Rational and systems thinking: practices and competencies of an analyst

The essential skill of an analyst is to identify objects and their relationships and determine the types and workflows of documents – in general, to build models. This should be done during interviews, analyzing documents and Excel files. Typically, object-oriented approach is used for this purpose. OOA is a specific instance of systemic thinking methods based on rationality. They teach how to structure information about the world: to mark up texts and other narratives to build models by considering the world as a collection of interacting systems. Understanding these thinking methods provides a powerful apparatus for analysts to solve complex problems. This is analogous to integration methods: there are specific approaches for particular integrals, and there are general approaches.

In the presentation, we will discuss applying rational and systemic thinking methods for solving analytical tasks.