Reflecting on the Use of SSM within Humberside TEC

Abstract

This paper reports on and examines work involving the use of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) within Humberside Training and Enterprise Council (TEC). The basic remit of the TEC is to foster economic growth and contribute to the regeneration of the local community it serves. This is to be achieved through strengthening the local’ skill-base’ and assisting enterprises to expand and compete effectively. In practice, these objectives translate into a central activity of contracting; i.e. a process of developing formal agreements between the TEC and a variety of local training suppliers. The project addressed by this paper sought to inquire into, and develop actions to improve, this process of formulating contracts. As well as a brief description of the project, the paper includes feedback from participants relating to perceived strengths and weaknesses of the methodology. Strengths were seen to be the participative and accessible nature of rich pictures together with the overall discipline and action orientation of the methodology. Weaknesses were found with the technical accessibility of human activity system modelling and the feasibility of enacting a learning cycle over time within the TEC’s normal working practices. The paper goes on to discuss implications of the project for future practice by using the notion of sustainability as a guiding focus. Sustainability is taken as being a measure of the methodology’s ability to support and maintain a learning process over a long period of time.