Navigating Complex Systems: A Review of Systems Practice Frameworks

Systems engineering methodologies are complex and interconnected, reflecting various philosophies and problem‐solving approaches. Practitioners often question their suitability for all contexts, especially complex adaptive systems. This has led to the need for meta‐methodologies to help select appropriate methodologies. Michael C. Jackson's “Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioners Guide” introduces a more pluralistic approach, exploring different systemic perspectives to inform the selection and combination of methodologies, replacing the term “Meta‐methodology” with the term “Practice” to imply Critical Systems Practice (CSP). Taking the lead from this, this paper reviews a set of similarly constructed publications, termed Systems Practice Frameworks (SPF), that all seek to aid the reader in characterizing their unique problem and proposing pointers to tools, techniques, heuristics or methodologies. It compares and contrasts these approaches to assess their suitability, guides readers in selecting suitable approaches to address complex challenges and identifies recommendations for improving SPFs. It concludes that SPFs are increasingly pivotal in helping Systems Engineers face their unique, complex challenges. CSP is identified as the most useful SPF, but the other SPFs indicate improvements that can be made, such as simplifying the advice and pointing towards a more comprehensible and accessible range of practices.