Socio-technical systems engineering (LSCITS EngD 2012)
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Transcript of Socio-technical systems engineering (LSCITS EngD 2012)
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 1
Socio-technical systems engineering
Ian Sommerville
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 2
Rationale
• Socio-technical issues are now recognised by senior managers in industry as a major issue in systems design
• There is a pressing need to take socio-technical issues into account when procuring, designing and configuring complex systems
• However, methods of social analysis, such as ethnography, have not been widely adopted in industry
– Lack of expertise. Requires understanding of both the social and the technical
– Cultural factors. Engineers should focus on technical issues
– Contractual issues. The requirements define the system
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 3
Problems
• Methods such as ethnography that rely on a situated specialist examining an organisation are hard to scale
• Case studies of previous systems are retrospective analysis techniques
• Little or no explicit support available for influencing the design of a system based on a social analysis of the work
• Inter-disciplinary incompatibilities– Social science vs engineering perspectives
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 4
Socio-technical systems engineering
• Embed socio-technical analysis into the engineering processes of procurement, specification, design and implementation of systems
• The aim is for socio-technical analysis to be carried out by engineers and others involved in procurement and design, rather than specialists
• Integrated with other systems engineering processes, taking technical issues into account
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 5
STSE requirements
• Practical methods of social analysis that return useful results in a reasonable time
• Guidance for non-specialists on how to use these methods to study work
• Integration with processes and methods used in systems engineering
• An evaluation framework that demonstrates the value of socio-technical systems engineering
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 6
Practical social analysis
• Based on workplace studies
• Informal ethnography
• Action research / Co-realisation
• Guided ethnography– Ethnographic viewpoints
– Patterns of cooperative interaction
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 7
Informal ethnography
• Observers simply go into the workplace and observe work as it is actually practised
• Minimal previous training so low-cost of implementation
• Reveals some of the most obvious issues of cooperative work and work practice
• Problems of observer variation, inconsistent coverage, etc.
• Suffers from same problems of scaleability
• BUT – better than nothing!
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 8
Action research
• A social science researcher is embedded in the development team and applies methods of socio-technical analysis as part of that team
• The goal of the researcher is to communicate socio-technical issues to the team who then explicitly reflect on these and how they should influence the design
• Problems of availability of specialists who can be action researchers and inter-disciplinary communications
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 9
Co-realisation
• A technical specialist is trained in methods of social analysis and is embedded in a development team
• They apply social analysis methods and translate the results directly into system design advice (and implementations where appropriate)
• Avoids communication problems between social scientists and engineers
• Problems of finding technical people sympathetic to this approach and scaleability
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 10
Guided ethnography
• A framework is used to guide engineers and managers in carrying out fieldwork
• More likely to lead to repeatable results and better coverage than informal ethnography
• Based around:– Ethnographic viewpoints
– The use of modelling notations to supplement field notes
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 11
Ethnography in requirements engineering
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 12
Social viewpoints
• Ways of looking at a fieldwork site with a view to understanding how the work is done
– Distributed coordination
• How do people coordinate their tasks as part of everyday work?
– Plans and procedures
• How are the objects in the workplace used and how is their use governed by organisational policies and rules?
– Awareness of work
• How are activities organised to make work visible?
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 13
Social concerns
• Mechanisms to generate questions for each social viewpoint
• Cross-cutting all viewpoints– Paperwork and computer work
– Skill and the use of local knowledge
– Spatial and temporal organisation
– Organisational memory
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 14
Concerns and questions
• Skill and the use of local knowledge– To what extent have standard procedures been
adapted to take local factors into account?
• Spatial and temporal organisation– Does any data have a ‘use-by’ date?
• Paperwork and computer work– How do forms and other artfacts act as embodiments
of the process
• Organisational memory– How well do formal records match the reality of how
work is done?
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 15
Patterns of cooperative interaction
• A means of communicating information about how people interact with each other through and around technology
• Developed as a resource that enabled the generalisation and reuse of previous ethnographic studies
• Represent patterns of work that are commonly observed and their significance
• Provide a basis for fieldworkers to know what to look for when observing the workplace
– Help address the problem of how to get started in ethnography
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 16
Components of a pattern
• Essence of the pattern
• Why used?
• Where useful?
• Design implications
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 17
Examples of patterns
• Artefact as an audit trail
• Working with interruptions
• Collaboration in small groups
• Receptionist as a hub
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 18
Problems with ethnography
• Focused, primarily, on co-located work
• Excellent method for examining ‘work in the small’ i.e. work as practised by a small team
• Not as effective for studying ‘work in the large’ i.e. work across an enterprise or organisation
– Practical problems of studying many workgroups that are not co-located
– Need to study management as well as use of systems
– Communications between parts of the organisation are critical
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 19
Studies of organisations
• Challenge for socio-technical systems engineering
• Enterprise systems– Goals of senior management may be different from
goals of individual work groups
– Diversity of comparable work across organisations
– Organisational complexity
– Rythyms of work and organisational timetables
– Legacy systems, processes and culture
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 20
Systems engineering and change
• New systems are often introduced into an enterprise as part of a process of organisational change
• However, there is often constrained and limited communications between the systems engineering team and the change team
• One view of STSE is as a means to bridge the gap between the engineers developing the software to support new processes and the change team designing these processes
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 21
Systems engineering processes
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 22
Change processes
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 23
Bridging the process gap
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 24
Sensitisation
• Making sure that the stakeholders in the process understand:
– Why human, social and organisational issues are important
– Why they are not someone else’s problem
– Why there may be good technical reasons that mean social ‘requirements’ have to be compromised. Engineering constraints are significant
– Key issues from other stakeholders
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 25
Constructive engagement
• Working with stakeholders to implement new systems
• No prescriptive model of how engagement should be practised or what socio-technical approach should be used
– Engagement at all phases from procurement to operation may be useful
– Make use of whatever resources and expertise are available
– Research issue is to develop lightweight methods of social analysis that can be used as part of systems engineering processes
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 26
Evaluation framework
• Evaluation of any changes to processes and methods is difficult as ‘repeatable experiments’ are practically impossible
– For example, debate over the utility and generality of agile methods
• Utility of the approach may be demonstrated by fewer problems in deployment and use
– But how can it be shown these are directly related to the use of STSE
Socio-technical Systems Engineering, EngD course, May 2010 Slide 27
Key points
• Socio-technical systems engineering has the aim of incorporating social and organisational analysis into systems engineering processes
• Conventional ethnography is inappropriate and we need approaches that are designed for use by engineers
• Guided ethnography may be used for analysis of cooperative work that is co-located
• Enterprise-scale analysis remains a research problem