Hard and Soft Approaches in a Simulation Meta-methodology

A simulation project for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system design and Business Process (BP) design in an organisation usually starts with an unstructured problem situation. We have already outlined a simulation meta-methodology addressing the situation. Now, we give a detailed description of the proposed simulation meta-methodology dealing with both the hard and the soft aspects of the problem. We describe the detailed process and functioning of a hard six-step simulation methodology which is an integrated part of our simulation meta-methodology. We define the role of the traditional SSM (Soft Systems Methodology) in the simulation meta-methodology, and also show how our previously proposed Soft Systems Methodology with Modified Conceptual Models (SSM-MCM) can function as a bridge between hard and soft approaches. There is also introduced a new fast simulation approach, based only on the Traffic Flow Analysis and the Entity Flow-phase Analysis. We also examine the functioning of the simulation metamethodology in a collaborative environment, which is a frequent situation.