Soft systems methodology (SSM) is an organised way of thinking and it can be used to tackle general problematic situations that arise in the real world and in the management of change by using action. Developed in England by academics at the Lancaster Systems Department, by utilising a ten-year action research programme. Overview The Soft Systems Methodology was developed primarily by Peter Checkland, through 10 years of research with his colleagues, such as Brian Wilson. The method was derived from numerous earlier systems engineering processes, primarily from the fact traditional ‘hard’ systems thinking was not able to account for larger organisational issues, with many complex relationships. SSM has a primary use in the analysis of these complex situations, where there are divergent views about the definition of the problem. These complex situations are known as “soft problems”, it is usually a real world problem where the goals and purposes of the problem are problematic themselves. Examples of “soft problems” are things like: How to improve the delivery of health services? How to manage homelessness with young people? “Soft approaches” are an assumption that people’s view of the world will change all the time and their preferences of it will also change. Depending on the current circumstances of a situation, trying to agree on the problem may be difficult as there might be multiple factors to take into consideration, such as all the different kinds of methods used to tackle these problems. Additionally, Peter Checkland had moved away from the idea of ‘obvious’ problems and started working with situations to make concepts of models to use them as a source of questions to help with the problem, soft systems methodologies then started emerging to be an organised learning system. Purposeful activity models could be declared using worldviews meaning they were never models of real-world action. Still, those relevant to disclosure and argument about real-world action led to them being called epistemological devices that could be used for discourse and debate. The distinction between the everyday world and systems thinking was to draw attention to the conscious use of systems language in developing intellectual devices which were used to structure debates or an exploration of the problem situation being addressed. In its 'classic' form the methodology consists of seven steps, with initial appreciation of the problem situation leading to the modelling of several human activity systems that might be thought relevant to