Peter Checkland Peter Checkland (1930- ) is emeritus professor of systems at Lancaster University and a noted systems thinker. Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) evolved as a response to the models developed by earlier systems thinkers such as von Bertalanffy and Beer. These theorists had used biological systems and engineering/cybernetics as a way of trying to model human-activity systems. Checkland recognised that such human activity systems are too ‘messy’ to be modelled in this simple fashion: a key feature of messes and difficult policy issues is that there are valid different perspectives on the issue or situation, which interpret information quite differently. Chapman 2002 Checkland’s own experience as a consultant to the British Aircraft Corporation’s Concorde project showed the problem with what he termed ‘hard systems’ approaches: thinking like a systems engineer at the time (What is the system?

What are its objectives?) he failed ‘to think of it as anything other than an engineering project’. The project was running late and was over-budget and thus failing against its originally stated objectives. Travel Management System Project In Java Free. However, there was a larger, political set of objectives at work which were more concerned with demonstrating British sincerity towards Anglo-French joint ventures than delivering the first supersonic passenger airliner. This was at a time when the UK was applying for membership of the European Community in the face of the then French President De Gaulle’s veto (Ramage and Shipp 2009 p150). This experience led Checkland to realise that there would always be a number of models and worldviews (he used the German term Weltanschauungen) in play when studying a system which described the multiple views of reality as perceived by the various participants within that system. In fact, a better version of systems thinking needed to be developed which could incorporate the greater degrees of complexity Checkland recognised in larger, human activity systems.

Soft systems methodology. The methodology was developed from earlier systems engineering approaches, primarily by Peter Checkland and colleagues such as. Soft Systems methodology was developed by Peter Checkland. In an attempt to research this area and deal with these SOFT problems. His 'Soft Systems Methodology.