Task 8: Reflection on project work

After all's said and done, my ethnographic study of a team prior to toolset migration is finished. It took me quite a few hours of work, many of those comprised of simply sitting quietly while writing furiously everything people were doing. Interpreting hours of scribbling proved challenging and the fact I knew what most of those people were doing made the notes a lot more biased than I'd hoped for an academic document, but in the end it's fine for its pragmatic application.

Shadowing alone didn't do the trick, which was an unexpected result. Since I had prior knowledge of how the team is structured and how it theoretically relates - I was even partially responsible for the training of some of the newer members of the team - I was able to build a good theoretical map of the relationships between sub-teams and the toolset, but shadowing revealed behavioral quirks, technical misconceptions, work vices and other work characteristics that needed clarification. Therefore, a couple of short interviews were executed to better understand what was actually going on.

The result was a much more complex relationship map than previously anticipated. That was a sobering experience and I'll try to remember not to assume I understand how a team works only by superficial observation. This is the most important lesson I expect to carry into future field research projects. The good news is that I left the endeavor with a great understanding of how each sub-team uses the tool differently, how previous assumptions shaped current work vices and how to prevent these during the migration to the new tool.

It has also taught me an important lesson that I tried to convey in the final document - that while people are fixated on what functions tool A possesses and how to achieve the exact same function in tool B, the really important thing is that both tools allow for the same workflow, even if functions are not exactly analogous. Less focus on functions and a more holistic view of how work revolves around the tool will help us shape not only the migration effort, but also training for the new tool.