Release 0.28 · Original practice · 4 October 2026
Eight task sheets
Task-only version. Cases are fictional. Use the linked pages after attempting the questions to see worked comparisons, counterexamples, and sources.
Our booking service is performing better: it allocated 120 appointments instead of 100.
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.
Your task
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.
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.
We closed 80 cases this month, so the backlog must have fallen by 80.
A fictional team begins with 200 open cases. During the month, 70 new cases arrive, 80 are closed, and 20 previously closed cases reopen. All counts refer to the same boundary and period; reopened cases are additional to new arrivals.
Your task
Calculate the closing backlog. Then write one claim the calculation supports and one causal claim it cannot support.
Change the conditions
Twenty cases are transferred to another team and removed from this backlog. Calculate the local total and state what is still unknown.
We need a separate procedure for every kind of request: requisite variety demands it.
A fictional housing service receives requests in six categories. Two categories require an urgent authorised response. Three can begin with the same investigation, which subsequently distinguishes their causes. The remaining category belongs to another service. A proposed form offers six buttons but every choice reaches the same untrained queue.
Your task
Separate distinctions in a form from effective responses. Identify what must be known at first contact and what can safely be distinguished later.
Change the conditions
The urgent team has expertise but cannot authorise the necessary action. Which part of the supposed response capability is missing?
The chief executive is System 5, so we have found the organisation's policy function.
Three fictional advice centres make local case decisions. A rota forum resolves shared interpreter conflicts. A finance group negotiates shared resources. A research group examines changing demand. The chief executive chairs some meetings but has delegated several decisions to a partnership board.
Your task
Choose the organisation being diagnosed. Identify evidence of coordination, resource negotiation, future inquiry, and policy decisions without assigning each person one permanent number.
Change the conditions
Each centre is an independently governed charity. What must be reconsidered before drawing one common metasystem?
The workshop was representative because every stakeholder group received an invitation.
A fictional transport consultation invites operators, passengers, and a disability group. The disability group declines the evening workshop. The savings target and available options are fixed before anyone arrives. Participants may comment on presentation but cannot challenge the criteria.
Your task
Distinguish invitation, attendance, evidence, and decision authority. Identify one change that would allow an affected group to challenge the terms of the inquiry.
Change the conditions
The group submits evidence through its own representative but cannot attend. What would count as a substantive response?
We used four systems methods, so the recommendation has four times the support.
A fictional improvement team makes a rich picture, a purposeful activity model, a stock-flow model, and a boundary critique. It then treats every arrow as a causal link and merges them into a master diagram. People who disagree with the preferred purpose disappear from the summary.
Your task
Select two methods. Write the distinct question each addresses, the output passed between them, and an assumption that must be tested at the transition.
Change the conditions
The causal model predicts improvement, but the participation work reveals that a group bears the cost. Which result cancels the other?
Average waiting time fell to ten days, proving that the pilot worked.
A fictional pilot reports ten days' mean wait for eighty completed cases. Twenty cases transferred elsewhere have a mean wait of fifty days, measured on the same basis. The report excludes them. There is no comparable baseline covering both groups.
Your task
Calculate the combined mean. State what this correction does and does not tell you about the pilot.
Change the conditions
Transferred cases include time before transfer; the ten-day measure starts after triage. Can you still combine them?
Everybody recognised the feedback loop, so it must explain the problem.
A fictional library team draws a loop: less assistance leads to incomplete applications, which lead to repeat visits, which consume assistance time. Staff recognise the story. No repeat-visit data have been collected. A software failure and a change in eligibility rules occurred during the same period.
Your task
Turn the loop into a bounded hypothesis. Specify one observation that would challenge it and one competing explanation worth investigating.
Change the conditions
Your new reporting makes staff record repeat visits more carefully. Recorded repeats rise. What belongs in the observer note?