Viable System Model Mapping (under development)
- Appendix with VSM system diagrams from the back of the book “Diagnosing the System” by Stafford Beer (PDF)
- VSM diagrams available from Metaphorum, drawn by Jon Walker and available under Creative Commons License 4.0. Comments and instructions from Jon:
- I draw the VSM using Inkscape which is free to down load and very powerful. Inkscape lets you alter curved lines in a very elegant way (using little handles to alter the curvature) which is great for arrows and links in a recursive mapping.
- Initially this took lots of time particularly drawing the big circular arrows between Systems 3 and 4.
- On this page you will find some of my Inkscape diagrams as SVG files – which means you can open them and change anything.
- So: you can just use the diagrams as I drew them and put your own text. (more to come soon)
- Or: If you want to design and draw your own VSM diagrams you can start with one of my diagrams, and then change everything. This will be much quicker than starting from scratch.
- There are a number of Inkscape files which offer a range of possibilities.
- You-tube is full of videos on how to use Inkscape and it gets better all the time as the open-source software is being improved by a community of users.
- VSMod
- Programs and approaches to use