporation Systems Analysis. Such methodology entails a search for the best means to achieve an end defined as desirable. In a programme of collaborative research undertaken in real problem situations, such an approach was found inadequate when faced with obscure objectives and multiple legitimate viewpoints. The alternative which emerged, Soft Systems Methodology, SSM, uses models of purposeful activity systems to set up a debate about change and learns its way to changes which would be both (systematically) desirable and (culturally) feasible. The shift from a paradigm of optimizing to one of learning marks the new systems thinking of the 70s and 80s the emergence and nature of SSM as described.