Soft systems methodology: An illustrative study

The opening chapter presented soft systems methodology as an approach to managing information. This section of the book introduces the methodology. In essence, the whole book expands soft systems methodology, and this chapter gives a first view of it. This means that the reader can get a general understanding of it before journeying into the detail that the rest of the book provides. Throughout the book a version of the methodology is followed which is the most commonly known. This is the version of the methodology seen as a seven-stage model, as is shown in figure 2.1, below. This version is merely a metaphor to describe a complex set of actions which is called soft systems methodology. That metaphor is an ideal type in that it is not the way any real world use of the methodology is likely to look, but rather it is a model to provide guidelines for action. This distinction between the methodology in principle and the methodology in practice is discussed throughout this book, but most fully in chapter 7.