‘Quality Control’ of Model Development for Successful Systems Intervention

Team 1 continued the dialogue of recent years between systems scientists and systems engineers from IFSR member organizations, notably from the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and the International Society for Systems Sciences (ISSS). The 2012 IFSR Conversation in Linz had led to the development of the Systems Praxis Framework, relating the terms ‘systems science’, ‘systems thinking’, and ‘systems approaches to practice’ in a common map. This loose framework was intended to allow systems researchers and practitioners to recognize and appreciate their complementary roles in the process of systems praxis without overly constraining the meanings of those terms. A November 2013 ‘Mini-Conversation’ in Cómpeta, Spain had explored implications for systems intervention in general if ‘wicked’ or ‘messy’ problems were taken to be the default case rather than the exception. This led to an initial effort to situate systems engineering (SE) within a general view of understanding-intervening-reflecting cycles in systems intervention.
Our 2014 topic provided a focus on concrete challenges of SE which was also relatable to a very broad range of issues from systems science, systems technology, systems arts and culture, and systems philosophy. At the end of four days we had started development of a broadly flexible new scoping diagram that could provide suggestions for ‘quality checks’ on modeling activities throughout a systems intervention. That figure placed the traditional SE ‘Vee’ model in a context of the other activities that must literally ‘co-operate’ if a systems intervention is to be successful, though these activities are too often left implicit and underappreciated. Following the Conversation, team members have continued developing this figure, its foundations, and its implications through weekly telecons.