![]() This leader knew exactly what he wanted to do. He joined the vice-president's staff after persuading the vice-president that the product could be made competitive within a year. ![]() He had a strong technical background that included experience customizing the product for a major customer and a thorough understanding of this customer's needs based on contacts with managers and users. This unproductive state of affairs was overcome by a “super designer” brought in from a group that supported the product at a distant site (see for a description of the roles of super designers in software development). Frequent reorganizations and some staff reductions contributed to both the indecision and the sense of urgency. Every option could be the topic of seemingly endless discussion and any decision could later be overruled by someone outside the group deciding that it did not fit the organization's marketing strategy. The same issues arose repeatedly, with little sense of moving toward a consensus. The projects provided some product enhancements but failed to produce an acceptable long-term development plan.Īs recounted by those who had been involved, these projects were overwhelmed by the difficulty of deciding what to do. As time passed a sense of urgency grew and these projects were allocated greater resources. For two more years they vacillated between the strategies of building a new product and modifying the old one. The organization had anticipated this problem years earlier and set up a small research project to design a new product, but after a year they were disappointed with its progress and canceled the project in favor of major modifications to the existing product. Some new functionality and small changes to the interface had appeared in periodic releases, but as the product aged, maintenance and modernization became increasingly difficult and it was rapidly losing ground to competitors’ newer products. The organization was responsible for a CAD product that started as a university project and then survived more than five years in a dynamic marketplace. Issues investigated included the organizational context for interface development, the tools used in the organization, how those tools affect the work, which different disciplines are involved in interface development, how people from different disciplines coordinate their contributions, and how the organizational structure affects interdisciplinary coordination. Through interviews, we learned about preceding activities and planned activities, and explored the perspectives of other members of the development organization. As a member of the interface team, the investigator acquired first-hand an appreciation of the methods and tools used in that period. ![]() ![]() He interviewed about twenty-five people, starting with the interface team and later including other developers, members of technical support groups, and managers. Over the course of a month, he participated in interface design and interviewed people throughout the organization, primarily people who contributed directly or indirectly to interface design or development. The investigator joined an interface team. The organization was designing a new version of an existing product. Poltrock, Jonathan Grudin, in Computerization and Controversy (Second Edition), 1996 A Case History Based on Participant ObservationĪs one of a series of participant – observer studies carried out at major computer companies, an investigator joined a software development organization that consisted of over seventy people responsible for the development of a major product that is sold internationally. ![]() Interface Development in a Large Organization: An Observational Study* ![]()
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