Systemic intervention | about 45 minutes | free
Compare options across explicit scenarios, then design more than one bounded learning probe.
A bridge to apprenticeship duties 8-10. Scenario analysis, sensitivity testing and safe-to-fail probes are distinct activities; none is a guarantee about the future.
This is original learning material, not a reproduced official course. Mechanical checks have determinate answers within the stated case. Worked comparisons for open judgements show defensible reasoning, not the only possible model. Specialist pedagogical review is not recorded.
Fictional case: an advice service is choosing capacity arrangements. Scenarios are low demand at 80 cases/week and high demand at 140. Option A has fixed capacity 100; option B has fixed capacity 120; option C has baseline 90 and can add 60, but only after two weeks. Costs and case complexity are not supplied. Separately, the service does not know whether residents avoid appointments because of timing, lack of trust or confusing letters. No one can safely be denied essential support for an experiment.
Use paper, your own drawing tool or the notes below. Attempt each step before opening its comparison. Describe a diagram in words when that is more accessible.
Produce: A two-by-three table, treating C's delay explicitly.
At demand 80, all options cover demand initially: spare capacity A=20, B=40, C=10. At demand 140, initial shortfalls are A=40, B=20 and C=50 cases/week. After its extra capacity becomes effective, C reaches 150 and has spare capacity 10. This is a capacity comparison, not a queue forecast or cost-effectiveness ranking.
Produce: Three missing assumptions and a robustness judgement.
Ask about duration of demand, mobilisation reliability, costs, case mix, backlog, staff welfare and acceptable waiting. C may cope with sustained high demand but expose people during the delay. B has a smaller initial gap but cannot fully meet the high case. No option is 'best' without purpose, constraints and evaluation criteria.
Produce: Two small interventions with distinct hypotheses.
Probe 1 offers a choice of appointment times to a consenting small group, testing timing constraints. Probe 2 offers an optional introduction from a trusted community contact, testing a relationship hypothesis. Preserve normal support for everyone. A clearer letter could be a third probe; avoid bundling every change so that nothing can be learned about the alternatives.
Produce: A named observer, review point and stop/adapt rules.
Review take-up, missed contact, participant experience and staff burden at an agreed short interval. Stop or alter a probe if people feel pressured, essential support is delayed or workload becomes unsafe. Expand only when evidence and context justify it, while continuing to look for harms and differences between groups.
These checks test the supplied case, not your overall competence. Open answers and model variants still need your judgement.
The plan chooses the highest eventual capacity, ignores mobilisation delay and calls a compulsory service withdrawal an experiment.
Model the transition as well as the eventual state. Preserve essential support, establish consent and safeguards, and test competing explanations with bounded actions. Unknowns do not justify avoidable harm.
Extra capacity now takes six weeks, while high demand is expected to last four. How does that affect C?
The additional capacity would arrive after the expected surge. C's nominal peak capacity becomes less relevant to this scenario. Reconsider earlier mobilisation, another arrangement or a different hypothesis about demand; do not silently retain the original recommendation.
A different model can be defensible when its purpose, assumptions and reasoning are explicit. A contradiction, incorrect unit, invented fact or unacknowledged change of purpose needs repair. Keep both your first attempt and revision.
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The complete original case above is free. Links below distinguish exercises from explanations, recordings, software and paid study. Reading a page or drawing in a tool is not itself a model check.
Check whether your probes test distinct coherent possibilities and whether you have designed sensing and a response to harm.
Author's discussion of parallel probes, coherence, amplification and dampening inspected. This is guidance, not a complete self-marking exercise.
Select the named tool, try the associated template and compare with the example. Use the pack's explicit checks where the toolkit provides no answer key.
HTML toolkit inspected, including mapping, stock-flow, theory of change and evaluation sections. Its examples are not automatic validation of a learner's model.
Ask for practice with feedback in the named approach, rather than assuming every recording includes assessment.
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