The software provides a visual environment that allows people to structure and record collaboration as they discuss and work through wicked problems.

[2][3] The current version operationalises the issue-based information system (IBIS), an argumentation mapping structure first developed by Horst Rittel in the 1970s.

By using these argumentation schemes, users of Compendium can examine claims in more detail to uncover their implicit logical substructure and improve the rigor and depth of discussions.

Compendium is the result of fifteen years of development in collaborative modeling, initiated in the mid-1990s by Al Selvin and Maarten Sierhuis at NYNEX Science & Technology; the theory behind the software hails from the 1970s, when IBIS was first conceptualised by Horst Rittel.

Selvin and Sierhuis built on Jeff Conklin's earlier hypertext issue mapping software: gIBIS and QuestMap.