Basic steps to construct a rich picture

The following are the basic steps of drawing a rich picture in Soft Systems Methodology:

1. Formulate a problem theme
2. In a piece of paper:
• Action 1: draw the main stakeholders and clearly label them
• Action 2: Relate the stakeholders in terms of organization charts or different forms of grouping (ie a form of intangible structure) and relate stakeholders to tangible structures (e.g. buildings, equipments)
• Action 3: Relate the stakeholders and tangible structures to various processes, e.g. communication processes, workflow processes, and business processes, etc.
• Action 4: Note the main concerns of various stakeholder and use the "eye" symbols to indicate direction of attention of stakeholder
• Action 5: Note main conflicts between stakeholders with the symbols of "swords"

Also refer to the following diagram:

Things to note:

• Feel free to use different colours to make your rich picture easy to understand.
• Involve the stakeholders to draw the rich picture or do sufficient literature review so as to enable you to draw an informed rich picture.
• Use the language of the stakeholders in the rich picture and avoid technical jargons that skakeholders do not understand.
• Try to highlight concerns and conflicts to depict a problem situation with soft complexity; do not spare efforts on highlighting solutions in the rich picture diagram.

Some related lecture notes:
Note 1:

Note 2:



References

FB notes: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150261845082090.378645.713727089&type=1

Also see two articles with an example (JKKH); Article 2 on parallel trading