ABSTRACT
The common element of all these is that they seek first to identify the purpose of the system to be developed – to answer the question: ‘What is this Bridge/Boat/Olympic Games/ Organisation a system to do?’ at the highest possible level. Possibly the best example of this was an incoming chief executive of a commercial TV station asking the question of his entire workforce. The answers he got varied according to the various roles performed in different departments – ‘to entertain, to inform, to produce programmes, to sell advertising’. No, he said. ‘All of these are activities we must do well, but they are not the overall unifying purpose. We are a system to create tailored audiences for our advertisers. Everything we do is a subsystem of that overall system.
