Complete thesis - Murdoch University

2.2.4 The non-alignment of theory to practiceFrom the mid-1970s, Argyris and Schön (1974) worked on the concept of reasoning processes.They assert that whilst people describe the process by which they take action, this is verydifferent from how the action was planned, implemented and reviewed. This is not merely thedifference between saying and doing: the theory of action takes the form of espoused theoryand theory-in-use. The ‘espoused theories’ are officially accredited or agreed ways of reactingto certain situations as opposed to ‘theories in use’ which denote the rules and hypothesiswhich are actually applied, inferred from behaviour. The theories in use may or may not becompatible with espoused theories; furthermore, the individual using these theories may ormay not be aware of the incompatibility of the two (Argyris and Schön, 1978). Hence, whatis intended to be done (espoused) may be very different from what is done (in use), governedby inherent beliefs and feelings.A recent discussion in RE-online (Zowghi, 2004) provides a snapshot of this discrepancybetween stated and practised process, and hints at the educational issues to be tackled inthis thesis. Quotes are excerpted for simplicity – the discussion ranged over several topics,and relevant elements are highlighted. The thread subject is Bottom-up RE methods (Zowghi,2004).26 April 2004 I have a feeling that any approach that gathers stakeholdergoals, viewpoints and stories in a people-centred way is goingto be mixed: perhaps only purely analyst-devised (and hence,not surprisingly, analytic) methods will ever be top-down.Actual meetings with stakeholders tend to be chaotic from thepoint of view of neat and tidy top-down analysis! but quiteorderly and logical from the point of view of people who areexperiencing the pain of a problematic work process.Stories/scenarios/use cases may seem to offer a top-downapproach, but people can offer stories at any level. I suggestthat,rather as mathematicians do with published proofs, engineers tend to try to impose topdownorder on sets of stories, but this is post-hoc explanation rather than a method ofgathering.There is a natural small-scale way in which use case work is topdown: from any story, you ask what can go wrong and elicitexception sub-stories from that. But these mini-trees have to be55