The Viable System Model driven the Organization

and the Information System Design

Material estrictamente académico
Nora MOUHIB, Slimane BAH, Abdelaziz BERRADO
asignatura de Metodologías
Equipe AMIPS, Ecole Mohammadia d'Ingenieurs
Sistémicas, Robensoy Marco
University Mohammed V
Taipe Castro 2019-II Rabat, Morocco
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— IT systems are often designed without a deep integrated whole and provides the necessary and sufficient
understanding of the organization business, which they are conditions of viability [6]. It helps to identify the required
intended to support. This leads to the automation of processes but information channels for an effective communication and
does not meet user requirements. Moreover, software projects provides a structured and integrated way of designing them.
are often broken down into simple parts to facilitate the
development process. Regrettably, throughout the integration
phase, the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. The Viable In this paper, we will describe the information system design
System Model (VSM) is a useful framework to overcome these process using the VSM. To do this, in section one, we will
common difficulties. It is a well-known and widely used thinking give a summary of the VSM and we will define several
tool for managers when working with organizations as viable concepts relative to the generic system design process. In
systems. In this paper, we will highlight its role in understanding section two, we will focus on the information system, we will
the organization complexity and designing an integrated explain the usefulness of the VSM in the design process and
information system. we will provide a case study to support our explanation.
Keywords— Viable System Model, Enterprise Engineering, II. BACKGROUND
Generic System Development Process, Integrated Information
System, Case study. A. The Viable System Model
The Viable System Model ([4], [5], [6, [7]) was developed by
I. INTRODUCTION the cybernetician Stafford BEER. He drew inspiration from
IT systems become an important competitive element in the human nervous system, and described laws that govern
many organizations. Unfortunately, they are typically difficult how organisms and organizations maintain their identity. The
to manage, and failure is an all-too-common outcome. A recent model embraces organizations holistically and provides the
research conducted by the Standish Group reported that only necessary and sufficient conditions of viability. By viability is
9% of IT projects succeed on-time and on-budget [1]. A major intended the capacity to deal effectively with the environment.
problem of IT initiatives failure is the lack of business IT The VSM provides the principles, axioms and laws that
alignment. IT projects do not meet user expectations, often govern such organization by diagnosing mismatches with the
because of a misunderstanding of user requirements [2]. IT environment, organizational weaknesses, and missing
experts are technology oriented, they focus mostly on the latest components or channels. It guarantees that the organization
technological innovations rather than human being real needs.
operates in an integrated way. It mainly focuses on the
It follows a poor communication between IT and business
people. Very often, they speak completely different languages. interaction of the organization with its external environment,
Another big challenge of IT projects, is the integration issues and on the effectiveness of communication and information
that appear when individual software modules are combined channels within the organization [19].
and tested as a group. Software projects are split into simple
parts to facilitate their management and development, this A recent empirical study conducted by [8] on the grounds of a
decomposition has many advantages. However, without a clear direct business people survey corroborates the VSM and the
understanding of the interactions between those parts at the viability theory.
beginning of the project, the integration issues are inevitable
[3]. This situation is challenging enough to look for a new way The VSM consists of five systems as described hereafter:
of understanding the business holistically, and gathering the • System One comprises the production units and their
right amount of information about user requirements. local management. These units need to be as free as
The VSM is a powerful tool that helps to overcome these possible to deal with their local environments.
challenges. It is a well-known thinking tool of organizational • System Two provides a coordination service to System
diagnosis and design. It describes the organization as an One. It is an anti-oscillatory advice; it

978-1-5386-4396-9/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 is responsible of damping any instability between
System One units.
• System Three is responsible of the Inside and Now
management, its role is to maintain cohesion and steer
the organization towards its current objectives. It can
gain additional information about System One
operations through the sporadic audit called System
Three*.
• System Four is the intelligent component, it is
responsible of the Outside and Then, learning and
adaptation. Typical activities of system four are
strategic management, prospective studies, product
design and forecasting.
• System Five sets policy, values and beliefs that should
be shared with all other elements of the organization
and supervises the interactions between System Three
and System Four.

The VSM is a recursive model, meaning that each viable

system is embedded in other viable system at the next level of
recursion up, and contains a set of viable systems at the next
level of recursion down. E.g. the plant is embedded in the
division which is embedded in the company, which is
embedded in an industry. In turn, there will probably be
services in the plant, each service embeds different teams that
produce different goods or services [9]. Figure 1 shows the
graphical representation of the VSM as described in [6].

The VSM is mostly used in the organizational management

([10], [11], [12], ([13], [14]). It was also widely used in other Fig.1.The Viable System Model [6].
fields among them the information systems as described in the
work of [15], the authors expressed a system’s information
requirement in adaptive, viable organization. In addition, [16] The design process comprises two major phases: function
proposed to use software and techniques to carry out the design and construction design. The function design starts
functions prescribed by the VSM. [17] provided a systematic from the construction of the using system and ends with the
analysis, evaluation and design of the information channels of function of the object system. The function design consists of
a healthcare services company using the VSM. [18] structured transforming functional requirements into functional
the principal success factors of a software project upon the specifications that the using system expects from the object
basis of the VSM. system. The construction design starts with the functional
specifications of the object system and ends with the
construction of the object system. The construction design
B. The Generic System Development Process
comprises two steps: ontological design and implementation
The BETA (Binding Essence, Technology and Architecture) design or engineering. The ontological design is about the
theory is an Enterprise Engineering design theory of making operation of a system and the engineering is the process of
artifacts. This theory is based on the Generic System deriving models starting from the ontological model until the
Development Process (GSDP). This is the process of implementation model. The implementation is the assignment
designing a system in general, where an object system is of technological means to the elements in the implementation
designed for the benefit of a using system. BETA Theory is model, so that the system become operational.
discussed exclusively in ([20], [21]). Hereafter a brief
summary of its foundation. The Reverse engineering is the process of reconstructing the
higher ontological model from the implementation model.
The design process illustrated in figure 2 ([20]) involves two The function design and the construction design take place
systems, the using system and the object system. The object alternately and incrementally in two steps: the analysis that
system is the system to be designed and the using system is consists of understanding the function of the object system
the system that will use the functions or services offered by and the synthesis that consists of proposing the suitable
the object system once it is operational. construction that provides the required function.
 - The information channels that link System Four to the
The architecture is the normative restriction of design freedom environment.
[22]. It comprises functional and constructional principles that
are additional inputs for the function and construction design
phases respectively. The principles are the generic A. Example : a High school VSM
requirements that are not specific to a particular object system.
Let us take the example of a high school. Figure 3 shows the
school embedment, there are three recursion levels: at the
primary level (recursion 2), the school contains a set of
branches; at the next recursion level down (recursion 1), each
branch contains three program courses dedicated to the 1st, 2nd
and 3rd year; at the last recursion level down (recursion 0),
each program comprises several courses.

Considering the system in focus at the recursion level 0, there

are several courses in different fields as system One. System
Two includes timetable, teacher’s meeting, course protocols…
System Three management is involved in adapting the courses
and improving the learning performance. System Four
comprises the committee planning course and system Five
consists of the board of professors. The corresponding VSM
model is shown in figure 4, the different systems are described
Fig.2.The Generic System Development Process [20]. as well as the communication channels between them. Even
without undertaking a full VSM diagnosis, the example
highlights the usefulness of the VSM, and depicts succinctly
the school components at the elementary recursion level.
III. THE VSM DRIVEN THE INFORMATION SYSTEM DESIGN
PROCESS

The GSDP is a generic design process for any system. In

this section, we will consider a particular object class of
systems, which is the information system.

The design process starts when a using system, the

organization in this case, needs a supportive system, which is
the information system. According to the GSDP, the starting
point is the construction of the organization; otherwise, the
business processes in the organization. The VSM diagnosis
may precede the construction design to provides the blueprint
for the business processes structure. It is particularly helpful in
identifying/requiring the existence of:

- The organization under study (system in focus),

- The boundaries between the organization and the
environment,
- The operations that produce the organization: System
One.
- The management that regulates the operations:
System Two, Three, Three*, Four and Five.
- The different communication channels that link the
operations and the management together.
- The information channels that link different parts in
the management.
- The information channels that link different
operations together.
- The information channels that link the operations to Fig.3.The embedment of a school.
the environment.
 Fig.4.The VSM of a school – recursion 0.

B. Preventing failure with the VSM

The Viable System Model diagnosis provides an integrated interesting to make different assumptions about the problem
view of the organization and describes its communicative situation. [31], [32] and [33] developed two frameworks that
channels. It enables practitioners to identify the missing help partitioning and combining different parts of
elements and highlights what changes are necessary in order to methodologies.
be viable. However, the way to carry out those changes, as
well as the way to construct the existing components, requires The next step in the design process is the determination of the
the use of a business processes modeling technique. Several information system functions required to support each element
techniques are available, e.g. Business Process Modeling in the VSM. To exemplify this, the process of budget
Language (BPML), Flowchart Diagram, UML Activity allocation (channel between System Three and System One),
Diagram. However, in Enterprise Engineering, the as a part of the construction of the school can be supported by
recommended methodology is DEMO for Design and a budget system to make setting up and managing the school
Engineering Methodology for Organization. DEMO focuses budget easier. This is a job of function designer to determine
mostly on human being interactions within the organization the requirements of each process described in the construction
and provides a fully implementation independent models models of the organization. For instance, what functionalities
([23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]). are required from the budget system in order to support the
budget course management? It follows the construction design
At this step, a multi-methodology is required to combine the of the information system. To illustrate this, the notion of
VSM and a business process design technique. The multi- expenditure in budget management is the result of a
methodological approached is supported by the research calculation. The information system construction designer has
community, for instance, [29] proposed the System of to get the right calculation rule from the function designer and
Systems Methodology (SOSM) and [30] proposed the Total expresses it in some algorithm or pseudo code. Figure 5
System Intervention (TSI). They argued that different summarizes the different steps described above.
methodologies are complementary, and that it is therefore
 Fig.5.The VSM driven the information system development

CONCLUSION

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