Use of Cognitive Work Analysis Across the System Life Cycle: From Requirements to Decommissioning

Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) is a systems-based approach to the analysis, modelling, and design of complex sociotechnical systems that is particularly useful when working with real-time work domains in which operator adaptation and flexibility may be needed (Rasmussen, Pejtersen, & Goodstein, 1994; Vicente, 1999). In this paper we argue that CWA can be used not only for design, with which it is most commonly associated, but also throughout the system life cycle. We present a table that shows the five phases of CWA crossed with different steps and activities in the system life cycle, and in the cells of the table we indicate how a particular phase of CWA informs the system life cycle activity in question. We illustrate this discussion with material from our own work using CWA in air defence environments, such as the use of work domain analysis in the tender evaluation for Australia's AEW&C system. CWA not only leverages and coordinates some previous human engineering techniques, but it also adds important analytic products that have been absent from previous techniques.