What do you do when you are facing a seemingly irreparable problem at work? Imagine this problem is such that you do not even know the cause – just that you have a problem in your hands. (Maybe your team is not meeting the mandatory sales quota despite their best effort, and you are trying to get to the root of the problem.)
The obvious first step is to brainstorm for possible causes and trying to apply lessons learnt from previous experiences to the situation. However, a sure way to being derailed is such directionless brainstorming. No matter how needlessly remedial and self-deprecating checklists seem they can be surprisingly useful when used appropriately to stimulate open thought.
In the 1960s, a systems engineering professor, Peter Checkland, had the novel idea of developing a problem solving method that would apply systems principles to business problems and other such “soft” problems. This Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) conceptualises the activities or business under scrutiny as a system, a part of which is the CATWOE checklist for problem solving.
What is CATWOE?
CATWOE is a simple checklist for thinking and one of the generic techniques business analysts use to identify a business’ bottlenecks, problem areas and how potential solutions may affect the business and the people involved in it. CATWOE has six elements: clients, actors, transformation, worldview, owner and environmental constraints.
When should one use it?
The CATWOE checklist may be used to identify a problem, to prompt thinking about what you are really trying to achieve and to implement the solution and help consider the impact of the business and people involved.
How best to use it?
Use the following elements of the CATWOE checklist to stimulate thinking about the problem and solution during your brainstorming.
Clients: The clients are the stakeholders who use the system, or rather the business. These are the people who will be directly affected by any change in the system and benefit or suffer from its outcome. The first step to a CATWOE checklist is to identify this group and understand how the system affects them.
For example - maybe your sales team is not meeting its quota because of an outdated processing system and you think introducing an automated system will expedite the process. A few questions to ask yourself are: Who is on the receiving end? What problem do they have now? How will they react to your proposal?
In this case, your employees are on the receiving end and are thus the clients. They will be directly affected by this change. Their problem is slow processing time due to a manual system. Their reactions may be mixed, as the more tech-savvy will welcome the change but older employees in the company may resist such a big change.
Actors: The actors in a CATWOE checklist refers to the people involved in the implementation of the changes to the system, or business.
A few questions to ask yourself are: Who are the actors who will be carrying out the changes to the system? What will its impact be on them? How will they react to the change?
In the aforementioned example, this role would be of the automated system development team, the IT department, and to an extent the HR department.
Transformation: The transformation is the total number of changes that the system or business undergoes. Questions to ask yourself are: What are the inputs and where do they come from? What are the outputs and where do they go? What steps are in between the transformation?
In our example, the transformation would be the shift from a manual processing system to an automated one.
Worldview: The worldview is the big picture and the impact at large of the transformed system or business. The entire system is analysed in this step to come up with the positive and negative impact of the change. This is the most crucial step in CATWOE analysis as different stakeholders may have different approaches to the same issue. The worldview defines why we want to implement the change to the system.
The primary differences in the overall analysis will lie in this particular step, if each individual “client” were asked to do a CATWOE. Questions to ask yourself about the different worldviews are: What is the real problem you are working on? What is the wide scale impact of any solution?
In our example, the impact at large to the system would be that the automation of the processing system increases the efficiency of the sales team, leading them to making more sales, and reduce time spent manually processing all sales.
Owner: The owner or the decision maker is the one with authority to make and implement the changes to the system, stop the process or decide on whether to look at alternate solutions.
A few questions to ask yourself about the owner are: Who is the real owner of the system you are trying to change? Will they assist you or get in your way? How can you get their help?
In our example, the system owner would be the head of the sales team, while other key owners will also be involved, such as the HR and IT heads.
Environmental constraints: Environmental constraints are external limitations that affect the success of the solution. These can range from budgetary limitations, regulations, ethical constraints, limits set by owners etc.
A few questions to ask yourself about this step are: What are the broader constraints imposed on the situation? What are the more specific constraints and limitations? How can you get around them?
In our example, some environmental constraints may be the expense of running an automated system, maintenance of the system leading to a higher strain on the IT department, lack of integration with current aspects of the system etc.
The CATWOE model is used to identify and categorise all stakeholders of the system, or business, being analysed to come up with the root definition. The root definition is a structured definition of the system – a clear statement of activities that take place in the system being studied.
