Contributions from cognitive engineering to requirements specifications for complex sociotechnical systems: A case study in the context of healthcare in Brazil

This paper aims at presenting a case study on the use of human factors and ergonomics to enhance requirement specifications for complex sociotechnical system support tools through enhancing the understanding of human performance within the business domain and the indication of high‐value requirements candidates to information technology support. This work uses methods based on cognitive engineering to build representations of the business domain, highlighting workers’ needs, and contributing to the improvement of software requirements specifications, used in the healthcare domain. As the human factors discipline fits between human sciences and technology design, we believe that its concepts can be combined with software engineering to improve understanding of how people work, enabling the design of better information technology.     

Designing sociotechnical systems with cognitive work analysis: putting theory back into practice

Cognitive work analysis (CWA) is a framework of methods for analysing complex sociotechnical systems. However, the translation from the outputs of CWA to design is not straightforward. Sociotechnical systems theory provides values and principles for the design of sociotechnical systems which may offer a theoretically consistent basis for a design approach for use with CWA. This article explores the extent to which CWA and sociotechnical systems theory offer complementary perspectives and presents an abstraction hierarchy (AH), based on a review of literature, that describes an ‘optimal’ CWA and sociotechnical systems theory design system. The optimal AH is used to assess the extent to which current CWA-based design practices, uncovered through a survey of CWA practitioners, aligns with sociotechnical systems theory. Recommendations for a design approach that would support the integration of CWA and sociotechnical systems theory design values and principles are also derived.     

Work system design in macroergonomics: A case study related to prioritization of major sociotechnical system components by using the fuzzy analytic network process

The primary lesson for a company in an industrially developing country that desires to build its competitive capabilities is that investing and focusing solely on the technical side of the work system results in disruptive technological and organizational change. The managers should take into account the broader prerequisites and be aware of the potential pitfalls of work system incompatibilities. Past experiences indicate that, to be successful, the work system design has to match certain requirements of major sociotechnical systems. Thus the matching process has to consider multiple criteria and the opinions of several managers. This work attempts briefly to identify factors affecting the success of work system design to reduce the potential for incompatibilities with respect to macroergonomics and to optimize the decision process of managers. The objective of the presented decision model in this article, based on the fuzzy analytic network process, determines the global weights (highest degree of importance) for different sociotechnical subsystem components/elements and examines the critical factors and benefits that affect the successful application of macroergonomic work system designs from a manager's point of view. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Establishing a systems integration process intrastructure

With the steady fall of prices and margins of computer hardware, back in the 1980s, many hardware manufacturers have tried to diversify their range of offerings. Bull Information Systems has chosen to change its major business direction to become a systems integrator and solution supplier. It has been a real challenge and a big success for Bull to succeed in changing its business direction from being a hardware/software mannfacturer to becoming a leading systems integration (SI) company. For a business to be successful in making such a change it needs to work more efficiently and to react faster, while preserving its stability. Although there are many ways for achieving such change, the experience highlighted in this paper describes how a process focus played a critical part in realizing such change. Creating a systems integration business process and a process-focused organization have been critical factors in achieving the change of business direction. A process focus has an impact on the organizational structure; management practices; employees' skills and training; and on measurements of business performance. This paper describes the experiences at Bull Information systems in creating a systems integration business process-focused organization and it outlines the mechanms which are in place to ensure ownership and improvement of the process. It summarizes the main lessons earnt as a result of creating systems integration business processes.     

What could they have been thinking? How sociotechnical system design influences cognition: a case study of the Stockwell shooting

Understanding why an individual acted in a certain way is of fundamental importance to the human factors community, especially when the choice of action results in an undesirable outcome. This challenge is typically tackled by applying retrospective interview techniques to generate models of what happened, recording deviations from a 'correct procedure'. While such approaches may have great utility in tightly constrained procedural environments, they are less applicable in complex sociotechnical systems that require individuals to modify procedures in real time to respond to a changing environment. For complex sociotechnical systems, a formative approach is required that maps the information available to the individual and considers its impact on performance and action. A context-specific, activity-independent, constraint-based model forms the basis of this approach. To illustrate, an example of the Stockwell shooting is used, where an innocent man, mistaken for a suicide bomber, was shot dead. Transferable findings are then presented. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: This paper presents a new approach that can be applied proactively to consider how sociotechnical system design, and the information available to an individual, can affect their performance. The approach is proposed to be complementary to the existing tools in the mental models phase of the cognitive work analysis framework.     

Designing a ticket to ride with the Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit

Cognitive work analysis has been applied in the design of numerous sociotechnical systems. The process used to translate analysis outputs into design concepts, however, is not always clear. Moreover, structured processes for translating the outputs of ergonomics methods into concrete designs are lacking. This paper introduces the Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit (CWA-DT), a design approach which has been developed specifically to provide a structured means of incorporating cognitive work analysis outputs in design using design principles and values derived from sociotechnical systems theory. This paper outlines the CWA-DT and describes its application in a public transport ticketing design case study. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the process provide promising early evidence that the toolkit fulfils the evaluation criteria identified for its success, with opportunities for improvement also highlighted.     

When paradigms collide at the road rail interface: evaluation of a sociotechnical systems theory design toolkit for cognitive work analysis

The Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit (CWA-DT) is a recently developed approach that provides guidance and tools to assist in applying the outputs of CWA to design processes to incorporate the values and principles of sociotechnical systems theory. In this paper, the CWA-DT is evaluated based on an application to improve safety at rail level crossings. The evaluation considered the extent to which the CWA-DT met pre-defined methodological criteria and aligned with sociotechnical values and principles. Both process and outcome measures were taken based on the ratings of workshop participants and human factors experts. Overall, workshop participants were positive about the process and indicated that it met the methodological criteria and sociotechnical values. However, expert ratings suggested that the CWA-DT achieved only limited success in producing RLX designs that fully aligned with the sociotechnical approach. Discussion about the appropriateness of the sociotechnical approach in a public safety context is provided.

Practitioner Summary: Human factors and ergonomics practitioners need evidence of the effectiveness of methods. A design toolkit for cognitive work analysis, incorporating values and principles from sociotechnical systems theory, was applied to create innovative designs for rail level crossings. Evaluation results based on the application are provided and discussed.     

Mining version histories for change impact analysis in business process model repositories

In order to remain competitive and sustainable in today's ever-changing business environments, organizations need to frequently make changes to their business activities and the corresponding business process models. One of the critical issues that an organization faces is change impact analysis: estimating the potential effects of changing a business process to other processes in the organization's business process repository. In this paper, we propose an approach to change impact analysis which mines a version history of a business process model repository. Our approach then identifies business process models that have been co-changed in the past and uses this knowledge to predict the impact of future changes. An empirical validation on a real business process model repository has showed the effectiveness of our approach in predicting impact of a change.     

What's All the Fuss About Fax?

Facsimile (fax) technology is a fast, inexpensive, and efficient method of accurately transmitting information. In addition to these obvious benefits, however, there are more subtle advantages as well. Fax makes time more elastic, allows smaller companies to be more competitive, and fits nicely with today's leaner staffing trends. This column discusses fax technology and its impact on the business of the organization and the IS department.     

Persistent problems and practices in information systems development: a study of mobile applications development and distribution

The widespread uptake of mobile technologies has witnessed a re‐structuring of the mobile market with major shifts in the predominance of particular firms and the emergence of new business models. These sociotechnical trends are significant in the ways that they are influencing and shaping the working lives of software professionals. Building on prior research investigating the persistent problems and practices of systems development, this paper examines mobile applications development and distribution. A qualitative study of 60 developers based in Sweden, the UK and the USA was analysed around the interrelated problems of diversity, knowledge and structure. The analysis revealed how platform‐based development in an evolving mobile market represents significant changes at the business environment level. These changes ripple through and accentuate ongoing trends and developments, intensifying the persistent problems and challenges facing software developers.     

An approach for estimating the time needed to perform code changes in business applications

Business applications automate various business processes within an organization. Business analysts frequently modify business processes to maintain a competitive edge. Estimating the time needed to modify a business process is not a trivial task, since changes to the business process result in changes to the source code of which the business analyst has limited knowledge. We propose a change impact metric which estimates the code to be modified as a result of a business process change. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed change impact metric through a case study, using seven large business applications from the OFBiz open source project.     

Change impact analysis in service-based business processes

In the service-oriented computing paradigm, business processes can be wrapped and exposed as business services. Business processes and services are subject to changes required by the organizational and regulatory policies changes. A required service change can affect its supporting business processes, and a change occurred in business process can affect the services it supports. In this study, we will provide some insights on the challenging issue in the service-based business process change management. Different from the existing work in the field of workflow change management, this work focuses on the analysis of dependencies between services and their supporting business processes. We present a taxonomy for the changes that can happen in services and business processes based on the proposed service-oriented business process model. A set of change impact patterns are defined based on the study of the dependencies between services and business processes and the identified change types. These change types and the impact patterns then can be used to analyze the necessary change propagation occurring in business processes and services. We provide algorithms for determining the impact scopes affected by the service and process change. A prototype that implements the proposed change management mechanisms is developed.     

Team-based work and work system balance in the context of agile manufacturing

Manufacturing agility is the ability to prosper in an environment characterized by constant and unpredictable change. The purpose of this paper is to analyze team attributes necessary to facilitate agile manufacturing, and using Balance Theory as a framework, it evaluates the potential positive and negative impacts related to these team attributes that could alter the balance of work system elements and resulting "stress load" experienced by persons working on agile teams. Teams operating within the context of agile manufacturing are characterized as multifunctional, dynamic, cooperative, and virtual. A review of the literature relevant to each of these attributes is provided, as well as suggestions for future research.     

The Spiral of Change Model for Coping with Changing and Ongoing Requirements

This paper is a discussion on the problem of establishing information requirements in changing and ongoing business organisations. Attempts within existing software development paradigms to cope with business change are identified and discussed, and their problems concerning business change are highlighted. The alternative spiral of change model of tailorable information systems is proposed for thinking about establishing changing and ongoing information systems requirements. It is also proposed that information should be reconceptualised as tailorable. Such a reconceptualisation would allow us to explore ways of establishing information systems requirements that cope with business change. Deferred system’s design is proposed as a form of business software design and development that can cope with business change, as well as with the contextual and situational nature of tailorable information.     

Foresight for a responsible future with ICT

The ACM Code of Ethics asserts that computing professionals have an ethical responsibility to minimize the negative consequences of information and communication technologies (ICT). Negative consequences are rarely intended, but they can often be foreseen with careful sociotechnical analysis in advance of system building. Motivated by an interest in extremely complex sociotechnical contexts (e.g., mortgage lending and automated trading) where ICT appears to be having negative consequences in addition to many benefits, this paper identifies and evaluates future-oriented problem analysis and solution design tools in three potentially relevant literatures: 1) ICT ethics, 2) environmental sustainability, and 3) technology hazards. Several promising future-oriented technology analysis techniques (e.g., anticipatory technology ethics, technology roadmapping, morphological analysis, and control structure analysis) were found and are discussed in this paper, but much work remains to be done to customize them, integrate them, and codify them for use in education and high-quality IS research on very complex sociotechnical contexts like the global financial network.     

Human factors of complex sociotechnical systems

Increasingly products and services result from interactions among people who work across organizational, geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries. This has major implications for human factors and ergonomics (HFE), in particular, challenging the limits of the systems to be designed, and widening the range of system elements and dimensions that we need to consider. The design of sociotechnical systems that involve work across multiple boundaries requires better integration of the various sub-disciplines or components of HFE, as well as increased collaboration with other disciplines that provide either expertise regarding the domain of application or expertise in concepts that can enrich the system design. In addition, 'customers' contribute significantly to the 'co-production' of products/services, as well as to their quality/safety. The design of sociotechnical systems in collaboration with both the workers in the systems and the customers requires increasing attention not only to the design and implementation of systems, but also to the continuous adaptation and improvement of systems in collaboration with customers. This paper draws from research on human factors in the domains of health care and patient safety and of computer security.     

Reducing contention in shared-memory multiprocessors

The techniques that can be used to design a memory system that reduces the impact of contention are examined. To exemplify the techniques, the implementations and the design decisions taken in each are reviewed. The discussion covers memory organization, interconnection networks, memory allocation, cache memory, and synchronization and contention. The multiprocessor implementations considered are C.mmp, CM*, RP3, Alliant FX, Cedar, Butterfly, SPUR, Dragon, Multimax, and Balance     

Incorporating technology in service-oriented i* business models: a case study

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to enterprise information systems. This interest is motivated by the need for achieving better integration of new technologies (hardware and software) with the business processes of an organization. Business processes have become more and more dependent on technologies because technology has a direct impact on business processes, changing the way they are performed and thus also affecting the way analysts design the software system. However, at the present time, there are still some gaps between the definition of business processes and the technologies used in the organization. In practice, organizations have carried out their business processes using different technologies; however, it is sometimes not possible to determine how technologies are useful in achieving current business goals. This is because business models do not explicitly consider the technologies in the organizational requirements. The goal of this paper is to present a systematic process for integrating business processes and technologies at the conceptual level. To validate our approach, we present a case study that describes the processes of the inventory management department of a public research center.     

Review and reappraisal of human aspects in planning robotic systems

The social issues of worker displacement and worker retraining due to introduction of robotics are discussed and the impact of industrial robots on organization design and job design are reviewed and safety issues mentioned. The impact of human industrial work performance on designing robotics systems is reviewed with special reference to the range of human performance abilities; human information-processing, memory and decision making capabilities; paced-work; supervisory control of robotics systems; and, social and management impacts of robot diffusion.     

A coordination-theoretic investigation of the impact of electronic integration on logistics performance

Using the Coordination Theory, we explored the impact of electronic integration of intra-organizational and inter-organizational business processes on organizational performance in terms of logistics cost and service improvements. Our work extends knowledge on adoption of information technology (IT) in logistics operations, with a focus on examining the performance implications of electronic integration within and between firms in a supply chain. Data was collected from 227 trading firms in Hong Kong and analyzed to investigate the research issues. Our empirical findings revealed that electronic integration is positively associated with logistics performance in cost but not in service, suggesting that electronic integration is not sufficient for delivering superior logistics services. Theoretical and practical implications of our results are discussed.