Open University: defective maps, your own map and worked comparisons
Start with SAQ 3, then Activities 19-22. Attempt the task before opening the answer or comparing the author's map. The historical case is for practice, not current policy advice.
Systems thinking | Basic practice
Systemic systems methods practice for systems practice
Free exercises, worked examples and answers for technical dry runs of systems methods.
There are 26 free practice pages: all 13 approaches and three theory rows in the public SCiO framework, plus ten supporting areas of systemic inquiry and intervention. You do not need to complete every approach for the apprenticeship. Agree your selection and depth with your tutor.
Dry runs for learning a craft
This pack grew from repeated requests by apprentices during Benjamin P Taylor's teaching with SCiO on the level 7 Systems Thinking Practitioner apprenticeship. They wanted simple exercises, worked examples and answers so they could try out methods and check their understanding.
Systems practice is learned through application in the real world. Teaching, workshop exercises, worked examples and support with live situations all contribute to apprenticing in a craft. A dry run can help develop technical skills and reveal a misunderstanding before using a method with people. It cannot reproduce the purposes, relationships, uncertainty and consequences of that work.
Use the exercises as preparation for practice and as a way to revisit a technical point. Getting a model or answer right is useful, but it is not the purpose of systems practice or the practice itself.
Use the external exercises that genuinely help
MIT: system dynamics assignments with paired solutions
Start with the early problem sets and their solution files. Some software instructions are historical; the questions and solutions are distinct from simply playing a simulation.
Other resources often supply only part of the practice process. Each page below therefore includes its own scenario, explicit outputs, checks, a defective model to repair, a changed case and answers. See the checked resource register, including paid routes and access problems.
How to use a page
Read the case and state your assumptions. Make the requested model before opening its comparison. Use the mechanical checks where available, then repair your work and try the changed case. Keep a note of why your answer changed. For open questions, compare the reasoning rather than copying the picture.
These technical dry runs support learning a craft. They are not an end-point assessment or evidence that you have already worked effectively with people in an organisation. The coverage register shows those limits.
Choose a practice area
26 practice pages.
Foundations
Foundations | about 35 minutes
Systems concepts: make your boundary inspectable
Construct and challenge two systems-of-interest descriptions without confusing your model with the situation.
Foundations | about 40 minutes
Systems laws: test variety, feedback and local optimisation
Use a small disturbance-response model to test a claim about regulation.
Foundations | about 30 minutes
Transposing theory: move up to a pattern and back down
Test a structural analogy rather than importing a solution because two situations sound alike.
Core methods
Core methods | about 60 minutes
Soft Systems Methodology: build a model that follows its purpose
Move from a messy situation through purposeful perspectives to a logically defensible activity model and comparison.
Core methods | about 55 minutes
System Dynamics: build, calculate and challenge a queue model
Distinguish causal-loop reasoning from an executable stock-flow model and verify a small model by hand.
Core methods | about 60 minutes
Viable System Model: diagnose functions and channels
Choose a recursion, identify operational units, and test management functions without turning the VSM into an organisation chart.
Core methods | about 60 minutes
Critical Systems Heuristics: inspect all twelve boundary categories
Build an is/ought boundary critique and show how a change in boundary alters a judgement.
Core methods | about 45 minutes
Confrontation Analysis: separate positions, options and credibility
Build a small options table and identify what would make a joint commitment credible.
Core methods | about 45 minutes
INFORMED Group Dynamics: investigate the distinctions behind a decision
Elicit contrasting meanings, make a small reflective map, and revise an inference about another person's position.
Core methods | about 50 minutes
Interactive Management: construct a small interpretive structural model
Use a precise relation, a small adjacency matrix and transitive reasoning to structure a set of enabling conditions.
Core methods | about 50 minutes
Interactive planning: design the service you would choose now
Distinguish an idealised design from a forecast, then work back to feasible changes and learning.
Core methods | about 45 minutes
Mosaic transformation and bubble strategy: sequence changes you can sustain
Test a change sequence against available capacity, released capacity, dependencies and a protected experiment's interfaces.
Core methods | about 50 minutes
Multi-methodology: justify the move from one method to another
Design a short inquiry in which each method answers a different question and its output is translated carefully into the next.
Core methods | about 45 minutes
Patterns of Strategy: model dependence, fit and timing
Analyse a strategic relationship and test a proposed move against relative dependence and response time.
Core methods | about 50 minutes
Socio-Technical Systems: redesign the work and technology together
Find where variation is handled and design a jointly workable social and technical arrangement.
Core methods | about 45 minutes
Syntegration: test the communication structure before the event
Understand overlapping participation and repeated cross-topic learning through a small structural rehearsal.
Systemic intervention
Systemic intervention | about 40 minutes
SODA: build a means-ends map without erasing disagreement
Turn supplied statements into contrasting constructs and a traceable means-ends map.
Systemic intervention | about 40 minutes
Fractal Enterprise Model: alternate processes and the assets they depend on
Build a small process-asset model and identify a neglected asset-management dependency.
Systemic intervention | about 50 minutes
Critical social learning: build a learning relationship across boundaries
Design a small collective inquiry that can change both action and the assumptions behind it.
Systemic intervention | about 40 minutes
Service systems: follow demand and distinguish activity from resolution
Classify a small demand sample, trace end-to-end work, and design a prediction-led test.
Systemic intervention | about 40 minutes
Participative inquiry: test who your evidence leaves out
Build an engagement and evidence plan that does not confuse influence with the right to be heard.
Systemic intervention | about 45 minutes
Futures and probes: test robustness without pretending to predict
Compare options across explicit scenarios, then design more than one bounded learning probe.
Systemic intervention | about 40 minutes
Ethics and power: make an intervention's authority and effects explicit
Distinguish permission, participation and legitimacy, then design a reversible intervention with an accessible challenge route.
Systemic intervention | about 40 minutes
Evaluation and reflexivity: test the claim you are tempted to make
Distinguish a measured change from a causal claim and use evaluation to revise both intervention and framing.
Systemic intervention | about 30 minutes
Systemic constellations: use a spatial representation as a hypothesis
Explore a fictional organisational relationship with objects, then test what the representation does and does not establish.
Systemic intervention | about 35 minutes
Systemic conversations: expose inference and repair a broken commitment
Separate data from inference and turn an ambiguous request into a discussable commitment.
For a tutor or practice partner
Ask to see the first model, the revision and the reason for the change. Check for purpose drift, missing boundaries, invented evidence and incorrect notation. Do not turn a worked comparison into the only permitted answer.
Tutor and learner guidance · All task sheets without answers · All worked comparisons · Standards mapping
Reference this resource
Taylor, B. P. (2026). Systemic systems methods practice for systems practice. Alpha version. The Necessary Tangle.
Canonical online edition. Original exercises were prepared with AI assistance. Technical and website tests do not amount to independent review of the teaching material.