converge on one solution or answer. Divergent problems are those for which different answers appear to increasingly contradict each other all the more they are elaborated, requiring a different approach involving faculties of a higher order like love and empathy. Wicked problems in software development In 1990, DeGrace and Stahl introduced the concept of wicked problems to software development. In the last decade, other computer scientists have pointed out that software development shares many properties with other design practices (particularly that people-, process-, and technology-problems have to be considered equally), and have incorporated Rittel's concepts into their software design methodologies. The design and integration of complex software-defined services that use the Web (web services) can be construed as an evolution from previous models of software design, and therefore becomes a wicked problem also. Super wicked problems Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld and Steven Bernstein introduced the distinction between "wicked problems" and "super wicked problems" in a 2007 conference paper, which was followed by a 2012 journal article in Policy Sciences. In their discussion of global climate change, they define super wicked problems as having the following additional characteristics: There is a significant time deadline on finding the solution There is no central authority dedicated to finding a solution Those seeking to solve the problem are also causing it Certain policies irrationally impede future progress While the items that define a wicked problem relate to the problem itself, the items that define a super wicked problem relate to the agent trying to solve it. Global warming as a super wicked problem, and the need to intervene to tend to our longer term interests has also been taken up by others, including Richard Lazarus. See also :Category:Problem structuring methods Collaborative information seeking Collective action problem Competing harms Complex question Drama theory Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential Hard problem of consciousness Hyperobject Ludic fallacy Morphological analysis Nonlinear system Post-normal science Problem solving Small Is Beautiful Social issue Societal collapse Soft systems methodology Structured systems analysis and design method Systems theory References Notes Bibliography . Further reading Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2, (Spring, 1992), pp. 5–21: http://web.mit.edu/jrankin/www/engin_as_lib_art/Design_thinking.pdf Brown, Valerie A. and Harris, John A. and Russell, Jacqueline Y; "Tackling wicked problems : through the transdisciplinary imagination" Edited by Valerie A. Brown, John A. Harris and Jacqueline Y. Russell Earthscan, London ; Washington,