Working model

This page describes how SAMT-BU currently works to map needs and try out solutions. The model is deliberately simplified, and it will be developed further.

Cases and pilots

The project distinguishes between two things that are easily conflated, and that the project’s own documents often use interchangeably:

• A case describes a need – a situation that does not work well enough today. The cases are found under Needs.
• A pilot is an implementation measure – a concrete attempt to do something about one or more needs. The pilots are found under Pilots.

The relationship between them is many-to-many. One pilot can address several cases, and one case can be touched by several pilots – fully or partly, at different stages. Two practical consequences follow:

• Cases are not merged. Two cases appearing in the same pilot proposal does not make them one case. Each keeps its own description and is given a relationship instead.
• Cases do not “lapse” because they are covered elsewhere. A need handled through a pilot tied to another case is still a real need. “Lapsed” should be reserved for needs that have genuinely been rejected.

The case description as a simplified statement of need

Needs are currently mapped through case descriptions – short, free-text accounts of a situation that does not work well enough. The format was chosen because the threshold is low: it lets many people contribute early, without having to engage with a formal model.

The price of that simplicity is that case descriptions do not systematically distinguish between need, goal, proposed solution and deliverable. Several of the cases in the register contain all four intermixed. Nor does the current register apply the distinction above consistently – some cases are marked as incorporated into or replaced by others.

This is known, and accepted for the time being.

Further work

The working model described here is a basis for work, not an adopted metamodel. A more precise conceptual framework for need, solution, goal and deliverable is under development, and may change both how needs are described and how they are linked to measures.

The conceptual work is found under Concepts and terminology. The fact that this work evolves does not make the description on this page wrong – it describes practice as it stands today, and is updated when practice actually changes.