Using work domain analysis to evaluate the impact of technological change on the performance of complex socio-technical systems

Complex socio-technical systems are notoriously difficult to evaluate. The relationships between measurable processes and high-level descriptions of performance are neither clear nor well understood. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to relate changes made to physical components to overall system performance. Using the relationships captured in work domain analysis, this paper introduces a new approach for evaluating the impact of system changes. An event and actor-independent model is used to describe the given domain at a number of levels of abstraction. The relationship between these descriptions forms the basis of this approach. A case study of a recently upgraded UK land military headquarters is used to demonstrate the approach. As the presented case study will show, a clear link can be made between system changes that result in an increase in overall system performance, as well as changes that result in a degradation. It is contended that the described approach adds important structure to the way that evaluations of complex socio-technical systems are considered, creating a traceable link between changes made at a component level to high-order descriptions of domain purpose.