The aim of the SYCOMT Project has been "...to provide a framework of methods for the design of CSCW systems which supports the co-operative nature of work activities more effectively" through field studies of co-operative work and organisational analysis / design within the context of a major 'high street' bank. The project includes a 'prototype study' of applications of CSCW to the core business process of Lending.
Ethnography has acquired some disputed prominence within CSCW as a fieldwork method which contributes both to a general understanding of systems in use in a variety of contexts and to the design of distributed and shared systems (Harper et al 1991; Hughes et al 1992; Randall & Hughes 1994; Button & Sharrock 1994). This is connected to the somewhat belated realisation that both the 'success' and 'failure' of system design is associated with the social context of its use. Perhaps the main virtue of ethnography is its ability to make visible the 'real world' sociality of a setting. As a mode of social research it is concerned to produce detailed descriptions of the 'workaday' activities of social actors within specific contexts [Hughes et al 1992; 1993]. It is this objective which is the rationale behind the method's insistence on the development of an 'appreciative stance' through the direct involvement of the researcher in the setting under investigation. It is, as Fielding (1994) suggests;
"a stance which emphasised seeing things from the perspective of those studied before stepping back to make a more detached assessment. .... mindful of the Native American adage that one should 'never criticise a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins'" (Fielding 1994: 156)
Ethnographic investigation views activities as social actions embedded within a socially organised domain and accomplished in and through the day-to-day activities of participants. Ethnography is not, however, a unitary method but is a gloss on various and different analytic frameworks. One which has strongly influenced our own work, is ethnomethodologically inspired ethnography, in which member's methods for accomplishing situations in and through the use of local rationalities becomes the topic of enquiry;
"to treat practical activities, practical circumstances, and practical sociological reasonings as topics of empirical study, and by paying to the most commonplace activities of daily life the attention usually accorded extraordinary events, seeks to learn about them as phenomena in their own right" (Garfinkel 1967)
The focus of ethnomethodologically inspired ethnography is on the investigation of doing the work, work in the raw, work as it is done, and in the ways in which it is done in actual practice, as opposed to work in idealised form. This focus has, again arguably, proved an important analytic tool for the examination of work as lived experience, supplying important clues as to both how work is accomplished and, perhaps, why work is done in the way it is. In contrast to other sociological approaches, ethnomethodologically inspired ethnography attends closely to the distinct character of the work in the setting, giving priority to the fact that these persons are doing 'air traffic controlling', 'registering hotel guests', 'writing code', or in the context of SYCOMT 'authorising a bank loan', 'bouncing a cheque', 'setting up a Standing Order', 'serving a customer' and so on. This draws attention to the multifarious activities which specifically, distinctively, comprise these particular tasks, and, thus, gives detailed characterisations of, and seeks to understand the particular circumstantial conditions for their accomplishment.
CSCW research has identified a number of possible different uses of ethnography within the design process and our experience in SYCOMT, both in the early phase of familiarisation with the work of the bank and the later prototyping stage, has involved further exploration and elaboration of what have been characterised as 'quick & dirty' and 'evaluative' ethnographies (Hughes et al 1994). 'Quick and dirty' ethnography - or its currently fashionable alternative formulation 'lightweight' ethnography - has proved particularly valuable in providing useful knowledge of the social organisation of work in a large scale and distributed work setting in a relatively short space of time and thereby seeks to address a 'standard' criticism of ethnographic techniques, that they tend to be far too prolonged and leisurely to meet the time and budget constraints of business and commerce. Despite the comparatively short time span involved (short, that is, in comparison, for example with traditional anthropological ethnographies), this approach has proved useful both in highlighting areas of interest and, as a response to these issues, as a way of progressively 'focussing' the research effort.
Despite the 'quick & dirty' nature of the study, a number of important and interesting features of work have emerged; notably, and to mention some particular, and favourite, examples; the massive volume of paperwork; the importance of local knowledge and local logics in the accomplishment of work; the phenomenon of 'constant interruption'; the emphasis on 'teamworking', on small-scale constellations of assistance and, in the face of persistent work re-design, the continued reliance on the deployment of various forms of 'skill'. One of most salient findings to emerge from the fieldwork is that despite the obviously 'routine' and procedurally driven nature of the work, dealing with the inevitable contingencies that arise often requires departure from 'routine' in order to get the work done 'as is required'. In many cases, this is a co-operative activity in that occasioned reliance is made on the knowledge and competencies of others in the team. The computer technologies, though they may configure the work and the procedures in variable ways, do not remove the importance of teamwork, 'skills' of various kinds and 'local knowledge' in dealing with everyday contingencies. Another, related, theme of both the initial fieldwork and the 'prototyping' phase has been the varied ways in which the paperwork essential to banking, and the information in the bank's computer systems, are kept in step and how this information is communicated in a large, highly distributed, organisation.
The focus on a single process - such as lending - in a single 'Area' of the bank has both highlighted and further developed the use of 'evaluative ethnography' in CSCW. While undoubtedly 'evaluation' has taken on some of the characteristics of an advertiser's 'weasel word', few practitioners in CSCW would wish to contest its importance, despite acknowledging the difficulties inherent in the evaluation process not least because of uncertainties over both what exactly constitutes an evaluation, how it should be implemented and when and where it should take place. As Twidale et al (1994) argue;
" the view that evaluation should be regarded principally as a summative process which takes place at a given stage in the software life cycle and which yields 'objective' results is, we believe, deeply problematised by CSCW's interest in the 'real world' context of use. " (Twidale et al 1994: 441).
We have sought to use ethnographic techniques in SYCOMT as a particular form of 'illuminative evaluation' (Parlett and Hamilton 1967) illustrating different users' experiences of systems in use and systems in the process of change. Of particular interest in the context of the 'prototyping' has been the process of 'becoming a user' (COMIC D2.3, D2.4) of a system; a notion that extends beyond training or familiarisation to include some idea of 'appreciation'; and, as an extension of this idea, the role of mediators (Viller 1992) and 'champions' in facilitating system change. What this study reinforces is the recognition that system change often involves reconfigurations in the understandings, practises and conceptions of work. System design is work design and furthermore, embedding a system into work activities, achieving a level of routine-ness, generating relevant 'local knowledge', 'gearing' the user into the work, and so on, takes time and involves subtle changes and adjustments in the sociality of work. One final aspect of 'evaluative ethnography' that has become prominent in the prototyping phase of SYCOMT has been a linkage with 'continuous but modest redesign', allowing, indeed encouraging users of a a system to make contributions to its evolution and contribute their skill and experience to its development.
Determining the CSCW implications of an ethnographic study is a design question, the ethnographic study as a descriptive report is an input into the designer's decision making process, and its implications must be assessed relative to other decisions the designer must make. As we have suggested elsewhere, (COMIC D2.3 and D2.4) one way of understanding and structuring this process is in terms of a 'framework'; an essentially practical device for organising and understanding the observations of how the work in any complex setting, including CSCW, 'gets done'. Through analysing and describing the complex social world of a working organisation in terms of a limited number of important orientations we develop a set of 'sensitising concerns' for design decisions; a range of issues that designers can draw on to inform system design - as both Hammersley and Suchman have argued;
"The purpose of ethnographic analysis is to produce sensitising concepts and models that allow people to see events in new ways. The value of these models is to be judged by others in terms of how useful they find them.." (Hammersley 1992: 15)
".. ethnographies provide both general frameworks and specific analyses of relations among work, technology and organization. Workplace ethnographies have identified new orientations for design: for example, the creation and use of shared artifacts and the structuring of communicative practices." Suchman 1995: 61)
To some extent, particularly in the context of a 'quick and dirty' ethnography, our experience in SYCOMT has been that these are also 'sensitising concerns' for the ethnographer.
The framework we employ, illustrated in the diagram above, emphasises three general, important, linked aspects of CSCW - distributed co-ordination; plans and procedures; and the awareness of work. 'Distributed co-ordination' refers to the manifold ways in which the co-ordination of people and tasks are accomplished as a routine feature of 'real world, real time' work. Given the central role of co-ordination within co-operative work the identification of the features of work which promote co-ordination has an obvious relevance for CSCW. In a similar fashion plans and procedures are quintessentially about co-ordination. However, plans and procedures do not apply themselves but have to be used by people in the course of 'real time, real world' settings and are consequently dependent upon the practical understandings about what the plan specifies in these circumstances, using these resources, these people, and so on (Suchman 1987). From the ethnographically informed point of view, plans and procedures are devices which enable workers to 'make sense' of work. This highlights the importance of seeing how and in what ways plans and procedures are interwoven into a highly variegated set of phenomena that make up the social organisation of work. Lastly, 'awareness of work' refers to the way in which work tasks are made available to others as an essential ingredient in 'doing the work' as part of a socially distributed division of labour and the important role this plays in the 'real world real time' social organisation of work. Finally, one result of the SYCOMT fieldwork has been the incorporation of a number of 'cross-cutting themes' into the framework including, for example; 'paperwork and computerwork'; 'space and time'; 'skill' and 'organisational memory' - each of which contributes in various ways to a greater appreciation of the social context of work.
We have used a cybernetic model - Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) - to understand and articulate the adapting structure of the bank during a period of major restructuring and change. Our analysis led to the presentation of three structural options for addressing issues of communication and control and the integration of lending activities. One of these options has been selected by the Bank at a local and national level as the model for formally establishing various kinds of cross-functional teamworking. A computer-supported 'virtual organisation' has been established that is responsible for all aspects of Lending in the Chester & Wirral Area. This virtual organisation represents an 'experiment' in contrast with arrangements in other areas, where the branches and functionally specialised support units are more loosely interconnected.
The VSM has therefore provided a powerful tool and framework for discussing in overview the alignment of structure, strategy and the communication needs of various management and implementation groups within the Bank; it has also provided the background model or template for the more detailed work of implementing changes and strengthening communications (by technological and non-technological means) 'on the ground.' Without such a model, organisation and system design efforts all too often tend to be heavily influenced by existing work groupings and short-term political expediency - reinforcing rather than addressing the dysfunctionalities in the overall organisational system.
The VSM defines in principle where improved communication is required (between which groups of people or 'roles' in the organisation) for long term viability and, in overview, what the general purpose of that communication should be. However, as a model, it does not go into detail about the interactions of the business' activities. This is where we are bringing other tools from the management sciences to bear to help in the more detailed area of implementation and change management.
We have been researching the different types of team and teamworking that can exist in organisations, their cybernetic function (under the general categories of 'primary' or 'regulatory') and how the organisation as a whole can be better integrated through a process of aligning purposes, or task definition, among and between teams; also through an enhanced awareness and management of the loop between the individual/group and organisational task venue. This area of research may well prove useful in increasing our understanding of both managerial competency and team performance in a 'networked environment' in which the emphasis shifts from competent performance of particular (local) tasks to the competent handling of local and distant relationships and the ability to learn from those interactions. This is clearly an area of great significance to CSCW. More work will be required, however, if we are to be able to translate theory into a practical management tool in this area and this may lie outside the current project's scope and available resources.
We are also applying the process of 'deployment flowcharting' to understand the lending process within the bank in greater depth. This work is enabling the braiding of business processes with organisational processes to ensure a more cohesive approach to process-mapping than that traditionally employed by 'process re-engineers' - one that takes into account the organisational context of business processes. Deployment flowcharting deals not only with workflow but with the 'actors' in the process; it helps to chart the relationships between people and groups of people and is thus a 'natural' complementary tool to the VSM, providing a greater level of detail on business processes and organisational relationships. The VSM is able to provide the organising framework to link the process maps to the organisation's structure. We believe that this is the first time that these two particular tools have been combined and are confident that the result will be a significant contribution to informing systems development in the light of co-operative work requirements.
In our view, information technology requirements should be influenced not only by studying the organisation's structure and recommending improvements in communication mechanisms and information flows; a quantitative dimension is also required and this is provided by examining the area of performance and performance management. We are touching upon this area in our work with the 'virtual lending team' in the bank, in helping them to establish performance targets, but whether or not we have time to create a fully functioning 'performance management system' with them remains to be seen.
Essentially, the paradigm that we will be adopting supports the bank's use of the 'Balanced Business Scorecard' as a method for measuring and monitoring performance cross a range of hard and soft criteria. In particular, this paradigm supports:
In practice, the critical variables to measure are those that primary teams at all structural levels perceive as critical to manage their organisational tasks. These perceptions can be improved by helping teams build shared mental models and systemic awareness of their tasks within a broader organisational context.
Ethnography and cybernetics have evolved independently over time, each developing its own tools and methods. It is only in the context of SYCOMT that they have been related in order to produce an integrated approach to study information requirements in banking activities.
The two methodologies are highly complementary in the sense of providing a combination of global and local views of the organisation as a social entity. In the recent micro-level organisation study of the Chester & Wirral area, the two research teams of ethnographers from Lancaster and cyberneticians from SYNCHO initially conducted their data gathering activities in parallel, then combined their findings into a single report. The teams used the two methodologies to cross-validate, corroborate or challenge each other's findings from the fieldwork. The resulting report was structured by the cybernetic analysis, while the ethnographic research was used to provide detailed descriptions and illustrative 'vignettes' of aspects of the lending process. The report thus had the benefit of an analysis of the organisation's structure and people/process issues in terms of the VSM, combined with some detailed examples and quotations from ethnographic fieldnotes showing how the participants themselves viewed the system of which they were a part.
We are working on a more formal integration of the two approaches for the purpose of informing information systems design. Each has a different purpose and stance in relation to this task: ethnography seeks to sensitise designers to the nuances and 'workaday' aspects of organisational life in a particular locality - aspects that might otherwise be overlooked in attempts to provide 'standard' systems spanning several organisational units/localities. Cybernetics, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with aligning the structure of communications in organisations with strategic intent before technology is applied to accelerate the flow and efficiency of those communications. Currently, both Lancaster and SYNCHO are using IT-based tools for data collection and analysis, respectively in support of ethnographic and cybernetic research. These tools are Designer Notepad (DNP) and Viplan. Whether or not there is any merit in having the one methodology make use of the other's tool is an issue still to be resolved through our discussions and joint research work.
A brief outline of Designer Notepad (DNP) and Viplan follows.
Designer's Notepad.
As said earlier, the value of ethnography in design is a matter of some controversy (cf. Anderson,1994, 1995, Rogers, 1995). It could be (it has been) argued that ethnography (or sociology more generally) ought to carry implications for design, that it is, as one of our colleagues so (in)elegantly put it, "time for Sociology to piss or get off the pot". The role of ethnography and the presentational framework as we have envisaged is primarily as an informational input into design, although it can be of critical value in alerting the designer to the actual work practices, thereby ascertaining whether the realities of a given setting conform to the preconceptions of the designer. In many respects, the fieldworker's role is to generate a kind of data which the designer would have neither the time nor inclination to collect, and which is best carried out if it is done as an independent operation within the design process. Consequently, building a relationship based on effective communication between designer and ethnographer is essential. However, it is not enough to maintain that ethnography has a (modest) utility for designers without also confronting the fact that there are problems in enabling designers to utilise ethnography. The problem is how to bridge the gap between the expansive textual expositions of the ethnographer and the abstract, spare, graphical depictions which seek to focus upon 'key elements' and 'core concepts' of the designer. We have sought to do this through the use of an electronic support (the Designer's NotePad (DNP)) where the studies of work are reflected in a medium shared by the designers, where the materials from the study can be available to designers in an accessible fashion, and where they can be decomposed, through the use of a 'viewpoints' presentation - into elements which can be selected in terms of their relevance to the designer's purpose. (Hughes et al 1995; COMIC D2.3)
Of course communication problems are not restricted to those between designers and researchers, but are clearly manifested both in other relationships such as those between mediators and designers; users and designers; and, of particular relevance for SYCOMT, between different researchers, (in particular those with different disciplinary or methodological backgrounds). Our response to the challenge of effective communication has been to focus on a more systematic means of structuring the results of ethnographic studies. This approach has a number of elements: the utilisation of a systematic framework for organising data; and tool support (the DNP) to allow the structured ethnographic record to be presented in an intelligible fashion to designers, to support the development of requirements; to users, mediators and facilitators, to support the understanding, implementation and adaptation of systems; and to other researchers to enhance and facilitate complementarity in organisational research and design. Used as a practical device to assist in communication in the design process, by making available the different rationalities on view in the work setting, the DNP may perform some role in what Anderson (1994) calls 'the play of possibilities for design'.
Integral to all these aspects is the exploitation of 'viewpoints' ( Rodden at al 1995) as a means of structuring the ethnographic material to promote the construction of abstract models of work. Our studies have specified a small (though not exclusive) set of viewpoints; - the setting of the work, the social context of the work and the practical organisation of the work taking place - each presenting a particular focus on the social organisation of work activities and chosen in order to highlight relevant aspects of the sociality of work. The adoption of a technique based on 'viewpoints' allows us to present information in a form that makes explicit the different but complementary interests involved in the design and implementation process (Rodden et al 1995) and thereby provides the starting point for developing fruitful communication between designers, users and researchers since the presentation of these different viewpoints allows alternative views and perspectives (of users or researchers, for example, ethnographic data, cybernetic models or process chains ) to be set aside each other as a resource.
In the context of SYCOMT and the 'prototyping' exercise, examination of the material presented via the various these viewpoints would, for example, provide evidence to users, designers and management, of the different approaches to lending found in the CSB and the Lending Centre, suggested perhaps in one CSB'Lending Officer's rather rueful comment, "You have to have a letter from the Pope to get any unsecured borrowing round here" Perusal of the text notes would also illustrate the ways in which, despite the various manuals and action sheets and computer software support, 'procedure' was routinely re-interpreted in the light of circumstances and 'gut feeling' or, as one Lending Officer put it; "in the end do you trust him to pay the money back?.." Such perusal might, conceivably, have design implications in the sense that it might be valuable to know the circumstances in which routine is strictly followed and when and how it is subject to modification or rejection; to know when 'success' and 'failure' in work are a product of following or deviating from routine procedure. Finally, since our interest is in communicating research results to a varied audience, there is an important methodological point to be made here which is that reading the fieldworker's notes in the various text notes attached to the different designs quickly makes apparent the sheer ( necessary) tedium of routine work in a way that the 'illustrative vignettes', commonly found in research reports, do not. That routine work is often mind-numbingly boring is hardly a novel research finding. Nevertheless there is a danger in the use of 'illustrative vignettes' that the 'vignettes' come to represent 'the data' and, of course, they do not. Such 'vignettes' may commonly exaggerate the unexpected, the unusual and the bizarre and whilst in some circumstances this might be important, the implications for systems design are not always or necessarily obvious in that since design is a 'satisficing' activity both designers and users of systems may prefer to live with and accommodate the exceptions that constitute the 'illustrative vignettes' rather than opting for the uncertainties of system re-design.
Viplan
The aim of Viplan is to model the distribution of human, physical and information resources in the organisation based on VSM models. Hence, it can assist in detecting the communication and information gaps limiting an organisation's chances for viability. Users need to have knowledge of the basic ideas and practices of the Viable System Model before using the software. It is a tool for data collection and analysis which makes use of a Visual Basic user interface and a Prolog based engine. Its main output is a 'recursion-function table' which relates people and resources in the organisation to functions and business processes at appropriate structural levels.
Viplan uses data collected during in depth interviews and essentially aids the user to transform the 'everyday' language from the interviews into the recursive language of the VSM. Activities that constitute or carry out an existing or desirable process that does not match a declared function of an existing organisational unit constitute a 'virtual function.' Virtual functions imply the existence of 'virtual units' and their elucidation is essential to forming a proper understanding of how the organisation works or could be made to work better. Viplan helps, through its logical operations, to work out possible recursive structures consistent with an existing or desirable organisation's identity. An outcome of the modelling is the detection of the human, material and information resources producing or required for producing a particular primary activity.
The recursive properties of the model make it possible to apply the same completeness and consistency criteria to any organisational unit, from small teams to large organisations, as long as it is intended to be a viable enterprise. Specific business processes can also become the focus of a Viplan analysis, enabling the design of business processes that are organisationally functional.
As part of the Chester & Wirral organisational study, a cybernetic analysis was made of teams and teamworking in the Area. The existing teams that were recognised by interviewees were analysed and categorised according to cybernetic functional criteria and this analysis was used to recommend the development of further types of teams that appeared under-represented in the current organisation. We believe that this type of analysis represents an innovative use of cybernetics and the VSM and offers scope for further application/development. In particular, while methods abound for analysing internal team dynamics, there appear to be very few methodologies available that specifically help organisations to design the deployment, constitution, purpose and systemic function of work teams.
Additionally, as part of the implementation phase of the project, we are looking to pilot an innovative facilitation process with support tools aimed at leveraging team performance through the creation of shared team mental models. This process is particularly useful when dealing with diverse, multi-functional teams which need to make decisions and act on important, complex business issues. We will be combining various systems thinking tools and approaches to progress a particular team's thinking from individual concerns couched in their own language to a more systemic way of understanding and dealing with the issues of change management with which they are faced. As an outcome of this research we hope to develop a method to support and enhance team performance, using computer support where appropriate as a modelling and memory aid.
We will also be field-testing a computer-supported participative process aimed at establishing an organisation's critical processes and critical success factors. Using a group of 30 managers, a set of protocols based on cybernetic and geometric principles will be field tested and refined in the light of IS strategy clarification requirements.
As indicated under 1.2.2, cybernetics brings a particular perspective to the area of competency research, in helping individuals and teams to be more aware of the core skill of complexity management, which is realised primarily through strategies for managing organisational relationships. This concept is closely linked to that of the learning organisation, as the ability of individuals to develop their competence in an organisational context is seen to depend to a large extent on their ability to learn from their interactions with others. As stated previously, this is clearly an area of interest to CSCW research, but more resource may be required than is available under the current project to translate theory into practice.
Evidence from ethnographic fieldwork in the bank problematises the common, 'bin-like' (Walsh & Ungson) view of 'organisational memory', suggesting that the notion adds little to our understanding of various practises that occur within organisations which are, perhaps, better understood in terms of the more familiar notion of 'organisational recording'. While it is evidently the case that organisations need forms of record keeping, process maps, formal accounts of who does what when, and so on, and that CSCW systems can be designed to augument and support these processes; our experiences suggest that CSCW systems should seek to support work as it is practically accomplished rather than designed to support idealised versions of the work process, idealisations which are likely to have only a weak relationship to the practicalities of situated work.
The general finding of the field studies is that the activity of 'remembering' is resolutely embedded in the social activities of work; consequently formalising this practical process of 'remembering' into 'organisational memory' can, through the disembedding of work activity from its social context, have consequences for the practical accomplishment of work. That is, the problem of organisational memory, of what we have come to call 'the Mavis phenomenon' (with 'Mavis' as the stereotypical older, female worker who 'knew how to get things done') is unlikely to be resolved via a model of organisational behaviour based on formal representations of procedures and practices rather than one grounded in empirical observations of the practical accomplishment of work. Providing computer support for and through abstract models of organisational behaviour effectively rides roughshod over the subtleties and contingent responses of 'real world, real time' organisational behaviour, - we need to provide support for actual behaviour rather than abstract models of that behaviour. As Bentley et al write;
"we must therefore have a clear understanding of the workplace and the way in which humans interact with each other in that workplace. We must also understand how they actually use interactive systems and the ways in which they manage and process information." (Bentley et al 1993:6).
and as such this is, perhaps unsurprisingly, as much a methodological recommendation - in support of ethnographic methods - as a commentary on the nature of organisational memory.
In addition, our project identifies a need for more research and understanding of managerial responses to change; of the complexities of 'managing the plan' in a changing business and organisational environment. In particular our fieldwork in an organisation undergoing changes in organisational culture, structure, working practises and technology indicates, at the very least, some of the complexities and tensions involved in this process and suggests a need to more fully understand some of the problems of implementing strategically formulated change policies and reconciling, at a practical, 'day-to-day' level, long term policies and short term contingencies.
Throughout, our research efforts have had commercialisation in mind. The bank has been keen to capture, enhance and replicate/disseminate best practice ideas across its network. SYNCHO has had the opportunity to apply its cybernetic expertise within a large blue chip financial institution and this research project has provided a valuable test-bed for its thinking on supporting CSCW and informing systems development. This opportunity complements and offers a substantial alternative to 'experimenting' in a commercial environment where time pressures would not have easily permitted scaling up of innovative thinking. Lancaster University has had the chance to develop new courses for their Masters and other executive development programmes.
To capture the learning from the project and exploit this in commercial environments, the SYCOMT consortium is developing the following 'products':
These are a series of training modules/workshops and methodology guides designed to introduce and use the concepts of ethnography and cybernetics for those seeking alternative approaches to inform systems development. Both Lancaster and SYNCHO will be using these kits as tools for education and dissemination of their approaches in commercial and academic environments and SYNCHO will be using them to inform its consulting activities.
This substantial document will capture our learning in applying ethnography and cybernetics to CSCW in a banking environment. It includes a section on the business context for CSCW, outlining user needs and market trends, an exposition of the application of technology to CSCW in general, descriptions of the two principal approaches used in the project, and an analysis of their combined application in the context of the bank. It is hoped that this handbook will provide industry, and the IT community in particular, with insights into the potential use of our methods and tools.
The project has given us the opportunity to field test various methods and techniques of relevance to CSCW, for example: lightweight and evaluative ethnography; methods from both ethnography and cybernetics for the definition, structuring and presentation of 'requirements' for information and information systems; a method to combine the study of business and organisational processes; a method to help primary work teams establish relevant criteria of performance and actively track their performance; a framework for understanding the nature of teams and teamworking and diagnosing 'gaps' and requirements of teams; and processes and computer-aided facilitation tools for improving team performance.
This field testing process will enable us to learn extensively from using these tools in a 'live' commercial environment, both separately and in certain combinations, so that we can enhance them and further develop their relevance and applicability to the commercial world. It should then be possible to market these approaches in the light of and with reference to this experience and the feedback we have received from our 'users' in the bank.
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