Strategy tools, courses & learning materials for individuals, universities and business
You are not logged in
This workshop will be held as part of the International System Dynamics Conference in Delft, July 2014. For more information see the conference web pages

Agile SD : conference workshop

Delft, Netherlands, July 2014

Workshop Leader: Kim Warren

Join Kim for an intensive half day learning about this powerful approach to model building.

Kim Warren

Why attend?

This workshop will demonstrate the Agile SD process and give participants experience of using the method – both a white-board approach to capturing a quantified picture of the dynamics for any case, and the software model of that picture which can easily be built in parallel.

The method specifies the time-path of some problem issue; both its history and desired future. Performance aims (lower crime rates, for example) are always traceable to stock-quantities, unless they are themselves stocks (fewer criminals). The process therefore traces back through the direct causes of the problem-issue until one or more stocks are reached, validating that causality by estimating time-charts for each item. The stocks' time-path behaviour is explained by adding the flow-rates causing the stocks' quantities to change (new people taking to crime, or giving up), again supported with estimated time-values for each flow. Finally, the causes of each flow are traced. This step always ends at one or more of three root causes – decisions made by actors in the system (e.g. penalties for crime), external factors (e.g. unemployment) or existing stocks in the system (e.g. police numbers). This last category of flow-rate drivers identifies interdependence and feedback among the stocks.

The first session will involve participants in replicating the approach for a real case. The second half of the workshop will then apply the process to an example from the workshop participants, to show how it can be done from a standing start, including live development of a working model.

2850200