ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM) and contrasted it with Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). SSADM is a process for analysing such things as manufacturing processes and software designs and, although effective in those areas, cannot be applied very easily in the much less well-defined areas of organizational problems. In the West, systems thinking made something of an appearance in 1917, when the Russian Alexander Bogdanov published his ideas about tectology', saying that complex objects could only be understood by looking at the way in which they organized themselves. Hysteresis can cause health problems in our water heating system, as another of its effects is to create time delays between the input and the output, which can have a dramatic effect on how the system operates. The choice of Weltanschauung is therefore extremely important when following SSM, because it has a profound effect on what insights the process gives.
