The What of Systemic Thinking

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Topics in Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality book series (TSRQ, volume 26)

Abstract

The main focus of the what question of systemic thinking is on attributes of the problem that we are trying to gain increased understanding of. Given that a mess is a system of problems as we describe it in Chap.  2, we take the occasion in this chapter to dissect a given problem and the structured decision analysis and associated concerns that may be employed to gain further insight regarding its parent mess. While it is beneficial to have undergone stakeholder analysis prior to proceeding with this chapter, it is not necessary. The problem analysis phase focuses on decomposition of a problem in a manner that allows for identification of outcomes, their derivative outputs, the outputs’ goals, and the relative importance of these outputs in determining goal attainment and the relative importance of outcomes in achieving problem understanding. This chapter first discusses the basics of decision analysis. We then discuss the anatomy of a problem. Finally, a framework for addressing the what question is presented and this framework is demonstrated on a realistic problem.

Keywords

Group Decision Systemic Thinking Aspiration Level Subject Matter Expert Satisfactory Housing 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Engineering Management and Systems EngineeringOld Dominion UniversityNorfolkUSA
  2. 2.Department of Information Technology and Computer ScienceUniversity of Maryland University CollegeAdelphiUSA

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