Ten million Brazilian children should be in state sponsored day care programs, but only 21% of them are regularly enrolled. We chose the problem of insufficient capacity in daycare as a setting to demonstrate the utility of a new problem analysis artifact: procedures for the analysis of complex problems, composed by the integrated application between cause maps and loop matrices, two techniques associated to the study of cognition standards in organizations. The proposed artifact was tested in three Brazilian municipalities using concepts from design science approach. Causes and intercause associations were identified and prioritized using cause map techniques and, subsequently, interactions between causes were analyzed using the loop matrix technique, which altered the initial prioritization. It was clear that, for complex problems, it is essential to identify and analyze the loops between loops of deviation amplifying ("explosive" loops). Another important result of this research is a better understanding of a complex and socially important problem.
cause maps; loop matrix; daycare; complex problem; cause
