Questions prompted by the Formal Systems Model
The Formal Systems Model suggests and supports the following analytic questions [1]: What is the continuous purpose or mission of the system? What is the system supposed to do? Who …
Course: Systems Thinking and Complexity
The Formal Systems Model
The diagram above, which you first saw in Week 1, shows a generalizable model of a robust system capable of purposeful activity without failure. It is called the Formal Systems …
Conclusion to Week 1
At the end of Week 1 you have been introduced to some of the basic ideas of systems thinking and some of the techniques for drawing systems diagrams. These include: …
Identifying system failure
Our multiple cause diagram is given above. It shows the obvious causes for people waiting in the corridor, namely too many people being admitted to the hospital but there being …
Analysing system failure
Exercise Analysing failure with multiple cause diagrams Imagine that as the manager of a hospital you have the problem that patients are spending an unacceptable time on trolleys in a …
Sketching a hospital system
The previous step set the exercise of drawing a system map and influence diagram for a hospital system. Our diagrams are given below: In this system map the components inside …
Drawing systems diagrams
Exercise Imagine you are the CEO of a hospital with an A&E (Accident & Emergency) department. For this exercise suppose you have the problem that newly admitted accident and emergency …
The bed blocking problem
Hospitals and Sheltered Housing in the Bed-Blocking System Over the past few years, it has become common in the UK for elderly patients to remain in hospitals after their clinical …
System dynamics
System dynamics, developed by J. W. Forrester in the 1960s, goes far beyond diagrams to analyse the behaviour of complex systems using qualitative and quantitative methods to model the dynamics …
Influence diagrams
An influence diagram represents the main structural feature of a system and the important influences that exist between them. It presents an overview of areas of activity, organisation and other …
Multiple cause diagrams
Multiple cause diagrams are used to explore why changes or events happen in systems. They do not predict behaviour, but may give insights into the multiple causes of system behaviour …
Sign graphs
Sign diagrams are used to represent relationships between variables. The go beyond the qualitative towards the quantitative. They are useful for investigating the likely effects of changes and interventions in …
Systems maps
A system map shows the components and boundary of a system and the components of the environment at a point in time. A system map is effectively a list of …
Towards the Formal Systems Model
The image above is an illustration of the Formal Systems Model. We will work towards defining this model in the rest of the steps this week. Building a Formal Systems …
How systems can spiral out of control
There is another kind of feedback loop that can make systems spiral out of control. The example above shows one of increasing frustration for patients and increasing pressure on doctors. …