Transcript
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In drawing a systems map you need to choose what to focus upon. This represents your first ‘boundary judgement’. I’ve chosen to look at the South African Working for Water Programme as our main bounded system of interest.
I could have chosen to focus down or up a level from the programme. For example, to focus down a level, suppose that I identify two sub-systems; one that focuses on the projects and the other on the co-ordinating structures necessary to implement the programme, such as the steering committee, an executive council, a government liaison officer and so on.
Looking at this initial system, you could choose to focus down on the geographic project areas. This could be sub-divided into more than 240 individual projects associated with the programme! It might then be useful to focus on one particular project as your system of interest. This will trigger thoughts on what component parts are relevant to your enquiry. You might wish to go down a further level to explore who the stakeholders are. A systems map is a particularly useful device for making a first pass at stakeholder analysis. It prompts important questions, such as which groups of stakeholders are actually involved with the programme? Which might be relevant but not actually involved in the programme design and implementation and therefore are placed in the environment?
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Alternatively, it might be more useful to focus up at a higher level of analysis, to which WWP might contribute. For example, the programme might be considered as a constituent part of a system of interest drawn at national level, such as the ‘South African national water strategy’.
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However, you could choose to focus on WWP as a component part of an even wider international system of interest centred on water conflicts. Using the limited information available from the case study summary, I had decided to focus on WWP as my primary system of interest, so let’s return to our original system boundary.
How do I identify relevant component parts to this system of interest? It’s possible to immediately identify key general component parts that appear obvious. However, there are two more thoughtful and considered approaches.
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One is to first brainstorm everything that come to mind as being relevant to the system of interest. This can be done on separate pieces of scrap paper or on a collection of small sticky labels. It might then be possible to work on grouping related factors together. Things affected by the programme or which have an effect on it, but aren’t component parts, ought to be put in the environment. Returning to the main system of interest, I can then construct sub-systems and possibly further sub-sub-systems.
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A second approach to identifying relevant factors is by asking particular questions of the main system of interest, which in turn prompts answers that identify relevant factors. For example, questioning the sources of motivation, control and expert support associated with the programme.
Very often people use a mixture of the two approaches. In constructing my systems map, I mainly used the second approach of asking key questions relevant to the programme. For example, in drawing the boundary around WWP, the first question I asked is who and/or what is it serving? In other words, what is its purpose or source of motivation?
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To answer this I listed down a number of possible stakeholder groups being served by the WWP and a number of goals or targets associated with it. Clearly there’s overlap between many of these components (for example between ‘low unemployed’ and ‘unemployed black South Africans’). To distinguish the components more clearly, I grouped them into two subsystems, one named ‘intended beneficiaries’ and one named ‘measures of success’.
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Having addressed important key issues of purpose, there remained questions regarding who the key actors are in securing the success of WWP? What types of action are helping secure success?
To answer these questions, I identified two more sub-systems relating to control and expertise:
Firstly, a group of key agencies or decision-makers in command of resources necessary for the programme’s success, such as; human, social, financial and infrastructural.
Secondly, a sub-system of expert practices or ‘know-how’, being promoted to help provide some guarantee of success.
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In each of the two sub-systems a number of key components were identified. You can perhaps think of other components that should be included.
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Finally, I began to question factors I’d identified in the environment, which may affect or be affected by the programme, but are essentially outside its immediate sphere of action. These could have a significant impact on whether the programme is a success or failure. Are there other factors you think might be relevant but are not component to WWP?
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Reviewing the map later, I decided to remove ‘projects’ from the ‘measures of success’ sub-system as I thought that their number was more of an indicator, which didn’t actually measure the transformative nature of the programme.
Similarly, I removed ‘skills training’ and ‘land-use’ from the ‘know-how’ sub-system as they could come under ‘intersectoral practice’ and ‘interdisciplinary expertise’.
I also felt it necessary to include ‘land-owners’ as a possibly important constituent of ‘decision making’ as these are people in command of resources, though not necessarily the water itself, which enable the programme to succeed.
Finally, for ease of reference, I decided to group local and national South African government agencies together in the ‘decision making’ sub-system. Whilst this reduces the congestion of factors in the map, it might inadvertently lead to misinterpreting local and national government decision making as being the same thing!
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Your own system maps for the WWP might be very different from mine. What differences, doubts, or questions occurred to you as the map developed? Remember, there is no right answer to systems mapping. In using systems mapping you are primarily engaged with the skill of making and defending boundary judgements.
Summary
Choose an appropriate level of interest to focus on and name your system of interest (SoI).
Draw a large central blob entitled with the name of your SoI.
Identify a number of sub-system components key to the success of your chosen SoI and represent them as labelled blobs within the main SoI.
Explore how some components might be grouped together into larger subsystems or alternatively further divided into sub-sub-systems.
Think of elements outside the SoI that may have an impact on the SoI and/or be affected by the SoI, and present these as environmental elements to your SoI.