Using work domain analysis to evaluate the impact of technological change on the performance of complex socio-technical systems

摘要

Complex socio-technical systems are notoriously difficult to evaluate.nThe relationships between measurable processes and high-level descriptions ofnperformance are neither clear nor well understood. Consequently, it is extremelyndifficult to relate changes made to physical components to overall systemnperformance. Using the relationships captured in work domain analysis,nthis paper introduces a new approach for evaluating the impact of systemnchanges. An event and actor-independent model is used to describe the givenndomain at a number of levels of abstraction. The relationship between thesendescriptions forms the basis of this approach. A case study of a recentlynupgraded UK land military headquarters is used to demonstrate the approach.nAs the presented case study will show, a clear link can be made betweennsystem changes that result in an increase in overall system performance, as wellnas changes that result in a degradation. It is contended that the describednapproach adds important structure to the way that evaluations of complexnsocio-technical systems are considered, creating a traceable link betweennchanges made at a component level to high-order descriptions of domainnpurpose.