Homework #3

Chapter #10

Sociotechnical Systems

10.6  A multimedia virtual museum system offering virtual experience of ancient Greece is to be developed for a consortium of European museums.  The system should provide users with the facility to view 3-D models of ancient Greece through a standard web browser and should also support an immersive virtual reality experience.  What political and organizational difficulties might arise when the system is installed in the museums that make up the consortium?

This is a system, not for one museum, but for many.  All the museums may not have the same supplier for equipment, which would affect the review and assessment phase of the spiral model in the textbook.   The book mentions that the user environments may be different from what the developers anticipated- adapting the system to cope with diverse user environments can be difficult.  When problems arise with the new system, who is responsible for technical support?  The museum staff?

When introducing a new system like this, there obviously has to be training of staff so they can demonstrate to users how to use the new system.  This sounds uncomplicated enough, but people don't usually like change and there might be some resistance towards this new system at first from staff members.  I worked on a NICU floor for almost 4 years and change was ALWAYS met with resistance...but who can really blame them, new changes usually meant more responsibility/work on top of already long and difficult shift work.

10.10  You are an engineer involved in the development of a financial system.  During installation, you discover that this system will make a significant number of people redundant.  The people in the environment deny you access to essential information to complete the system installation.  To what extent should you, as a systems engineer, become involved in this situation?  Is it your professional responsibility to complete the installation as contracted?  Should you simply abandon the work until the procuring organization has sorted out the problem?

This is a frustrating position to be in.  Obviously you can not complete your work without proper information, but you can't abandon the work all together.  Communication is key here.  Let human resources or whoever you are dealing with know what is happening on your end.  Call and email.  Postpone the work on this contract until you have the necessary information.  You can't do your job until they do theirs.