chapter 13

socio-organizational issues and stakeholder requirements

socio-organizational issues and stakeholder requirements

• Organizational issues affect acceptance
• conflict & power, who benefits, encouraging use
• Stakeholders
• identify their requirements in organizational context
• Socio-technical models
• human and technical requirements
• Soft systems methodology
• broader view of human and organizational issues
• Participatory design
• includes the user directly in the design process
• Ethnographic methods
• study users in context, unbiased perspective

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Organisational issues

Organisational factors can make or break a system

Studying the work group is not sufficient

• any system is used within a wider context
• and the crucial people need not be direct users

Before installing a new system must understand:

• who benefits
• who puts in effort
• the balance of power in the organisation
• … and how it will be affected

Even when a system is successful�… it may be difficult to measure that success

Conflict and power

CSCW = computer supported cooperative work

• people and groups have conflicting goals
• systems assuming cooperation will fail!

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e.g. computerise stock control

stockman looses control of information� ⇒ subverts the system

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identify stakeholders – not just the users

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Organisational structures

• Groupware affects organisational structures
• communication structures reflect line management
• email – cross-organisational communication

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Disenfranchises lower management� ⇒ disaffected staff and ‘sabotage’

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Technology can be used to change management style and power structures

• but need to know that is what we are doing
• and more often an accident !

Invisible workers

Telecommunications improvements allow:

• neighbourhood workcentres
• home-based tele-working

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Many ecological and economic benefits

• reduce car travel
• flexible family commitments

but:

• ‘management by presence’ doesn't work
• presence increases perceived worth
• problems for promotion

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Barriers to tele-working are managerial/social �not technological

Benefits for all?

Disproportionate effort

who puts in the effort ≠ who gets the benefit

Example: shared diary:

• effort: secretaries and subordinates, enter data
• benefit: manager easy to arrange meetings
• result: falls into disuse

Solutions:

• coerce use !
• design in symmetry

Free rider problem

no bias, but still problem

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possible to get benefit without doing work

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if everyone does it, system falls into disuse

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e.g. electronic conferences� – possible to read but never contribute

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solutions:

strict protocols (e.g., round robin)

increase visibility – rely on social pressure

Critical mass

Early telephone system:

• few subscribers – no one to ring
• lots of subscribers – never stops ringing!

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Electronic communications similar:

• benefit ∝ number of subscribers
• early users have negative cost/benefit
• need critical mass to give net benefits

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How to get started?

• look for cliques to form core user base
• design to benefit an initial small user base

Critical mass

Evaluating the benefits

Assuming we have avoided the pitfalls!

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How do we measure our success?

job satisfaction and information flow� – hard to measure

economic benefit� – diffuse throughout organisation

But ..

costs of hardware and software� … only too obvious

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Perhaps we have to rely on hype!

capturing requirements

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• need to identify requirements within context of use
• need to take account of
• stakeholders
• work groups and practices
• organisational context
• many approaches including
• socio-technical modelling
• soft system modelling
• participatory design
• contextual inquiry

who are the stakeholders?

• system will have many stakeholders with potentially conflicting interests
• stakeholder is anyone effected by success or failure of system
• primary - actually use system
• secondary - receive output or provide input
• tertiary - no direct involvement but effected by success or failure
• facilitating - involved in development or deployment of system

who are the stakeholders?

Example: Classifying stakeholders – an airline booking system

An international airline is considering introducing a new booking system for use by associated travel agents to sell flights directly to the public.

Primary stakeholders: travel agency staff, airline booking staff

Secondary stakeholders: customers, airline management

Tertiary stakeholders: competitors, civil aviation authorities, customers’ travelling companions, airline shareholders

Facilitating stakeholders: design team, IT department staff

who are the stakeholders?

• designers need to meet as many stakeholder needs as possible
• usually in conflict so have to prioritise
• often priority decreases as move down categories e.g. primary most important
• not always e.g. life support machine

socio-technical modelling

• response to technological determinism
• concerned with technical, social, organizational and human aspects of design
• describes impact of specific technology on organization
• information gathering: interviews, observation, focus groups, document analysis
• several approaches e.g.
• CUSTOM
• OSTA

CUSTOM

• Six stage process - focus on stakeholders
• describe organizational context, including primary goals, physical characteristics, political and economic background
• identify and describe stakeholders including personal issues, role in the organization and job
• identify and describe work-groups whether formally constituted or not
• identify and describe task–object pairs i.e. tasks to be performed and objects used
• identify stakeholder needs: stages 2–4 described in terms of both current and proposed system - stakeholder needs are identified from the differences between the two
• consolidate and check stakeholder requirements against earlier criteria

OSTA

• Eight stage model - focus on task
• primary task identified in terms of users’ goals
• task inputs to system identified
• external environment into which the system will be introduced is described, including physical, economic and political aspects
• transformation processes within the system are described in terms of actions performed on or with objects
• social system is analyzed, considering existing internal and external work-groups and relationships
• technical system is described in terms of configuration and integration with other systems
• performance satisfaction criteria are established, indicating social and technical requirements of system
• new technical system is specified

soft systems methodology

• no assumption of technological solution - emphasis on understanding situation fully
• developed by Checkland
• seven stages
• recognition of problem and initiation of analysis
• detailed description of problem situation
• rich picture
• generate root definitions of system
• CATWOE
• conceptual model - identifying transformations
• compare real world to conceptual model
• identify necessary changes
• determine actions to effect changes

CATWOE

• Clients: those who receive output or benefit from the system
• Actors: those who perform activities within the system
• Transformations: the changes that are affected by the system
• Weltanschauung: (from the German) or World View - how the system is perceived in a particular root definition
• Owner: those to whom the system belongs, to whom it is answerable and who can authorize changes to it
• Environment: the world in which the system operates and by which it is influenced

Participatory design

In participatory design:

workers enter into design context

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In ethnography (as used for design):

designer enters into work context

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Both make workers feel valued in design

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… encourage workers to ‘own’ the products

Participatory Design

• User is an active member of the design team.

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• Characteristics
• context and work oriented rather than system oriented
• collaborative
• iterative
• Methods
• brain-storming
• storyboarding
• workshops
• pencil and paper exercises

ETHICS

• participatory socio-technical approach devised by Mumford
• system development is about managing change
• non-participants more likely to be dissatisfied
• three levels of participation
• consultative, representative, consensus
• design groups including stakeholder representatives make design decisions
• job satisfaction is key to solution

Ethnography

very influential in CSCW

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a form of anthropological study with special focus on social relationships

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does not enter actively into situation

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seeks to understand social culture

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unbiased and open ended

contextual inquiry

• Approach developed by Holtzblatt
• in ethnographic tradition but acknowledges and challenges investigator focus
• model of investigator being apprenticed to user to learn about work
• investigation takes place in workplace - detailed interviews, observation, analysis of communications, physical workplace, artefacts
• number of models created:
• sequence, physical, flow, cultural, artefact
• models consolidated across users
• output indicates task sequences, artefacts and communication channels needed and physical and cultural constraints