From IS Design to Workpractice Construction Lars Taxén, PhD Department of Science and Technology, Campus Norrköping, Linköping University

The telecom network Service Providers Network Access Points Wide-band Backbone LAN Exchange Router

Globally distributed development S-site (Stockholm) A-site (Aachen)

Coordination “The management of dependencies btw activities” –Malone & Crowston, 1994 Coordination items –requirements –engineering change orders –products –documents describing products –workpackages –test cases –baselines –milestones –error reports –... IS support for coordination

Context model S-domain (Stockholm) Depends_on ANATOMY_ITEM TEST_ITEM DESIGN_ITEM Impacts (man-hours) REQUIREMENT Tested_by Included_In Directed_To (fulfillment-status) Baseline PROGRESS_CONTROL_ITEM MILESTONE CR CHANGE_PROPOSAL_ITEM TR INTEGRATION_ITEM LSV AD-package PROD_DOC PRODUCT Work Package Feature Increment Requirement Issuer has !

Entities Relations Names, icons Types of requirements Life cycle of requirements Attributes on requirements Attributes on relations Cardinalities on relations Revision stepping rules Actor roles Access rights for roles... Requirement context

IS implementation ! 40 entities, 20 relations Entities: types, names, attributes, states, icons Relations: names, attributes, cardinalities, revision rules 5 attributes/entity, 4 states/entity, 2 attributes/relation ~600 “things” have to be agreed upon

A major issue - shared meaning We also had major discussion about the attributes for each and every object, what do they really mean and how are they to be used. That was also something that caused quite a lot of time. (Project Manager 3G)

Approach - the workpractice ”A workpractice means that some actors make something in favour of other actors.”

Structuring workpractices - The Activity Domain Theory Motive Actors Temporal aspect –dependencies btw activities Spatial aspect –things and relations Tools Rules, norms, traditions, habits Development All elements are interdependent !

Requirement management as a workpractice Motive –provide requirement management to the project Actors - participants –Requirement manager –Project manager –IS vendor specialist –Workpractice architect, this author Main elements –Requirement management context model –IS implementing the context model –rules for identifying requirements

Entity type definition in the IS

Relation type definition

Object view (instances) in the IS

Constructing the workpractice Req. mgr Shared meaning Meaningful artefacts Individual meaning Proj. mgrIS vendor Architect

Constructing the S-domain (Stockholm) Depends_on ANATOMY_ITEM TEST_ITEM DESIGN_ITEM Impacts (man-hours) REQUIREMENT Tested_by Included_In Directed_To (fulfillment-status) Baseline PROGRESS_CONTROL_ITEM MILESTONE CR CHANGE_PROPOSAL_ITEM TR INTEGRATION_ITEM LSV AD-package PROD_DOC PRODUCT Work Package Feature Increment Requirement Issuer has !

Workpractice construction strategy exploration Shared meaning in a small group trust boosting Sharp usage in one project expansion Several projects Semiosis - shared meaning Time

Context model A -domain (Aachen) Feature WPFFRSIP (s)WPG High-level RS Holds SIP ARS, CRS, MRS Tagged (H)RS Item Feature Group prio Features DescribedIn* DescribedIn DependsOn Has Feature Groups Detailed RS toAnatomy RS_IP RS_SIP IP_FFFF_WP SIP_IP

Workpractices are constructed differently S-domain 2001 A-domain 2001

Results Btw 1999 and 2002 about 140 projects had used the approach Distributed to 20 development sites worldwide “... we would not have been able to run this project without the tool. I think if you simply look at the number of work packages, the number of products that we have delivered, the number of deliveries that we have had, if we would have had to maintain that manually, that would have been a sheer disaster.” (Project Manager 3G)

Key points The design target is the entire workpractice –IS but one element Users, designers, IS vendors etc., are co-constructing the workpractice Continuous construction Establishing shared meaning a major issue Usability - actions should be useful

From IS design to Workpractice Construction Target - the IS as a technical artifact Focus - technical properties 1 st generation

From IS design to Workpractice Construction Target - the IS in its context Focus- usability, participation 2 nd generation

From IS design to Workpractice Construction Customer Feature Set of Requirements System Issue AD Package Tech. Feature Inc Spec Feature Increment Feature Increment Impact Increment Task Spec Inc. MS Project AD TaskAD MS Increment Responsible Resource Design Item Functional Anatomy Function Design Base ProductDocument Individual Team LDC Sub-project Project IS IP FF...ANTCNTCAAFSFDTS... Project MS Target - the context Focus - shared meaning, usefulness 3 rd generation