One Year
on the
LSCITS Project
John Rooksby
Research Fellow at
St Andrews
Photo by bensonkua on flickr

What have I achieved
so far?
4 publications
6 (or more?) talks
1 Tutorial
115 posts on Elgg
96 updates on Twitter
Research Themes:
Systems Testing
Software Development Practices
Diagnostic Work
Healthcare
Resilience and failure

What have I achieved
so far?
Outputs:
• 4 publications
• 6 (or more?) talks
• 1 Tutorial
• 115 posts on Elgg
• 96 updates on Twitter
Research Themes:
• Systems Testing
• Software Development Practices
• Diagnostic Work
• Healthcare
• Resilience and failure

What have I achieved
so far?
Outputs:
• 4 publications
• 6 (or more?) talks
• 1 Tutorial
• 115 posts on Elgg
• 96 updates on Twitter
Research Themes:
• Systems Testing
• Software Development Practices
• Diagnostic Work
• Healthcare
• Resilience and failure
Image from “Big ball of mud” http://www.laputan.org/mud/

Theme 1 Systems Testing

Two publications on testing
1 Journal paper
Accepted (with corrections) by the
Journal of Computer Supported
Cooperative Work. Published late „09?
2 A workshop paper
CHASE 2008 (A Workshop at ICSE08)
These papers examine testing at 4 sites,
and describe how testing
satisficesorganisational concerns.
Both report pre-LSCITS research but were
done on LSCITS time. Both partially
LSCITS related.

Further work on Systems Testing
I have been considering testing from an LSCITS perspective
I gave a talk at St Andrews examining
1) Testing and Heathrow Terminal 5
2) Testing and the PASS Passport System
Made testing one of the themes
at the St Andrews Socio-Technical
Systems Workshop
Have written something about
testing in the „Newcastle‟
report

Theme 2 Development Practices

PPIG 2008
I organised the conference PPIG08
(Psychology of Programming
Interest Group)
• 3 Days
•20 Papers
• 3 Keynotes
• 2 Tutorials
• PhD Symposium
• Printed Proceedings

Tutorial
I gave 1/3 of a tutorial on
“Fieldwork for Design”
With Mark Rouncefield and Dave Randall

Programming and Conversation
A continuing interest for me
Hoping to submit something on ‘talk about users’ to a journal
Recently I have been analysing videos from a programmer ‘Dojo’
I gave a presentation on this in Edinburgh last November and will probably
be doing one at a workshop in August at St Andrews.

Theme 3 Diagnostic Work

Journal Special Issue
I co-editted a Special issue of Journal of
Computer Supported Cooperative Work on
“Diagnostic Work”. Forthcoming June 09
(online now).
7 papers on topics such as
• Anomaly response at NASA
• A friendly fire incident
• Ambulance Dispatch
• System Troubleshooting

Theme 4 Healthcare

Diabetes Service Study
I have been working with Gordon on this
BUT
It was stalled for a long time because of
difficulties with our collaborators

Electronic Prescription
Services
I gave a talk about this at St Andrews in
February.
It relates to some work I‟ve been doing with
a couple of people at Lancaster
EPS is interesting because:
• Its part of NPfIT
• Its one of the more successful
parts (but hardly a success!)
• It is to be used by people not
employed by the NHS
(Pharmacists and GPs)
• The complexities are not
technical but socio-technical

Theme 5 Resilience

Leeds - St Andrews
Resilience
Collaboration
I have been working with Adeel, Andy,
Bushra, Dave G, and Gordon on a review
document giving an overview of resilience
from a socio-technical perspective

Social Media and Systems
Resilience
Failure
I have become interested in how social
media is used during systems downtime,
both by the users of those systems and the
providers.

Work with Rolls Royce
Resilience
Gordon and I have been working with Rolls
Royce on issues to do with Socio-Technical
Systems
Still early days on this…

Conclusion Healthcare
Resilience
Systems Testing
Diagnostic
Work
Studies of developers
Looking back Looking Forward