Understanding causal feedback using the Strategic Planning System (SPS)

The Strategic Planning System (SPS) is a causal modeling tool that gives planners a way to express underlying causal relationships and feedback loops in a strategic plan and determine the effects and side-effects of different strategic alternatives. SPS provides an environment where situations can be defined, and plans refined, abstracted, analyzed, critiqued, and then further refined through an explicit, mutually understandable framework. SPS is a tool in which the underlying structure of a model is elucidated through qualitative explanations and incorporates systems dynamics concepts (nonlinear systems with feedback). Numerical tools are then used afterward to further refine the models. SPS assists planners in understanding the underlying structure and implications of the business model they have built and assists them in explaining these concepts to others. Artificial intelligence techniques were used to understand the model and build explanations