For this assignment I will consider the group I work with at CIT. The HelpDesk is divided into three groups, the General Information Team, the PC Team, and the Mac Team, with each group specializing in obvious areas. I have been a member of the PC Team since Fall '08, and I admit that it has greatly increased my effectiveness working in a group, as we work in a collaborative team-oriented environment each day.
Using Hutchins' work to model the PC Team as a cognitive system is fairly simple. The goal of our group is to quickly and accurate attend to the technology-support needs of the Cornell Campus. We answer calls, emails, voicemails, and walk-in appointments daily. From each of these events the important information is compiled that includes: The source of the case (phone, email, voicemail), the general problem category, the problem description, the time/date, and case notes. Information about the existence of cases needs to also be represented at the HelpDesk. This is accomplished in a few ways. New voicemails are announced with a glowing red light new email cases are added to a queue, walk-in appointment schedules are posted electronically, and phone cases ring until answered. Each source having a unique way of presenting itself diminishes confusion and aids in overall task organization. Case categories are also crucial to minimizing task uncertainty; each case is categorized down to 3 levels (most general category > specific category > specific problem), so a consultant can quickly assess the case. Consultants all understand how to use these operational categories (op-cats) effectively to diagnose and solve cases.
All consultants are able to edit any of the information presented in a case. This fact is integral to how CIT functions with both tightly and loosely coupled tasks. In general, consultants' tasks are very loosely coupled. Occasionally, consultants may be working on similar cases, but usually their tasks are independent of each other. In this way, their tasks are very loosely coupled. There is very little task-uncertainty in this case, and consultants need very little communication amongst each other, similar to what Olson & Teasley found in the car manufacturing plant. On the other hand, when consultants encounter a conflict or a difficult case (or a large number of similar cases), the work becomes very tightly coupled. It is not uncommon for all consultants to weigh in on a particularly difficult case.
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I also work at the CIT HelpDesk, and I think that you covered the tasks and described them in terms of Hutchins' work well. You mentioned that tasks at the HelpDesk are, for the most part, loosely coupled. This is true. Consultants, when they answer calls or respond to emails, rarely have to ask for help from another consultant or supervisor directly. However, consultants get help from others in different ways. For example, a consultant can overhear someone talking about a case on the phone with a customer. This is one way of learning to solve a case. There is also a wiki with information compiled by consultants that contains information about common cases and how to solve them. In this way, working at the HelpDesk is loosely coupled.
ReplyDeleteBased on your description, I understand why responding to a case is a loosely coupled task because one consultant can finish a case from start to finish and not have to consult other workers. I wonder however how you communicate with each other on determining protocol or setting a standard for fixing a certain issue. I'm surprised that you don't have tightly coupled needs such as a FtF meeting every so often to review cases that you have opened and closed. Wouldn't this review help each of you with similar cases in the future? Just because each of you can complete a loosely coupled task on your own I still wonder if there is a novelty in still communicating with each other on a regular basis.
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