This document discusses organizational factors that can contribute to failures and disasters. It provides examples like the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry accident, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Space Shuttle disasters, and Bhopal gas tragedy. Common organizational issues identified include communication failures, lack of coordination, cost prioritization over safety, and failures of responsibility. The document also discusses definitions of organizations, how their structure can impact dependability, and relationships between organizational and software structures.
Workplace bullying is common but often unrecognized. While there are laws against harassment and discrimination, direct complaints about bullying cannot be made to tribunals. It is best to first explore other options like speaking to the bully, managers, or union representatives. Keeping a diary of incidents can help if legal action becomes necessary. Bullying negatively impacts staff turnover, sickness, and stress levels across entire organizations.
This document provides advice for someone who has been asked to head up an employee involvement initiative at their company. It recommends that they first understand the current situation by identifying any demotivators that are preventing employees from doing good work. Their goal should be to create an environment where employees find their own motivation. Finally, it notes that changing a company's culture and empowering employees will require selling the idea to managers who may be resistant to giving up control.
Hear from our expert panel of speakers:
Deloitte
Boral Cement
Energy Australia
Macquarie University
NSW Department of Human Services
Comcare
National eHealth Transition Authority
National Support Office,Family Court of Australia
Datarati
The document discusses critical infrastructure and control systems. It focuses on SCADA systems which are commonly used to monitor and control infrastructure. The document outlines concerns about the security and dependability of SCADA systems as they increasingly rely on standard IT technologies. It then discusses the internet as digital infrastructure and notes concerns about the resilience of the internet, citing studies that found the internet could experience failures without proper protections and understanding of its components. The document recommends better understanding failures, further resilience research, promoting good practices, and greater policymaker engagement.
CS5032 Lecture 13: organisations and failureJohn Rooksby
This document discusses the qualities of high reliability organizations (HROs) and how they differ from low reliability organizations based on five key principles:
1. HROs prioritize reliability over efficiency while low reliability orgs prioritize efficiency.
2. HROs are preoccupied with failure while low reliability orgs focus on success.
3. HROs ensure everyone understands the big picture while low reliability orgs rely on narrow focus.
4. HROs are reluctant to oversimplify while low reliability orgs rely on simplicity.
5. HROs decentralize decision making while low reliability orgs centralize decisions.
It provides examples of nuclear aircraft carriers demonstrating HRO
CS5032 Lecture 10: Learning from failure 2John Rooksby
The document discusses investigations into accidents and failures. It explains that investigations aim to identify underlying causes rather than just immediate causes. The basic steps of an investigation include collecting evidence, analyzing facts, making judgements about causes and responsibilities, and making recommendations. Complex events require narrative approaches, causal chains, or systems approaches to analysis. While investigations provide lessons, predicting all problems is difficult given the complex nature of systems.
This document provides an overview of critical infrastructure. It discusses what infrastructure is, including national, organizational, and digital infrastructures. It defines critical infrastructure as infrastructure that is essential for society to function. The document notes that infrastructure is vulnerable to faults, decay, accidents, attacks, and natural disasters. It discusses perspectives on critical infrastructure from the UK, EU, and USA. Key points made are that critical infrastructure is complex with many interdependencies, emerges over the long term through social and institutional processes rather than rational design, and vulnerabilities exist at both the system and component level.
Workplace bullying is common but often unrecognized. While there are laws against harassment and discrimination, direct complaints about bullying cannot be made to tribunals. It is best to first explore other options like speaking to the bully, managers, or union representatives. Keeping a diary of incidents can help if legal action becomes necessary. Bullying negatively impacts staff turnover, sickness, and stress levels across entire organizations.
This document provides advice for someone who has been asked to head up an employee involvement initiative at their company. It recommends that they first understand the current situation by identifying any demotivators that are preventing employees from doing good work. Their goal should be to create an environment where employees find their own motivation. Finally, it notes that changing a company's culture and empowering employees will require selling the idea to managers who may be resistant to giving up control.
Hear from our expert panel of speakers:
Deloitte
Boral Cement
Energy Australia
Macquarie University
NSW Department of Human Services
Comcare
National eHealth Transition Authority
National Support Office,Family Court of Australia
Datarati
The document discusses critical infrastructure and control systems. It focuses on SCADA systems which are commonly used to monitor and control infrastructure. The document outlines concerns about the security and dependability of SCADA systems as they increasingly rely on standard IT technologies. It then discusses the internet as digital infrastructure and notes concerns about the resilience of the internet, citing studies that found the internet could experience failures without proper protections and understanding of its components. The document recommends better understanding failures, further resilience research, promoting good practices, and greater policymaker engagement.
CS5032 Lecture 13: organisations and failureJohn Rooksby
This document discusses the qualities of high reliability organizations (HROs) and how they differ from low reliability organizations based on five key principles:
1. HROs prioritize reliability over efficiency while low reliability orgs prioritize efficiency.
2. HROs are preoccupied with failure while low reliability orgs focus on success.
3. HROs ensure everyone understands the big picture while low reliability orgs rely on narrow focus.
4. HROs are reluctant to oversimplify while low reliability orgs rely on simplicity.
5. HROs decentralize decision making while low reliability orgs centralize decisions.
It provides examples of nuclear aircraft carriers demonstrating HRO
CS5032 Lecture 10: Learning from failure 2John Rooksby
The document discusses investigations into accidents and failures. It explains that investigations aim to identify underlying causes rather than just immediate causes. The basic steps of an investigation include collecting evidence, analyzing facts, making judgements about causes and responsibilities, and making recommendations. Complex events require narrative approaches, causal chains, or systems approaches to analysis. While investigations provide lessons, predicting all problems is difficult given the complex nature of systems.
This document provides an overview of critical infrastructure. It discusses what infrastructure is, including national, organizational, and digital infrastructures. It defines critical infrastructure as infrastructure that is essential for society to function. The document notes that infrastructure is vulnerable to faults, decay, accidents, attacks, and natural disasters. It discusses perspectives on critical infrastructure from the UK, EU, and USA. Key points made are that critical infrastructure is complex with many interdependencies, emerges over the long term through social and institutional processes rather than rational design, and vulnerabilities exist at both the system and component level.
Why the systemic risks in Enterprise Cloud Computing could cripple your busin...Livingstone Advisory
Organisations that have successfully implemented standalone cloud systems may feel that they have won the war against complex and expensive enterprise IT. That feeling may not last too long once these systems need to be integrated with other systems, cloud or otherwise. The minute you start integrating your cloud with these other systems, you have what is termed a Hybrid Cloud.
Your IT risks are now becoming systemic risks – a point not lost in the most recent KPMG 2012 Audit Institute Report which identified “IT Risk & Emerging Technologies” as the second highest concern for 2012
In this presentation, Rob Livingstone, suggests some practical approaches that CEOs, COOs and CFOs should be considering in the identification and mitigation of the pitfalls of Cloud computing in the enterprise.
RDAP13 Mark Parsons: The Research Data Alliance: Making Data WorkASIS&T
Mark Parsons, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Mark A. Parsons and Francine Berman: "The Research Data Alliance: Making Data Work"
Panel: Global scientific data infrastructure
Research Data Access & Preservation Summit 2013
Baltimore, MD April 4, 2013 #rdap13
This week we discuss about the relevance of studying production in media studies. From films to electronic devices, production helps us to understand how media involves labor.
This document summarizes a presentation on inter-firm networks and cluster development. It defines networks as organizational forms between markets and hierarchies that involve more structure and interaction than markets. Key points:
- Networks are defined by the relationships between organizations and their interactions, with a common goal but different specific goals.
- Italy has over 200 recognized industrial districts concentrated in traditional industries like textiles and machinery. Districts involve geographic proximity, specialization, and intensive inter-firm cooperation.
- Factors supporting networks/districts include locational economies, social capital like trust, and collective learning. Policy can facilitate growth and innovation. Successful networks transition to global, virtual partnerships leveraging new technologies.
Cyber forensic readiness cybercon2012 adv j fickJacqueline Fick
This document provides an overview of cyber forensic readiness and its importance for organizations. It defines cyber forensic readiness as an organization's ability to maximize the collection of credible digital evidence to aid investigations in order to reduce response time and costs. It discusses key trends like increased connectivity and data sharing that impact organizations. The document outlines why organizations need to be prepared to respond to cyber incidents, what happens to potential evidence before an investigation, and the risks of not properly managing digital evidence. It provides examples of how unprepared organizations can spend 34 hours investigating what took a hacker 30 minutes. The document closes by listing important questions for organizations to consider regarding their cyber forensic readiness and providing recommendations for developing plans and policies to improve readiness.
These slides contain frameworks and concepts to build the capacity of NGO staff to monitor and evaluate their work. They contain some ideas that are relevant and useful for the M&E of complex systems.
Many thanks to Carlene Baugh and Scott Yetter from CHF International for sharing this material with MaFI.
Parallels in private_and_public_sector_governancenadeemshafi111
This document discusses parallels between governance in the private and public sectors. While private sector governance has received more attention due to corporate collapses, public sector governance has developed along a similar path. Both sectors deal with issues like the role of managers and stakeholder involvement. The paper contrasts governance models in each sector and notes some desirable attributes, like accountability and transparency, that should be present in both. Key elements of governance models include organizational structures, principles and values, relevant laws, and theories of good governance mechanisms.
Successfully Kickstarting Data Governance's Social Dynamics: Define, Collabor...Stijn (Stan) Christiaens
The document discusses data governance and outlines several key points:
1) Data governance is about bringing business and IT together to govern data as a key enterprise asset and ensure there is a common understanding of what data means.
2) Existing tools and approaches are insufficient for handling today's data complexity, and semantic technology can help by clarifying the meaning of data elements.
3) Effective data governance requires a combination of technology, organizational structure, methodology, and culture to define roles and processes for validating and reconciling data across stakeholders.
Delivered at Trend Micro's Executive briefing events Sydney and Melbourne 5-6 June 2017 on Australia's new Mandatory Data Breach Notification legislation. YoutubeVideo available at https://youtu.be/j5nmY916H7k
Defining high level organizational architecturesNicolay Worren
The consultant was hired to help clarify roles and responsibilities across a large Nordic bank's organizational units. They gathered data through interviews and documentation. They mapped the bank's high-level functions to its organizational structures, noting deviations from its governance principles. They also modeled alternative structures with more independent functions to potentially improve performance by reducing coupling between roles. The analysis aimed to increase understanding of current issues and raise awareness of design options.
MacCanna, Leo, Brennan, Niamh and O’Higgins, Eleanor [1999] National Networks...Prof Niamh M. Brennan
This paper maps the network of interlocking directorships formed by the boards of the top 50 financial and 200 non-financial companies in Ireland. The Irish network is compared with those in ten countries, based on the same sample size and selection criteria as used in this paper, using the methods and theory of Social Network Analysis (SNA). Fundamental to the paper is the idea that the network of interlocking directorates is in some way structured, and not the result of random processes.
Irish boards were found to have a relatively loose connected network structure which is sparser and less dense than those of other countries. This is reflected in the relatively low percentage of multiple directors and the relatively fewer number of directorships per multiple director.
In general, indigenous Irish public companies tended to be central in the network, while a disproportionately large number of foreign and private companies were isolated on the periphery. However, a number of foreign-owned companies were central to the network - in particular, those which started as indigenous Irish companies which were subsequently taken over.
When account is taken of the nature of the Irish economy and business in comparison with that of the ten other countries, it is seen that the opportunities for company interlinking at board level in Ireland are relatively fewer. However, within these constraints, there is a thriving network of corporate power in Ireland.
Twelve lessons to Develop and Sustain Online Knowledge CommunitiesJose Claudio Terra
O desenvolvimento de comunidades de prática vem se tornando uma das ferramentas mais importantes na Gestão do Conhecimento. Assim, artigo apresenta e discute doze lições práticas para criar e manter comunidades de prática virtuais em empresas.
www.terraforum.com.br
The document provides an agenda and details for the Legal Week Corporate Governance & Risk Forum taking place on October 18, 2012 in London. The one-day conference will focus on issues related to corporate governance, compliance, and risk management. It will feature panel discussions, workshops, and keynote speeches from experts in these fields. Topics will include the Eurozone crisis, corporate culture, extradition laws, benchmarking governance, managing outsourced risk, and preparing for unforeseeable events. The event is aimed at in-house lawyers, compliance officers, and risk professionals.
The document discusses the concept of "externalisation" as applying web principles to corporate IT systems to better facilitate information sharing. It defines externalisation as breaking down applications and databases to expose meaningful business information while also making tacit knowledge explicit. The document provides an example framework for externalisation and argues that many standards and tools now exist to implement externalised approaches that leverage both internal and external information sources.
This whitepaper sets out the 1E view of how organizations can blend the benefits of both centralized and decentralized approaches to IT management, resulting in reduced costs, greater business agility and happier, more motivated users.
The Collaborative Dilemma of Network Based Development, Roger NormannSportacentrs
The document discusses the challenges of network-based development. It argues that networks emerge strongly due to their ability to access resources outside markets and bureaucracies. However, network development is difficult as it requires consensus on priorities, roles, and steering. The document outlines challenges around collaboration and proposes that effective networks require unifying strategies, a collaborative culture, and competent shared leadership with broad legitimacy.
This document provides an introduction to Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM). It discusses key cybernetics concepts like variety, variety attenuators and amplifiers, self-organizing systems, and Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety. The VSM aims to identify the necessary structures for a system to remain viable and cope with its environment by matching its variety. It can be applied to analyze organizations, help diagnose problems, and improve functioning.
UNDERSTANDING THE THEORIES AND TYPES OF ENTERPRISE NETWORKSNGANG PEREZ
To begin, Casson and Giusta (2007) said a network refers to a set of elements or members that are connected to each other. Seibert, Kraimer, and Liden (2001) defined a network as “the pattern of ties linking a defined set of persons or social actors”. Before I go any further, to you, what do you think a network is all about? What opinion do you hold in your mind about this concept? From the two definitions I just presented, you will realize that connections or ties are the fundamental features of all networks. The connections are the results of relationships between the members. In addition, all members of a network are either directly or indirectly linked to each other (Casson & Giusta 2007). Thus, networks consist of a set of elements or members that are connected to each other as a result of the relationships of the members. Therefore, your class is made up of a network of individual members called students. Also, your church is made up of a network of Indi dual people called brethren as well as your family is made of a network of individual persons called family members. Almost in every situation in normal life and business, a network is bound to exist. This makes me tempted to say Man cannot live without a network, so also do businesses need networks to survive. I find it challenging when I hear people say, “I don’t need another man in this life” or “I can succeed without the help of any man” and there are many examples of such comment’s rights? I’m sure you too often hear people make statements. It's funny, and yes truly funny because such statements are made may be from ignorance or usually from nonsense pride. Hear me and hear me well! Even to go to heaven, you need God’s network if not you lie yourself. One famous Cameroonian politician once said, “you scratch my back, I scratch your back”. Therefore, the importance of networks cannot be overemphasized in business.
Using an iterative approach for app development
The document outlines an iterative approach to developing personal tracking apps. It discusses:
1) Talking to people early to understand needs and exploring existing apps for ideas.
2) Sketching many alternative designs and prototyping top ideas to get early feedback.
3) Developing functional prototypes, collecting usage data and interviewing users to refine designs.
4) Releasing versions of successful apps, continuing to collect data and feedback to guide future improvements through an ongoing iterative process.
The key benefits of this iterative process are identifying the right design early through testing, and obtaining rapid feedback to inform each cycle of refinement.
Why the systemic risks in Enterprise Cloud Computing could cripple your busin...Livingstone Advisory
Organisations that have successfully implemented standalone cloud systems may feel that they have won the war against complex and expensive enterprise IT. That feeling may not last too long once these systems need to be integrated with other systems, cloud or otherwise. The minute you start integrating your cloud with these other systems, you have what is termed a Hybrid Cloud.
Your IT risks are now becoming systemic risks – a point not lost in the most recent KPMG 2012 Audit Institute Report which identified “IT Risk & Emerging Technologies” as the second highest concern for 2012
In this presentation, Rob Livingstone, suggests some practical approaches that CEOs, COOs and CFOs should be considering in the identification and mitigation of the pitfalls of Cloud computing in the enterprise.
RDAP13 Mark Parsons: The Research Data Alliance: Making Data WorkASIS&T
Mark Parsons, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Mark A. Parsons and Francine Berman: "The Research Data Alliance: Making Data Work"
Panel: Global scientific data infrastructure
Research Data Access & Preservation Summit 2013
Baltimore, MD April 4, 2013 #rdap13
This week we discuss about the relevance of studying production in media studies. From films to electronic devices, production helps us to understand how media involves labor.
This document summarizes a presentation on inter-firm networks and cluster development. It defines networks as organizational forms between markets and hierarchies that involve more structure and interaction than markets. Key points:
- Networks are defined by the relationships between organizations and their interactions, with a common goal but different specific goals.
- Italy has over 200 recognized industrial districts concentrated in traditional industries like textiles and machinery. Districts involve geographic proximity, specialization, and intensive inter-firm cooperation.
- Factors supporting networks/districts include locational economies, social capital like trust, and collective learning. Policy can facilitate growth and innovation. Successful networks transition to global, virtual partnerships leveraging new technologies.
Cyber forensic readiness cybercon2012 adv j fickJacqueline Fick
This document provides an overview of cyber forensic readiness and its importance for organizations. It defines cyber forensic readiness as an organization's ability to maximize the collection of credible digital evidence to aid investigations in order to reduce response time and costs. It discusses key trends like increased connectivity and data sharing that impact organizations. The document outlines why organizations need to be prepared to respond to cyber incidents, what happens to potential evidence before an investigation, and the risks of not properly managing digital evidence. It provides examples of how unprepared organizations can spend 34 hours investigating what took a hacker 30 minutes. The document closes by listing important questions for organizations to consider regarding their cyber forensic readiness and providing recommendations for developing plans and policies to improve readiness.
These slides contain frameworks and concepts to build the capacity of NGO staff to monitor and evaluate their work. They contain some ideas that are relevant and useful for the M&E of complex systems.
Many thanks to Carlene Baugh and Scott Yetter from CHF International for sharing this material with MaFI.
Parallels in private_and_public_sector_governancenadeemshafi111
This document discusses parallels between governance in the private and public sectors. While private sector governance has received more attention due to corporate collapses, public sector governance has developed along a similar path. Both sectors deal with issues like the role of managers and stakeholder involvement. The paper contrasts governance models in each sector and notes some desirable attributes, like accountability and transparency, that should be present in both. Key elements of governance models include organizational structures, principles and values, relevant laws, and theories of good governance mechanisms.
Successfully Kickstarting Data Governance's Social Dynamics: Define, Collabor...Stijn (Stan) Christiaens
The document discusses data governance and outlines several key points:
1) Data governance is about bringing business and IT together to govern data as a key enterprise asset and ensure there is a common understanding of what data means.
2) Existing tools and approaches are insufficient for handling today's data complexity, and semantic technology can help by clarifying the meaning of data elements.
3) Effective data governance requires a combination of technology, organizational structure, methodology, and culture to define roles and processes for validating and reconciling data across stakeholders.
Delivered at Trend Micro's Executive briefing events Sydney and Melbourne 5-6 June 2017 on Australia's new Mandatory Data Breach Notification legislation. YoutubeVideo available at https://youtu.be/j5nmY916H7k
Defining high level organizational architecturesNicolay Worren
The consultant was hired to help clarify roles and responsibilities across a large Nordic bank's organizational units. They gathered data through interviews and documentation. They mapped the bank's high-level functions to its organizational structures, noting deviations from its governance principles. They also modeled alternative structures with more independent functions to potentially improve performance by reducing coupling between roles. The analysis aimed to increase understanding of current issues and raise awareness of design options.
MacCanna, Leo, Brennan, Niamh and O’Higgins, Eleanor [1999] National Networks...Prof Niamh M. Brennan
This paper maps the network of interlocking directorships formed by the boards of the top 50 financial and 200 non-financial companies in Ireland. The Irish network is compared with those in ten countries, based on the same sample size and selection criteria as used in this paper, using the methods and theory of Social Network Analysis (SNA). Fundamental to the paper is the idea that the network of interlocking directorates is in some way structured, and not the result of random processes.
Irish boards were found to have a relatively loose connected network structure which is sparser and less dense than those of other countries. This is reflected in the relatively low percentage of multiple directors and the relatively fewer number of directorships per multiple director.
In general, indigenous Irish public companies tended to be central in the network, while a disproportionately large number of foreign and private companies were isolated on the periphery. However, a number of foreign-owned companies were central to the network - in particular, those which started as indigenous Irish companies which were subsequently taken over.
When account is taken of the nature of the Irish economy and business in comparison with that of the ten other countries, it is seen that the opportunities for company interlinking at board level in Ireland are relatively fewer. However, within these constraints, there is a thriving network of corporate power in Ireland.
Twelve lessons to Develop and Sustain Online Knowledge CommunitiesJose Claudio Terra
O desenvolvimento de comunidades de prática vem se tornando uma das ferramentas mais importantes na Gestão do Conhecimento. Assim, artigo apresenta e discute doze lições práticas para criar e manter comunidades de prática virtuais em empresas.
www.terraforum.com.br
The document provides an agenda and details for the Legal Week Corporate Governance & Risk Forum taking place on October 18, 2012 in London. The one-day conference will focus on issues related to corporate governance, compliance, and risk management. It will feature panel discussions, workshops, and keynote speeches from experts in these fields. Topics will include the Eurozone crisis, corporate culture, extradition laws, benchmarking governance, managing outsourced risk, and preparing for unforeseeable events. The event is aimed at in-house lawyers, compliance officers, and risk professionals.
The document discusses the concept of "externalisation" as applying web principles to corporate IT systems to better facilitate information sharing. It defines externalisation as breaking down applications and databases to expose meaningful business information while also making tacit knowledge explicit. The document provides an example framework for externalisation and argues that many standards and tools now exist to implement externalised approaches that leverage both internal and external information sources.
This whitepaper sets out the 1E view of how organizations can blend the benefits of both centralized and decentralized approaches to IT management, resulting in reduced costs, greater business agility and happier, more motivated users.
The Collaborative Dilemma of Network Based Development, Roger NormannSportacentrs
The document discusses the challenges of network-based development. It argues that networks emerge strongly due to their ability to access resources outside markets and bureaucracies. However, network development is difficult as it requires consensus on priorities, roles, and steering. The document outlines challenges around collaboration and proposes that effective networks require unifying strategies, a collaborative culture, and competent shared leadership with broad legitimacy.
This document provides an introduction to Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM). It discusses key cybernetics concepts like variety, variety attenuators and amplifiers, self-organizing systems, and Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety. The VSM aims to identify the necessary structures for a system to remain viable and cope with its environment by matching its variety. It can be applied to analyze organizations, help diagnose problems, and improve functioning.
UNDERSTANDING THE THEORIES AND TYPES OF ENTERPRISE NETWORKSNGANG PEREZ
To begin, Casson and Giusta (2007) said a network refers to a set of elements or members that are connected to each other. Seibert, Kraimer, and Liden (2001) defined a network as “the pattern of ties linking a defined set of persons or social actors”. Before I go any further, to you, what do you think a network is all about? What opinion do you hold in your mind about this concept? From the two definitions I just presented, you will realize that connections or ties are the fundamental features of all networks. The connections are the results of relationships between the members. In addition, all members of a network are either directly or indirectly linked to each other (Casson & Giusta 2007). Thus, networks consist of a set of elements or members that are connected to each other as a result of the relationships of the members. Therefore, your class is made up of a network of individual members called students. Also, your church is made up of a network of Indi dual people called brethren as well as your family is made of a network of individual persons called family members. Almost in every situation in normal life and business, a network is bound to exist. This makes me tempted to say Man cannot live without a network, so also do businesses need networks to survive. I find it challenging when I hear people say, “I don’t need another man in this life” or “I can succeed without the help of any man” and there are many examples of such comment’s rights? I’m sure you too often hear people make statements. It's funny, and yes truly funny because such statements are made may be from ignorance or usually from nonsense pride. Hear me and hear me well! Even to go to heaven, you need God’s network if not you lie yourself. One famous Cameroonian politician once said, “you scratch my back, I scratch your back”. Therefore, the importance of networks cannot be overemphasized in business.
Similar to CS5032 Lecture 14: Organisations and failure 2 (20)
Using an iterative approach for app development
The document outlines an iterative approach to developing personal tracking apps. It discusses:
1) Talking to people early to understand needs and exploring existing apps for ideas.
2) Sketching many alternative designs and prototyping top ideas to get early feedback.
3) Developing functional prototypes, collecting usage data and interviewing users to refine designs.
4) Releasing versions of successful apps, continuing to collect data and feedback to guide future improvements through an ongoing iterative process.
The key benefits of this iterative process are identifying the right design early through testing, and obtaining rapid feedback to inform each cycle of refinement.
This lecture discusses self-tracking and digital health. It begins by providing examples of self-tracking, including tracking physical activity, weight, diet, mental wellbeing, and health conditions. It then discusses the brief history of self-tracking and its relationship to mobile health and health behavior change. The lecture notes that while self-tracking technology has advanced, the core concepts are not new. It concludes by discussing the role of human-computer interaction research in studying self-tracking systems and applications.
Digital Health From an HCI Perspective - Geraldine FitzpatrickJohn Rooksby
Digital Health from an HCI Perspective discusses contributions and challenges from an HCI perspective. HCI can contribute qualitative user-centered methods to understand everyday health practices and how technology might be used. However, more work needs to be done to have real impact, including embracing clinical outcomes and mixed methods. Bridging disciplinary divides, HCI needs to engage more with other stakeholders and conduct more cross-disciplinary research.
How to evaluate and improve the quality of mHealth behaviour change toolsJohn Rooksby
This document discusses evaluating and improving the quality of mobile health behaviour change tools. It outlines that while mHealth tools have potential benefits, their quality varies widely. The document proposes using a structured evaluation cascade including inspection of safety, content and accuracy; usability testing; and randomized trials to assess potential impact. Evaluating mHealth tools against agreed quality criteria and labeling them with results could help reduce unrealistic expectations and strengthen other quality improvement strategies. This approach aims to maximize the benefits of mHealth.
This document discusses designing mobile apps. It notes that effective design work done early in development saves time later. The lecturer focuses on sketching, prototyping, and getting feedback in the early stages. Examples are provided of sketching app ideas and a functional prototype that was tested with users, providing insights to improve the app design through an iterative process. Interviews with users provided information about why people used aspects of the app in certain ways. The conclusion emphasizes making mistakes early in design, refining sketches, and getting user input to settle the design before implementation.
Talk at UCL: Mobile Devices in Everyday UseJohn Rooksby
This document contains log data from a mobile app tracker showing user interactions over time, including app launches, screen swipes, and other events. It also includes interviews with two users who found the tracker useful to diagnose battery issues and see patterns in their app and phone usage related to their mental health conditions. The conclusion emphasizes that log data should not be treated as a perfect reflection of activity and that people interpret tracked data differently based on their own purposes and needs.
- Fitts' law predicts the time it takes to move a pointer to hit a target based on the size and distance of the target, with smaller and more distant targets taking more time to hit.
- The law was originally studied by Paul Fitts in 1954 and has been applied to the design of graphical user interfaces and evaluation of pointing devices.
- Factors like target size, distance, and the properties of the pointing device being used can all be measured and plugged into the Fitts' law equation to predict acquisition times.
The document discusses intimacy and mobile device use. It notes that intimacy is embedded in everyday activities and interactions between people rather than being a separate activity. Examples shown in videos illustrate how people use mobile devices as part of other intimate acts like talking, cuddling, and sharing food. The document questions if the issue is how shared devices are used or how to support intimacy from a distance, arguing intimacy occurs through shared activities rather than being an isolated action. It suggests styles of mobile device use within intimate relationships already exist as seen in the video examples.
This document summarizes an interview study of 22 people who use fitness tracking technologies like apps and devices. The following key points are made:
- People track a variety of health metrics like walking, exercise, eating, weight, and sleep, often using multiple trackers for different purposes like training, weight loss, and sleep.
- Tracking is usually not long-term, but rather focused on specific events or daily goals. Data is rarely shared on social media due to perceptions of egotism.
- Tracking is often a social activity done with families, partners, or coworkers to compare data and progress together.
- Future tracker design should support co-emergence of activities and tracking over time,
1. Failure is common in complex systems due to multiple interconnected causes, and failures can cascade in unexpected ways.
2. Resilience engineering aims to design systems that can gracefully cope with, recover from, and avoid failures through understanding how systems operate in reality.
3. Ensuring resilience requires a socio-technical approach that considers both organizational and human factors, not just technical issues.
CS5032 Lecture 9: Learning from failure 1John Rooksby
This document discusses incident reporting schemes and how organizations can learn from failures without blame. It provides examples of incident reports from aviation and pharmacy. Key points made include: 1) Incident reporting allows identification of why errors occur and why accidents are prevented; 2) Reporting rates are inversely related to accident rates, so more reports indicate safer operations; and 3) Factors like trust, anonymity, reporting ease, and feedback influence reporting rates. Overall, non-punitive incident reporting can help organizations continuously improve safety.
1) The Kegworth air disaster of 1989 was caused by the pilots shutting down the wrong engine after a fan blade broke in the left engine, causing smoke and vibrations. They incorrectly assumed the problem was with the right engine.
2) The "new view" of human error sees errors as symptoms of deeper problems in systems, rather than individual failings, and emphasizes understanding human actions and reliability over modeling errors.
3) Crew resource management (CRM) techniques promote effective communication, situational awareness, decision-making, and teamwork to improve reliability and reduce errors through cooperative work.
This document discusses human error in systems operation and provides examples of common slips and lapses that can occur. It outlines three approaches to modeling human error - THERP, GEMS, and CREAM. It also discusses designing systems to minimize errors through mechanisms like forcing functions, narrowing the gulf of execution and evaluation, and considering human and organizational factors rather than just technical approaches. Key points are that human error is often implicated in accidents but may not be the sole cause, and that it can be difficult to definitively classify actions as errors.
The PASS Passport System was introduced in 1998 to replace an aging system and handle new security requirements. It faced major issues during rollout, with high error rates, slower than expected processing, and unexpectedly high demand. This led to massive passport backlogs and delays by 1999, attracting widespread media attention. Over 400 additional staff were hired and free extensions offered to help address the situation. While targets were eventually met, lessons were identified around testing, contingency planning, capacity management, and communication with the public.
The document summarizes the issues surrounding the opening of Heathrow Terminal 5 in March 2008. Key problems included the failure of the baggage handling system which caused thousands of bags to be delayed. This was due to insufficient testing of the system under high loads and communication failures between BA and BAA. Over 28,000 bags were left in temporary storage over the opening weekend, cancelling hundreds of flights and delaying many more. Willie Walsh acknowledged corners were cut on testing and staff training, and that they did not fully implement lessons from previous openings.
Driving Business Innovation: Latest Generative AI Advancements & Success StorySafe Software
Are you ready to revolutionize how you handle data? Join us for a webinar where we’ll bring you up to speed with the latest advancements in Generative AI technology and discover how leveraging FME with tools from giants like Google Gemini, Amazon, and Microsoft OpenAI can supercharge your workflow efficiency.
During the hour, we’ll take you through:
Guest Speaker Segment with Hannah Barrington: Dive into the world of dynamic real estate marketing with Hannah, the Marketing Manager at Workspace Group. Hear firsthand how their team generates engaging descriptions for thousands of office units by integrating diverse data sources—from PDF floorplans to web pages—using FME transformers, like OpenAIVisionConnector and AnthropicVisionConnector. This use case will show you how GenAI can streamline content creation for marketing across the board.
Ollama Use Case: Learn how Scenario Specialist Dmitri Bagh has utilized Ollama within FME to input data, create custom models, and enhance security protocols. This segment will include demos to illustrate the full capabilities of FME in AI-driven processes.
Custom AI Models: Discover how to leverage FME to build personalized AI models using your data. Whether it’s populating a model with local data for added security or integrating public AI tools, find out how FME facilitates a versatile and secure approach to AI.
We’ll wrap up with a live Q&A session where you can engage with our experts on your specific use cases, and learn more about optimizing your data workflows with AI.
This webinar is ideal for professionals seeking to harness the power of AI within their data management systems while ensuring high levels of customization and security. Whether you're a novice or an expert, gain actionable insights and strategies to elevate your data processes. Join us to see how FME and AI can revolutionize how you work with data!
Taking AI to the Next Level in Manufacturing.pdfssuserfac0301
Read Taking AI to the Next Level in Manufacturing to gain insights on AI adoption in the manufacturing industry, such as:
1. How quickly AI is being implemented in manufacturing.
2. Which barriers stand in the way of AI adoption.
3. How data quality and governance form the backbone of AI.
4. Organizational processes and structures that may inhibit effective AI adoption.
6. Ideas and approaches to help build your organization's AI strategy.
zkStudyClub - LatticeFold: A Lattice-based Folding Scheme and its Application...Alex Pruden
Folding is a recent technique for building efficient recursive SNARKs. Several elegant folding protocols have been proposed, such as Nova, Supernova, Hypernova, Protostar, and others. However, all of them rely on an additively homomorphic commitment scheme based on discrete log, and are therefore not post-quantum secure. In this work we present LatticeFold, the first lattice-based folding protocol based on the Module SIS problem. This folding protocol naturally leads to an efficient recursive lattice-based SNARK and an efficient PCD scheme. LatticeFold supports folding low-degree relations, such as R1CS, as well as high-degree relations, such as CCS. The key challenge is to construct a secure folding protocol that works with the Ajtai commitment scheme. The difficulty, is ensuring that extracted witnesses are low norm through many rounds of folding. We present a novel technique using the sumcheck protocol to ensure that extracted witnesses are always low norm no matter how many rounds of folding are used. Our evaluation of the final proof system suggests that it is as performant as Hypernova, while providing post-quantum security.
Paper Link: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/257
Your One-Stop Shop for Python Success: Top 10 US Python Development Providersakankshawande
Simplify your search for a reliable Python development partner! This list presents the top 10 trusted US providers offering comprehensive Python development services, ensuring your project's success from conception to completion.
Connector Corner: Seamlessly power UiPath Apps, GenAI with prebuilt connectorsDianaGray10
Join us to learn how UiPath Apps can directly and easily interact with prebuilt connectors via Integration Service--including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Open GenAI, and more.
The best part is you can achieve this without building a custom workflow! Say goodbye to the hassle of using separate automations to call APIs. By seamlessly integrating within App Studio, you can now easily streamline your workflow, while gaining direct access to our Connector Catalog of popular applications.
We’ll discuss and demo the benefits of UiPath Apps and connectors including:
Creating a compelling user experience for any software, without the limitations of APIs.
Accelerating the app creation process, saving time and effort
Enjoying high-performance CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations, for
seamless data management.
Speakers:
Russell Alfeche, Technology Leader, RPA at qBotic and UiPath MVP
Charlie Greenberg, host
Digital Banking in the Cloud: How Citizens Bank Unlocked Their MainframePrecisely
Inconsistent user experience and siloed data, high costs, and changing customer expectations – Citizens Bank was experiencing these challenges while it was attempting to deliver a superior digital banking experience for its clients. Its core banking applications run on the mainframe and Citizens was using legacy utilities to get the critical mainframe data to feed customer-facing channels, like call centers, web, and mobile. Ultimately, this led to higher operating costs (MIPS), delayed response times, and longer time to market.
Ever-changing customer expectations demand more modern digital experiences, and the bank needed to find a solution that could provide real-time data to its customer channels with low latency and operating costs. Join this session to learn how Citizens is leveraging Precisely to replicate mainframe data to its customer channels and deliver on their “modern digital bank” experiences.
Essentials of Automations: Exploring Attributes & Automation ParametersSafe Software
Building automations in FME Flow can save time, money, and help businesses scale by eliminating data silos and providing data to stakeholders in real-time. One essential component to orchestrating complex automations is the use of attributes & automation parameters (both formerly known as “keys”). In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll ever build an Automation without using these components, but what exactly are they?
Attributes & automation parameters enable the automation author to pass data values from one automation component to the next. During this webinar, our FME Flow Specialists will cover leveraging the three types of these output attributes & parameters in FME Flow: Event, Custom, and Automation. As a bonus, they’ll also be making use of the Split-Merge Block functionality.
You’ll leave this webinar with a better understanding of how to maximize the potential of automations by making use of attributes & automation parameters, with the ultimate goal of setting your enterprise integration workflows up on autopilot.
For the full video of this presentation, please visit: https://www.edge-ai-vision.com/2024/06/temporal-event-neural-networks-a-more-efficient-alternative-to-the-transformer-a-presentation-from-brainchip/
Chris Jones, Director of Product Management at BrainChip , presents the “Temporal Event Neural Networks: A More Efficient Alternative to the Transformer” tutorial at the May 2024 Embedded Vision Summit.
The expansion of AI services necessitates enhanced computational capabilities on edge devices. Temporal Event Neural Networks (TENNs), developed by BrainChip, represent a novel and highly efficient state-space network. TENNs demonstrate exceptional proficiency in handling multi-dimensional streaming data, facilitating advancements in object detection, action recognition, speech enhancement and language model/sequence generation. Through the utilization of polynomial-based continuous convolutions, TENNs streamline models, expedite training processes and significantly diminish memory requirements, achieving notable reductions of up to 50x in parameters and 5,000x in energy consumption compared to prevailing methodologies like transformers.
Integration with BrainChip’s Akida neuromorphic hardware IP further enhances TENNs’ capabilities, enabling the realization of highly capable, portable and passively cooled edge devices. This presentation delves into the technical innovations underlying TENNs, presents real-world benchmarks, and elucidates how this cutting-edge approach is positioned to revolutionize edge AI across diverse applications.
5th LF Energy Power Grid Model Meet-up SlidesDanBrown980551
5th Power Grid Model Meet-up
It is with great pleasure that we extend to you an invitation to the 5th Power Grid Model Meet-up, scheduled for 6th June 2024. This event will adopt a hybrid format, allowing participants to join us either through an online Mircosoft Teams session or in person at TU/e located at Den Dolech 2, Eindhoven, Netherlands. The meet-up will be hosted by Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), a research university specializing in engineering science & technology.
Power Grid Model
The global energy transition is placing new and unprecedented demands on Distribution System Operators (DSOs). Alongside upgrades to grid capacity, processes such as digitization, capacity optimization, and congestion management are becoming vital for delivering reliable services.
Power Grid Model is an open source project from Linux Foundation Energy and provides a calculation engine that is increasingly essential for DSOs. It offers a standards-based foundation enabling real-time power systems analysis, simulations of electrical power grids, and sophisticated what-if analysis. In addition, it enables in-depth studies and analysis of the electrical power grid’s behavior and performance. This comprehensive model incorporates essential factors such as power generation capacity, electrical losses, voltage levels, power flows, and system stability.
Power Grid Model is currently being applied in a wide variety of use cases, including grid planning, expansion, reliability, and congestion studies. It can also help in analyzing the impact of renewable energy integration, assessing the effects of disturbances or faults, and developing strategies for grid control and optimization.
What to expect
For the upcoming meetup we are organizing, we have an exciting lineup of activities planned:
-Insightful presentations covering two practical applications of the Power Grid Model.
-An update on the latest advancements in Power Grid -Model technology during the first and second quarters of 2024.
-An interactive brainstorming session to discuss and propose new feature requests.
-An opportunity to connect with fellow Power Grid Model enthusiasts and users.
How information systems are built or acquired puts information, which is what they should be about, in a secondary place. Our language adapted accordingly, and we no longer talk about information systems but applications. Applications evolved in a way to break data into diverse fragments, tightly coupled with applications and expensive to integrate. The result is technical debt, which is re-paid by taking even bigger "loans", resulting in an ever-increasing technical debt. Software engineering and procurement practices work in sync with market forces to maintain this trend. This talk demonstrates how natural this situation is. The question is: can something be done to reverse the trend?
HCL Notes and Domino License Cost Reduction in the World of DLAUpanagenda
Webinar Recording: https://www.panagenda.com/webinars/hcl-notes-and-domino-license-cost-reduction-in-the-world-of-dlau/
The introduction of DLAU and the CCB & CCX licensing model caused quite a stir in the HCL community. As a Notes and Domino customer, you may have faced challenges with unexpected user counts and license costs. You probably have questions on how this new licensing approach works and how to benefit from it. Most importantly, you likely have budget constraints and want to save money where possible. Don’t worry, we can help with all of this!
We’ll show you how to fix common misconfigurations that cause higher-than-expected user counts, and how to identify accounts which you can deactivate to save money. There are also frequent patterns that can cause unnecessary cost, like using a person document instead of a mail-in for shared mailboxes. We’ll provide examples and solutions for those as well. And naturally we’ll explain the new licensing model.
Join HCL Ambassador Marc Thomas in this webinar with a special guest appearance from Franz Walder. It will give you the tools and know-how to stay on top of what is going on with Domino licensing. You will be able lower your cost through an optimized configuration and keep it low going forward.
These topics will be covered
- Reducing license cost by finding and fixing misconfigurations and superfluous accounts
- How do CCB and CCX licenses really work?
- Understanding the DLAU tool and how to best utilize it
- Tips for common problem areas, like team mailboxes, functional/test users, etc
- Practical examples and best practices to implement right away
Dandelion Hashtable: beyond billion requests per second on a commodity serverAntonios Katsarakis
This slide deck presents DLHT, a concurrent in-memory hashtable. Despite efforts to optimize hashtables, that go as far as sacrificing core functionality, state-of-the-art designs still incur multiple memory accesses per request and block request processing in three cases. First, most hashtables block while waiting for data to be retrieved from memory. Second, open-addressing designs, which represent the current state-of-the-art, either cannot free index slots on deletes or must block all requests to do so. Third, index resizes block every request until all objects are copied to the new index. Defying folklore wisdom, DLHT forgoes open-addressing and adopts a fully-featured and memory-aware closed-addressing design based on bounded cache-line-chaining. This design offers lock-free index operations and deletes that free slots instantly, (2) completes most requests with a single memory access, (3) utilizes software prefetching to hide memory latencies, and (4) employs a novel non-blocking and parallel resizing. In a commodity server and a memory-resident workload, DLHT surpasses 1.6B requests per second and provides 3.5x (12x) the throughput of the state-of-the-art closed-addressing (open-addressing) resizable hashtable on Gets (Deletes).
Main news related to the CCS TSI 2023 (2023/1695)Jakub Marek
An English 🇬🇧 translation of a presentation to the speech I gave about the main changes brought by CCS TSI 2023 at the biggest Czech conference on Communications and signalling systems on Railways, which was held in Clarion Hotel Olomouc from 7th to 9th November 2023 (konferenceszt.cz). Attended by around 500 participants and 200 on-line followers.
The original Czech 🇨🇿 version of the presentation can be found here: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/hlavni-novinky-souvisejici-s-ccs-tsi-2023-2023-1695/269688092 .
The videorecording (in Czech) from the presentation is available here: https://youtu.be/WzjJWm4IyPk?si=SImb06tuXGb30BEH .
2. IN THIS LECTURE…
This lecture will focus on organisations. This will be a high level
overview.
1. What are organisations?
2. Organisational structure
3. Change
4. Process, Practice and Management
5. Enterprises and Ecosystems
3. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
ENGINEERING
Society
Organisations
People and Processes
Socio- Applications
Technical
Systems Software
Engineering Communications + Data Engineering
Management
Operating Systems
Equipment
6. HERALD OF FREE ENTERPRISE
• A UK ferry capsizes shortly after departing Zeebrugge, killing
193 people. The bow doors remained open as it departed.
• UK Enquiry finds a disease of sloppiness and negligence at
every level of the corporation's hierarchy
7. HERALD OF FREE ENTERPRISE
• The disaster was a key event leading to
• The development of Corporate Manslaughter Laws in the
UK
• The Public Interest Disclosure act (protection for
whistleblowers)
9. MACONDO INCIDENT
DEEPWATER HORIZON
(DEEPWATER HORIZON)
A rig exploded and sank, killing 11 and leading to one of the largest oil
spills in history.
The US Government‟s investigation concluded:
• Better management of decision-making processes within BP and other
companies, better communication within and between BP and its
contractors and effective training of key engineering and rig personnel
would have prevented the Macondo incident.
10. MACONDO INCIDENT
DEEPWATER HORIZON
(DEEPWATER HORIZON)
The rig was operated within a complex organisational context:
• Commissioned by R&B Falcon which later became part of Transocean
• Leased to BP from 2001 until September 2013. BP had grown rapidly
through a series of acquisitions and mergers.
• Employees from several organisations were involved, inlcuding
Haliburton who were providing cement modelling services.
• The rig was registered in the Marshall Islands, and regulated by the
Minerals Management Service (MMS)
• During and after the incident, these organisations appeared to try to
shift blame to each other.
12. THE SHUTTLE
DISASTERS
• The CAIB investigation into the Columbia shuttle disaster
focused on:
a wide range of historical and organisational issues, including
political and budgetary considerations, compromises, and
changing priorities over the life of the Space Shuttle
Programme
13. THE SHUTTLE
DISASTERS
• NASA is a large, complex organisation
• The Shuttle programme also involved external organisations
• Managerial failings including a failure to share information,
to take engineers seriously, to explore contingencies
• Communication problems and misunderstandings with
external organisations
• A “faster, better, cheaper” strategy
• Columbia disaster reminiscent of challenger.
• Other disasters such as the loss of the Mars Climate Obriter
also attributed to organisational problems.
15. BHOPAL GAS DISASTER
In 1984, water was mixed with methyl isocyanate at a pesticide
plant in Bhopal, India, resulting in the release of toxic gas. There
were approximately 3000 deaths (in the short-term), and
hundreds of thousands of injuries including blindness, kidney and
liver failure.
According to Shrivastava [1] there were a series of organisational
antecedents to the accident including poor training, poor
motivation, poor manning, and low importance of the plant to its
parent organisation
16. BHOPAL GAS DISASTER
Ongoing controversies on the immediate cause: how did water
came to be mixed with methyl isocyanate?
But there were clearly wider problems:
• Storing chemicals in large tanks and filling beyond
recommended levels
• Poor maintenance leading to failure of several safety systems.
Other safety systems being switched off to save money
• Wider problems included growth of slums around the plant, a
lack of catastrophe plans, and lack of healthcare
Ongoing disputes over responsibility: a global organisation
operating under different jurisdictions. Complex issues over
ownership.
17. ORGANISATIONAL FAILINGS
In examples such as these we see factors including
• Communication failures
• Failures to coordinate and cooperate
• Failures in designing and maintaining equipment
• Failures to learn
• Prioritisation of cost over safety
• Failures of responsibility
• Regulatory failings
These are operational failures, but will have roots in
organisational design and strategy
When we say there are organisational problems we are not
talking specifically about the organisation as an entity but about
organisation-in-action
18. WHAT IS AN
ORGANISATION?
Organisations are groups of people who distribute tasks for a
collective goal.
• There are many definitions of organisation (including several
legal definitions).
• However, our interest is not to look at „types‟ of organisation,
but to examine how organisational practice can be
dependable.
• Our interest should be in how people work in an
organisational, or institutional context
• Organisation should be treated as both a noun and a verb
• Organisations should not be seen as entities but as arenas
for activity, and technologies not as artefacts but social
objects in this
• Critical systems engineering is often interested in
sociological and psychological views of work and
organisations
19. ORGANISATIONAL
STRUCTURE
Organisations are structured. They have a purposeful structure
• Contrast with unstructured collectives
• Contrast with self-structuring ecologies
There are many kinds of structure, but it is not my intention to
covers these here.
Structure is normative, an ideal rather than a mirror.
• Practices will be constrained by and orient to the structure
• Practices will be dynamic
• So ecologies and collectives may be apparent within and
across organisations (disorder will exist in order, and order
in disorder)
20. EXAMPLE: THE HOME OFFICE
Ministers and Home Office Board
Strategic Centre
HQ
Professional Services
Delivery Groups
Home Office
Office for Office for Crime Reduction
Shared Services
Criminal Justice Security and and Community
and Reform Counter Safety Group
Terrorism
Delivery Agencies
Criminal UK Borders Identity and
Records Agency Passport
Bureau Service
Delivery Partners
Counter NDPBs (e.g.
Terrorism Serious
Partners Organised
Crime Agency)
Local
Partnerships
43 Police Forces
21. STRUCTURE AND
DEPENDABILITY
Some evidence structure has an effect on dependability, e.g:
Complex and/or ambiguous structures
• Hinder decision making
• Can lead to an absence of responsibility
Control centric organisations
• Can lead to poor decision making (bottlenecks, remote)
• Have single point of failure
However, the problems do not lie purely in structure, but in the
relation between structure and practice.
• Eg. Can decision-making be effectively migrated in a
hierarchical organisation? Can decisions be negotiated in a
horizontal one?
22. ORGANISATIONAL AND
SOFTWARE STRUCTURE
The information technology used by an organisation often
has a close relation with organisational structure
• IT is often deployed as a part of re-structuring efforts
within organisations
• Many organisations seek to implement enterprise systems
• Enterprise does not necessarily mean organisation, but
can refer to distinctive parts of an organisation, and to
conglomerates of organisations.
• Generic, customisable systems are popular.
• These are not truly generic, but have an accrued
functionality – they do not represent an „ideal‟ organisation.
• Some evidence to show that the less customisation that
takes place, the more successful a deployment will be [6]
23. SOFTWARE STRUCTURE AND
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
Conway‟s law: organizations that design systems are constrained to
produce systems which are copies of the communication structures
of these organizations.
• “if you have four teams working on a compiler, you‟ll have a four
pass compiler” (Eric Raymond).
• The quality of systems interfaces reflects the quality of
organisational communication (e.g. Mars Orbiter crash)
• A study of Microsoft Vista [2] suggests organisational structure
is a better predictor of the failure proneness of software than
code-based metrics (churn, dependencies, test coverage, etc.).
• The more people who touch the code the lower the quality.
• A large loss of team members affects the knowledge retention and thus quality.
• The more edits to components the higher the instability and lower the quality.
• The lower level is the ownership the better is the quality.
• The more cohesive are the contributors (organizationally) the higher is the quality.
• The more cohesive is the contributions (edits) the higher is the quality.
• The more the diffused contribution to a binary the lower is the quality.
• The more diffused the different organizations contributing code, the lower is the
quality.
24. TESTING AND ORGANISATIONAL
STRUCTURE
Ahonen [3] suggests organisational structure has significant
influence on the quality of testing in an organisation.
Team based development models:
• A more pleasant working atmosphere, but leads to an uneven
and difficult-to-assure testing process.
Interdepartmental model:
• Teams can sometimes end up passing costs to each other,
but testing is easier to manage, and issues can be tracked.
Resource pool based model:
• This can have severe problems on working atmosphere, but
is the most suitable for supporting an effective testing
regime.
25. ORGANISATIONAL
CHANGE
Organisations are not static but change over time
• Organisations often go through periods of restructuring
The goal is not to find the perfect organisational form, but to
manage a changing organisation in a changing context.
Restructuring is necessary because of factors including:
• Growth, Mergers, Changing purpose, Changing
technology, Changing context.
Ciborra [4] argued there is a cycle in organistions between
control and drift.
• Change occurs naturally, and is punctuated by efforts to
regain control
27. ORGANISATIONAL
BOUNDARIES
Organisations have boundaries
• These are both internal and external and take different
forms
• Physical boundaries
• Unit boundaries
• Organisation-wide boundaries
• The boundaries may be different on paper than in practice
• Communication across boundaries is often problematic
• formalised either through reports or formal meetings
• “Boundary objects” need to be able to be transmit meaning
between different contexts.
28. ORGANISATIONAL
BOUNDARIES
Boundaries can lead to “silo working”.
• People working in proximity to each other but within
„closed‟ arenas
According to Page [5], Silos occur because of:
• Turf wars
• Budget protection
• Bureaucratic politics
• Ignorance
• Legal reasons
• Technology reasons
29. OPERATIONAL PROCESSES
There are three types of business process: Managerial,
operational, and support processes.
This area has generally been focused on efficiency rather
than quality
• Adam Smith found it was possible to increase productivity
in pin manufacturing by 2400% if production was
organised into a process
• This was taken to extremes under Scientific management
and Fordism where work was split into simple repetitive
tasks
• More recently the emphasis has been on business
process reengineering
30. OPERATIONAL PROCESSES
Proceduralisation and process reengineering is not
necessarily contrary to dependability
• Many industries rely upon correct procedure being
followed
• Regulation is also coming to rely heavily on the inspection
of procedure
Problems emerge when
• There is an accompanying diminishing of responsibility
• Efficiency is taken to extreme
• Problems also emerge when processes are impractical or
incomprehensible for people in the organisation
31. MANAGEMENT AND
GOVERNANCE
Management
• Management involves planning, organising and controlling work
in an organisation.
• Top level management: Develop goals, strategies, policies.
• Middle management: Develop organisational functions.
• Low level management: Assign and supervise tasks.
Governance
• Decisions that define expectations, grant power and
responsibilities and verify performance
Complex organisations require effective governance. An
overreliance on management is known as managerialism: where
management seeks to control all aspects of organisational working.
32. MANAGEMENT AND
GOVERNANCE
Leadership
• A distinction can be made between management and
leadership.
• Leaders show the way, but do not specify the means of
travel.
• Remember - Good leaders need good followers.
“Followership” is a skill too.
Responsibility
• Procedural responsibility
• Consequential responsibility
33. CULTURE
The idea of “Culture” is often invoked in characterising
workplaces, particularly where it comes to non-functional
aspects of this.
• “Organisational culture”
• “Safety culture“
• “Culture of trust”
This is a slippery term
• It is used to typify actions, rather than specify what does
happen
• It is used at varying granularities
• It is used in several senses
34. CULTURE
The most comprehensive framework for describing culture comes from
IBM. Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory was developed in the 1970s. It
was primarily aimed at working through cultural differences in a
multinational firm.
It covers the degree of:
• Subordination to power
• Collectivism
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Masculinity (competitiveness, assertiveness, etc)*
• Temporal orientation (long vs short-term)
• Indulgence and restraint
There are many other models and frameworks for culture – but often these
come from a managerial literature focused on instilling desirable values
rather than describing or explaining culture.
*This was the 70s!
35. CULTURE
Anthropology is the academic field that studies culture.
• The management literature on culture, including Hofstede,
is not taken seriously in this discipline!
In Anthropology, culture is largely a comparative concept.
• Over the last two decades, as anthropology has come to
focus on organisations
• Culture rediscovered as “communities of practice”
• Forms of understanding rediscovered as “distributed
cognition”
• Emphasis placed on the contextualisation of practice.
Particularly its physical and social “situatedness”
36. PROFESSIONALISM
An alternative source of power in work and organisations arises
through professional bodies
• Professional bodies develop around skilled areas of work,
what Abbot [7] describes as Jurisdictions
• Not all areas are able to professionalise. Software
development has had significant problems [7].
Professional bodies also seek to regulate the environments in
which their members work, to ensure they can work effectively.
• To become a member of a profession usually requires some
demonstration of skill
Trades Unions also seek to represent the interests of members
• Unions have been instrumental in the development of
participatory design, and socio-technical approaches
38. LOCAL VARIABILITY
There can be variance across ostensibly equivalent parts of an
organisation
• For example, there is large variation between NHS hospitals,
and even between wards on the same hospital.
• Work is contingent upon local resources and constraints.
• Practices are implemented, emerge and evolve locally.
Organisations will go through periods of standardisation, often
through the deployment of technology
• But at local levels standards will always be interpreted,
“gamed” or perhaps ignored.
• A classic study by Barley [8] found that the deployment of
the same technology in different hospitals led not to further
diversities in their practices.
39. SOCIAL NETWORKS
An alternative way of viewing organisations is in terms of the
formal and informal social connections between people within
organisations
• Social networks do not mirror organisational structure,
although they will often have some correspondence to it
Strong networks improve
• Expertise finding (“know-who”)
• Social capital
• Awareness among workers
• Greater flows of information and innovation
• Loyalty
Email and electronic communication can be used to give an idea
of social networks exist, but do not constitute social networks
40. SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY
Many organisations are turning to social technology
• Many large organisations are deploying their own internal
social network sites
• Some are turning to „public‟ social network sites (such as
twitter), although many are restricting use of these - for
security reasons
There is also a broader class of “collective intelligence”
technologies – collaboration technologies that
• Enable sharing and structuring of information
• Enable adhoc communication
• Enable distribute problem solving
41. ORGANISATIONS
The problem of dependability does not usually sit in
individual organisations
• Organisations often work with others
• Eg. suppliers, service providers, partners.
• Technologies exist across organisations.
• The technology, or tasks such as maintenance may be
offered as a service
• Different components may be operated by different
organisations
• Organisations often operate in an “industry”
• Regulation will be at the industry level
43. INTER ORGANISATIONAL
RELATIONSHIPS
When organisations collaborate or provide services there will usually
be a formal agreement
• Eg. Contracts, SLAs
However, the ties between organisations need to be stronger than just
having written agreements
• Eg. emergency workers do not just need to fulfill their specified roles
but to work effectively together
• A well known example was Toyota‟s ability to restart production just
days after a supplier of a complex component suffered a catastrophic
fire. [9]
Organisations are sometimes conceptualised in terms of ecosystems
• Formal and informal relations and dependencies exist between
organisations
• Organistions can enter into strategic ecosystems, where they
cooperate with others to supply services or build a market
45. KEY POINTS
• Many accidents and disasters have organisaional roots
• These problems lie in the working of the organisation, so
they cannot be resolved just by creating the correct „type‟ of
organisation but through ensuring organisations operate
effectively
• The organisational model is usually an aspiration rather than
a mirror, and even if the model is accurate, the organisation
itself will change. This does not mean the model is
unimportant!
• Organisational departments will not operate in uniform ways.
• Organisations often work closely with others. Cross
boundary communication can often be more formalised.
• Network views of organisations point to the importance of
connectedness over structure
46. REFERENCES
1. Shrivastava, P. (1986), Bhopal,New York: Basic Books
2. Nagappan et al (2008) The Influence of Organisational Structure on Software
Quality: An Empirical Case Study. In Proc. ICSE‟08: 521-530.
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Editor's Notes
20 April 2010, an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout, killed 11 people, and led to one of the largest oil spills in history
20 April 2010, an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout, killed 11 people, and led to one of the largest oil spills in history
20 April 2010, an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout, killed 11 people, and led to one of the largest oil spills in history
Challenger and Columbia
Challenger and Columbia
Challenger and Columbia
There are many kinds of structure that can be found in the organisational literature
The list is of assertions
Turf wars: The desire to extend the range of responsibility of the department or sectionBudget protection: Departments do not want to lose income, or gain financial responsibility for any new turf they gain without correlative budgetary increasesBureaucratic politics: Departments view the same issue from different perspectives and so pursue alternative solutionsIgnorance: A lack of awareness that another department has an interest in the same area or is doing the same thing Legal reasons: The different organisational legal bases of problems that require separate workingTechnology reasons: the incompatibility of computer systems