Systems Thinking in Project Management

Individual Essay
1

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Overview of tools and techniques of system thinking.....................................................................3
BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Explosion.............................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
2

Introduction
Systems engineering can be effectively defined as one of the most important fields of project
development and management which can effectively help the project manager of the company to
ensure that cycle of project development remains successful and smooth. In the case study
provided the application and usage of this system has been provided which will effectively help
the user to gain the insights on the issues faced and how the issues were resolved. The main core
of the paper is the system thinking tool which was developed by Jan Smuts. It should be noted
that there are five different approaches to the system thinking which are objects, attributes,
relationships, boundaries and environmental influences. In this report, there is a study presented
on one of the major incidents that took place in the history of crude oil production. In order to
conduct the same, the researcher has effectively taken example of BP Deep Water Horizon
explosion (Khan & Hashemi, 2017). In order to analyse the impact and the issues that led to this
exploitation, the researcher will make use of and effectively apply various tools of systems
thinking such as for cause mapping.
Overview of tools and techniques of system thinking
The tools and techniques of system thinking were first introduced by the theory of General
Systems. In the systems thinking there is a comprehension of various techniques of study
systems which major helps the researcher in the management of projects. The technique was first
developed in the year 1920 by Jan Smuts and this was further converted into general theory in
the year 1940. This conversion was done by Ludwig von Bertalanffy. The tools and techniques
of systems thinking can be further defined as the set of communication and interconnections
between each component in a particular system. The main idea behind the development of the
tools of system thinking was to avoid any kind of issue that may arise in a project and evade the
same by taking appropriate measures (Goetsch & Davis, 2016). The main purpose of the
software and the concept of system thinking is to deal effectively and efficiently with the issues
that might arise in the development of portfolio, project and quality of the processes which can
help the business in strategic improvement.
3