The Work System Method - Department of Computer Information ...

The Work System MethodIntroduction, Motivation andDefinitions

Definition• Work• the application of human and technicalresources to produce products andservices for internal and/or externalcustomers.

Work System• Work System - a system in which human participants and/ormachines perform work using information, technology, and otherresources to produce products and/or services for internal orexternal customers.• Typical business organizations contain work systems that procure materialsfrom suppliers, produce products, deliver products to customers, findcustomers, create financial reports, hire employees, coordinate work acrossdepartments, and perform many other functions.• Every work system can be viewed as a subsystem of a larger work system,the boundaries of a work system are treated as a carefully considereddecision by the work system modeler.• In general, the relevant work system for a particular analysis is the smallestwork system that exhibits or possesses the problem, issue, or opportunitythat prompted the analysis

Examples of Work Systems(from papers by MBA students at Georgia State Univ. )Calculating rates forinsurance renewalsManaging softwaredevelopment projectsAcquiring clients at aprofessional service firmReceiving materials at a largewarehouseApproving real estate loanapplicationsPlanning and dispatchingtrucking servicesPerforming pre-employmentbackground checksPerforming financialplanning for wealthyindividualsScheduling and trackinghealth service appointmentsOperating an engineering callcenterPurchasing advertisingservicesDetermining salary increasesCollecting and reportingsales data for a wholesaler© Steven Alter, 2009, all rights reservedPlanning for outages in keyreal time informationsystemsInvoicing for constructionwork

A Limiting Paradigm…• Viewing Systems as IT-based tools that areused by users.© Steven Alter, 2010

Work systems are NOT Information SystemsInformation SystemsWork systems supported by information systems7

© Steven Alter, 2010Work System Framework

the basic financial statements that defined benefit pension plans are required to provide, althoughadditional financial information may be provided. Furthermore, the Board concluded thatStatement 95 was not intended to modify the reporting requirements for those plans.16. Other employee benefit plans that are not covered by Statement 35, such as health andwelfare plans, may have characteristics similar to those of defined benefit pension plans and maypresent financial information similar to that required by Statement 35 (including the presentationof plan investments at fair value). The Board believes that those plans likewise should not berequired to provide a statement of cash flows.17. The Board does not prohibit the inclusion of a statement of cash flows with the annualfinancial statements of an employee benefit plan. In fact, the Board encourages plans to providea statement of cash flows when that statement would provide relevant information about theability of the plan to meet future obligations. For example, the Board believes that a statementof cash flows would provide relevant information about a plan's ability to meet future obligationswhen the plan invests in assets that are not highly liquid, such as real estate, or obtains financingfor its investments.Investment Companies18. Before the issuance of Statement 95, the Board considered whether investment companiesshould be required to provide a statement of cash flows as part of a full set of financialstatements. The Board recognized that information about the cash flows of certain investmentcompanies may be less important than similar information for other enterprises, but the Boarddecided that information about cash flows is relevant and that investment companies should notbe exempted from a requirement to provide a statement of cash flows.19. While the Board continues to believe that information about cash flows is relevant forinvestment companies, the Board readdressed the need for highly liquid investment companies toprovide a statement of cash flows under certain conditions. Highly liquid investment companiesare those whose assets consist predominantly of cash, securities, and other assets for which amarket is readily available. For example, open-end investment companies hold themselves outas being able to redeem their outstanding shares within seven days; therefore, they are requiredto maintain a portfolio of investments that enables them to fulfill that obligation.20. For highly liquid investment companies that do not finance investments with debt, theBoard concluded that the financial statements other than a statement of cash flows generallywould provide sufficient information for a user to assess the enterprises' liquidity, financialflexibility, profitability, and risk. However, for investment companies that invest in assets forwhich a market is not readily available or that finance investments with debt, the Board believesthat a statement of cash flows would provide relevant information about the enterprises'investing and financing activities to assist users in those assessments.Copyright © 1989, Financial Accounting Standards BoardNot for redistributionPage 11

Intermediate Products and Services§ intermediate products and services --used by other activities within thework system.§ not considered to the products and services of the work systemunless they are received and used by the customers of the worksystem for some purpose outside of the work system.§ E.g., assume that a loan approval process produces a formalevaluation of a loan.§ The approval is considered to be among the products andservices of the work system if it goes to a work system customerfor some purpose outside of the work system.§ If the approval process is only used to make a decision in asubsequent activity and then discarded; it is an intermediateprocess.

Information§ Includes codified and non-codified information used and created asparticipants perform their work.§ Codified information is the pre-defined information used in trackingpackages, entering orders, and performing repetitive financialtransactions.§ In each case, each data item must be defined precisely, and theinformation is usually processed using explicit rules.§ Uncodified information includes computerized or handwrittendocuments, verbal agreements, and formal or informal conversations.Information may or may not be computerized.§ Knowledge can be viewed as a special case of information.§ Explicit knowledge is recorded in documents, images, rules, andother forms.§ Tacit knowledge exists in people’s heads and is not explicit.

Technologies§ Tools that help people work more efficiently or thatperform automated work steps autonomously.§ Some technologies, such as search engines, cell phones,spreadsheet software, and automobiles, are generalpurposebecause they can be applied in a wide range ofbusiness situations.§ Other technologies are tailored to specific situations.§ Examples include a spreadsheet model forcalculating mortgage interest and a software packagefor designing kitchens.

Infrastructure§ Human, informational, and technical resources that thework system relies on but are outside the work system andare shared resources with other work systems.§ Human infrastructure -people and organizations that supply services shared bydifferent work systems.§ For example, training organizations, internal consultants, and humanresources departments are typically considered part of the humaninfrastructure that may be relevant to a work system.§ Information infrastructure -- information shared across various work systems,such as mutually accessible databases and other enterprise-wide information.§ Technical infrastructure includes the Internet, corporate computer networks,database management software, and other technologies shared by multiple worksystems and often hidden or invisible to work system participants.§ e.g., Enterprise software such as ERP suites is technical infrastructure thatis shared across multiple work systems. A specific program or module in anERP suite can be viewed as technology within a work system.

Environment§ The organizational, cultural, competitive, technical, andregulatory environment within which the work systemoperates.§ Factors in the environment affect work system performanceeven though the work system does not rely on them directlyin order to operate.§ The organization’s general norms of behavior are part of theculture in the environment that surrounds the work system,whereas…§ Behavioral norms and expectations about specific activitieswithin the work system are considered characteristics ofprocesses and and activities within the work system.

Strategies§ The guiding rationale and high-level choices within whicha work system, organization, or firm is designed andoperates.§ Strategies at the department and enterprise level may help inexplaining why the work system operates as it does andwhether it is operating properly.§ A work system’s strategy (its guiding rationale and highlevelchoices) should be aligned with the strategy of theorganization and firm that it serves.§ E.g., a work system designed to produce the highestquality products might not fit in an organization operatingunder a cost minimization strategy.

Metrics• Measures of performance (including )• instantaneous measures (e.g., the current inventory, the cashbalance last Monday at midnight, the number of amount ofdata stored in our database last Tuesday at midnight ) or• measures of occurrences or phenomena during a time periodin the past (e.g., total sales last week or total hiring last year).• The value of a metric is a number describing how well a worksystem or part of a work system is currently operating or operatedin the past. Here are some examples:

Metric examples

Level of Abstraction & Analysis• Organizational Analysis levels (include )… the entire enterprise,… a department within an enterprise,….a work system within a department within an enterprise,… a subsystem of the work system.The person doing the analysis should decide on the right organizational level for theanalysis that needs to be done.• The level of detail differs across the roles and across differentsituations.• In all cases, the analysis and design of a system shouldinclude typical steps of identifying the problem and system,performing an analysis, and producing a justifiedrecommendation.• People in different roles should use the framework andrelated ideas at different levels of depth.

Premises of the Work System Method• The goal: Improving business performance.• Assumption: Business performance is generatedby operation of sociotechnical work systems.• Improvement process: Changing work systems,not just creating, installing, or using informationsystems or IT.• Links to more formal ISA&D techniques(UML, SOA, etc.)– Decompose work systems into smaller work systems:– some of which are sociotechnical– some of which are autonomous computerized agents.© Steven Alter, 2010

Q: Should Business ProfessionalsAnalyze Systems for Themselves?• Can they be trusted?• Do they have the appropriate skill andknowledge?• IF NOT: How is it possible for them to do theirwork and manage organizations?• IF NOT: How is it possible for them to participatein the development of information systems?• èWhat system should be analyzed?© Steven Alter, 2010

Typical Systems Analysis Methodsare created for IT Professionals• Mostly about documentation, not really aboutanalysis• Emphasis on precision and completeness• Complex, opaque terminology• Emphasis on use of tools, not on businessperformance© Steven Alter, 2010

Work System Method:a kind of Systems Analysis for Everyone Else• Aha! Business professionals need to focus onwork systems, not just IS or IT.© Steven Alter, 2010

Positioning of Work SystemApproachEnterpriselevelOrganizationalarchitectureTechnicalinfrastructureIT-reliant worksystems inorganizationsLocallevelLocalized rulesand routinesTools, algorithms,computer programsPredominance of designand social sciencePredominance of engineeringand computer scienceLinks that ignore IT-reliant work systems within organizationsLinks that emphasize IT-reliant work systems within organizations© Steven Alter, 2010

Chapter 1Systems a mess: Seven Common Temptations• Temptation #1: Viewing technology as the system.• Temptation #2: Assuming technology is a magicbullet.• Temptation #3: Abdicating responsibility for systems.• Temptation #4: Avoiding performance measurement• Temptation #5: Accepting superficial analysis.• Temptation #6: Accepting one-dimensional thinking.• Temptation #7: Assuming desired changes willimplement themselves