Technique vs Method vs Methodology

Technique is a procedure or skill for completing a specific task. It is the final skilful execution, on a point-to-point basis, from start point to endpoint.

Examples:

• If a classroom is becoming distracted, a teacher may use the technique to use a quick physical activity to distract their distraction and get them all to do the same thing at the same time.
• An SDD Facilitator's technique of standing in front of each participant and making eye contact while they explain their idea empowers them.

Method is a way something is done. It is the executable process or procedure, with all the specific and prioritised tasks that anyone can assign to get the process or procedure to work.

Examples

• The recipe that I found in the cookbook had different ways to cook the potatoes, but I chose the baking method in the oven.
• The “round robin” method generates and develops ideas in a group brainstorming setting. It relies on an iterative process building off consecutive contributions by each participant, conducted in either written or verbal variations.

Methodology is a higher-order term than methods.

OR and systems thinking, use the term methodology to describe an organized set of methods and techniques employed to intervene in and change real-world problem situations.

Methodology can provide the bridge between theory and practice, ensuring that theory is turned into practical action and allowing reflection back on theory, stemming from the results of that action.

Methods are then defined as tools used by methodologies for limited purposes. They may, therefore, be detachable from a particular methodology and the theory that lies behind it. Models, procedures and techniques are examples of methods. Thus, the robin-round approach to collecting ideas in Structured Democratic Dialogue, the particilar approach used to cluster ideas, the Interpretive Structural Modeling used for mapping are all methods.

Methods	Tools used by methodologies for limited purposes. Can be detached from a particular methodology and the theory that lies behind it.
Methodology	Higher-order term. Can provide the bridge between theory and practice.

Jackson argued (Jackson, 2000) that it is particularaly insightful to link methodology closely to theory and to see different principles of method use as related to different theoretical positions.

The above distinctions were necessary because, for example, Rosenhead (2001) and Rosenhead & Mingers (2001) use the terms interchangeably, thus creating some confusion.

(Source: Jackson, 2000)

References

• Jackson MC (2000). Systems Approaches to Management. Plenum, New York
• Mingers, J., & Rosenhead, J. (2001). Rational analysis for a problematic world revisited (Vol. 1). John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
• Rosenhead J (2001). Preface. In: Rosenhead J and Mingers J (eds) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World Revisited, Wiley, Chichester, pp xiii-xv