Successful for whom?
Our booking service is performing better: it allocated 120 appointments instead of 100.
The case
A fictional advice service has increased appointment allocations. It has no comparable record of completed advice, abandoned bookings, repeat contacts, or people who could not use the booking form. The manager asks whether to move another adviser onto booking administration.
Try it before reading on
Write two possible purposes for the service. For each, specify who is inside your evidence boundary and one observation that would make the staffing proposal look worse.
Use paper or your own notes. Keep the first answer as well as any revision.
Compare your reasoning
Allocating appointments and resolving people's problems are different purposes. The allocation count supports a claim about recorded output. It does not establish access or resolution. Ask what happens between an allocated appointment and useful advice, and who cannot obtain an appointment at all. Compare a small staffing change with completed advice, repeat contacts, and the work displaced onto other organisations. Do not subtract unlinked counts as though every record described a different person.
When could the claim be defensible?
If booked appointments reliably led to timely resolution, excluded demand was measured, and administration was the actual bottleneck, improving allocation could be useful. Critiquing a measure does not establish that it is useless.
Change the conditions
The service now measures completed advice, but only for people who attend. Name the remaining exclusion and a proportionate way to investigate it.
Compare the changed case
People deterred by the booking process or unable to attend are still missing. Offer an accessible route to hear from non-attenders and people supported elsewhere. Do not infer their experiences from those who completed the service.
Follow the specific connection
Systems concepts: make your boundary inspectable
A first rehearsal of boundaries, relationships, perspectives, feedback and emergence. It is not a complete treatment of systems philosophy or complexity science.
Critical Systems Heuristics: inspect all twelve boundary categories
This exercise checks the completeness and consistency of boundary reasoning. It does not supply a morally unique answer or pretend that the practitioner represents every affected person.
Source routes and reading limits
The methodological route below uses the existing practice pack's checked resource descriptions. This release does not claim fresh reading of the external works.
OU: drawing systems maps, SAQ 3 and Activities 19-22
Attempt SAQ 3 before opening its answer. Draw your own map for Activities 19-22, then compare the author's choices. Different justified boundaries need not match the example.
Existing check: Tasks, defective maps, answer text and worked revisions inspected. Historic Child Support Agency case, not current policy guidance.
OU: systems maps, updated tutorial
Check containment and boundaries. An OU systems map is not a causal-loop diagram; do not add untyped causal arrows to it.
Existing check: Updated 2021 tutorial page and diagram conventions inspected; playback not independently tested.
OU: systems diagramming
Use the text conventions and printable activities. Use the newer systems-map tutorial below instead of the Flash element.
Existing check: Course content inspected. An old Flash activity is unavailable; do not depend on it.
Werner Ulrich: a mini-primer of critical systems heuristics
Use the twelve categories to challenge your is/ought table and your treatment of affected people. Follow the linked primer for depth.
Existing check: Author's HTML guide and linked introduction inspected. It supplies boundary critique, not a unique correct policy answer.
OU repository: evaluation using critical systems heuristics
Study the operational use of CSH in evaluation and compare its boundary judgements with your own. No automated marking.
Existing check: Repository abstract and download listing inspected; the accepted manuscript is linked there.
Take one revision away
Write the claim you can now support, the assumption you changed, and the observation or decision still needed. Do not turn the worked comparison into a compulsory answer where the question admits alternatives.
Choose another claim · Print all task sheets · Download the cases and route record