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Rich pictures are informal, hand-drawn representations that capture complex systems, stakeholders, and relationships visually and narratively. They support problem exploration, perspective alignment, and stakeholder engagement during early discovery. The method encourages shared understanding, hypothesis generation, and the surfacing of conflicts, boundaries…
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What organizes, connects, or makes decisions possible.
A rich picture is an open, visual depiction of a complex situation. It combines stakeholders, relationships, tensions, processes, and assumptions without prematurely forcing them into a formal model.
Peter Checkland developed rich pictures within Soft Systems Methodology from the 1970s and described the approach in his 1981 methodology book. The purpose is to make problematic human and organizational situations open to shared exploration.
Start with a large surface and draw what matters: people, roles, artefacts, movements, conflicts, and boundaries. Use symbols, arrows, and short labels, discuss differences between viewpoints, and only then derive more precise questions or models.
The picture places relevant elements of an unclear problem situation side by side.
Different interpretations remain visible instead of disappearing into a supposedly neutral diagram.
Conflicts, dependencies, and contradictions reveal areas for further inquiry.
Rich pictures help in early analysis, workshops, and change initiatives where social relationships matter more than formal precision. The picture is a conversation and thinking tool, not a complete process or architecture definition.
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