Demanding Solutions: A Four-Zone Model of Technological Intervention Richard Veryard, March 1997

Summary

The development and delivery of technological solutions for business organizations is a key process for all technology suppliers. The concepts and connections outlined in this paper contribute to a new integrated view on the dynamic relationship between technology and organizations.

Technology may be regarded as a means to an end, a solution (in some context) to a requirement. The quality of the solution, of the technology, can be defined in terms of its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. In other words, the match between means and ends.

But there are two sides to this satisfaction. The ability of the technology to satisfy the needs of the organization crucially depends on the capability of the organization to accommodate and support the technology. The best technology will be ineffectual without an adequate process.

This paper describes the relationship between requirements engineering, quality management and technology transfer using a third-order model of requirements engineering and a four-zone model of intervention in organizations.

This paper is a brief attempt to sketch the connections between a number of important themes in our recent work. The structure of the paper is circular. We start and end with Requirements, exploring in turn Technology, Quality, Capability (or Process Maturity), and the four-zone structure of Intervention.

Requirements and technology - desire and demand

Technology is often regarded as a means to an end, an instrument or contrivance, in German: Einrichtung. According to this view, technology is a series of devices that deliver a series of commodities.

A more sophisticated view of technology concentrates not on the devices themselves, but on the relationships between devices and commodities. These relationships are often hidden by an exclusive emphasis on the device, which Borgmann calls the device paradigm.

The standard path for technological development is to increase the availability of the technological satisfaction: converting an unreliable or uncontrollable device into an invisible commodity. Availability means:

• whenever I want it
• wherever I want it
• without difficulty, hassle or risk
The history of television and video can be understood in terms of ever-increasing levels of availability: 24-hour broadcasting, satellite TV, VCRs and video rental, and of course Video-on-Demand. The viewer is thus liberated from the tyranny of a timetable imposed by the TV scheduler, and comes to believe that he is in control of his own viewing.

Similarly, the history of information and communication technology (ICT) can also be understood in terms of ever-increasing levels of availability, with systems becoming more reliable, powerful, user-friendly and portable. The Internet provides world-wide 24-hour access to a wide variety of information and commercial services. The user is supposedly liberated from the limitations of a given hardware or software platform, or the monopoly power of a given vendor. But paradoxically, this liberation comes from other commitments: to standard languages and protocols, to given middleware products, or to advanced methods and tools.

Superstition: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Many gurus have scoffed at the 'silver bullet', but then fall into the trap of providing their own solutions.

Technology and Magic Thinking Superstition

Technology and quality

ISO 8402 defines quality as the 'totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs'. This definition applies, among other things, to technological entities such as products and processes. The quality of the solution, therefore, can be equated with the match between means and ends.

What exactly is a solution? A solution is a deployment of one or more devices (in some context) to satisfy a requirement. A solution has some degree of novelty, although it may adopt, adapt and improve from previous known solutions. Each solution is unique, because each customer situation is unique.

Which requirements (ends) have technological solution (means)? Technology can be justified if it enhances the availability of some business service. It should improve at least one of the following dimensions:

• time: more often available, 24 hours, 7 days a week, zero downtime, faster response, …
• place: more widely available, distributed, global, new markets, new types of customer supported, new technical platforms, …
• ease: reduced skill barriers, quicker to get started, …
• risk: greater reliability, predictability, security, …

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Requirements engineering process

The requirements engineering process can be regarded as a progression.  It starts with a sense of something lacking (e.g. from an organization or process or system). It proceeds via a vision or fantasy of what might compensate for the lack It concludes with an engineerable specification of an engineerable product or service.	Construction of a solution
The management theorist Elliot Jaques traces a similar view back to Hegel:	'A goal-directed episode begins with a sense of something particular which must be done. It may be stimulated from outside by some thing or occurrence which attracts our attention and which we then choose to pay attention to - by a chance encounter which must be followed through or by an invitation to take part in some event, or by an instruction to carry out an assigned task. Or it may be self-initiated, beginning with a lack, a felt need, a gap, a sense of something missing, an absence, and a wish that this gap or lack or absence did not exist. … This sense of lack next begins to take shape as a desire - the Desire emphasised and written with a capital D by Hegel. Desire takes the form of wishing or willing the existence or the completion of something which can replace the lack or somehow complete or close the episode.' [Elliot Jaques, The Form of Time (London: Heinemann, 1982) p 112]
But although this may be the starting point for requirements engineering, much of the time is often spent working out what is lacking in the solution. The specification is itself always incomplete or incoherent or inadequate. This may be discovered when the product or service is being designed, or when it is delivered. The diagram shows a simplified view of this iterative process.	Iterated construction of a solution

Now let us assume that the specification is a documented statement of requirements, which can be stored in a computerised design repository, or embedded in a legally binding contract. Of course, not all requirements are expressed in this form, but we may use this as a step towards a definition of what we mean by a requirement.

Current practice in requirements engineering is not well equipped to ensure the consistency between the vision or fantasy (the perceived solution) and the actual product or service (the formal solution). Witness the London Ambulance Service fiasco, where there were conflicting perceptions of the application: a resource management system or a safety-critical system.

And whence the demand?

During the requirements formulation process, the requirements owner is himself transformed: from a 'naive' client who articulates an infinite (imaginary, fantasy) demand for a magic solution, into a 'mature' client who articulates a moderated (symbolic, formal) desire for a realistic solution.

Parallel development of requirements and client

The 'maturing' of the client is a function of language. It is the putting into language of the solution that is important, transforming the vision into a requirement, and at the same time effecting a transformation in the client himself. This maturing of the requirements owner is a developmental process of which the requirements engineer needs to be aware, as it affects the relationship with the client, and may also well affect the nature of the contract - at least for the next system, if not for this. Indeed, this aspect of organisational learning as an outcome of a requirements process is one that is often unrecognised, but it is part of any engineering discipline to suggest and incorporate organisational learning improvements in the processes of that discipline. This transformation can be a highly fulfilling experience for the participants, as Christopher Alexander reports.

'Dr. Ryan told us, after his clinic was built, that this one week he spent with us, shaping the building, was the most important week he had spent in five years,- the week in which he had felt most alive.' [Christopher Alexander et al, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p 453]

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Quality and capability

The best technology will be ineffectual without an adequate process. The ability of the technology to satisfy the needs of the organization crucially depends on the capability of the organization to accommodate and support the technology. Technology transfer demands two coordinated actictivies: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation: Changing the technology to fit (literally: make digestible by) the organization. Assimilation adjusts the function (purpose, commodity, not to be confused with functionality) and sometimes the structure of the technology. This can be seen as making the technological solution more fit-for-purpose.

Accommodation: Changing the organization and its processes to fit (literally: make room for) the technology. Accommodation adjusts the structure (and sometimes the function) of the organization. This can be seen as making the organization more capable. Capability is frequently measured in terms of maturity.

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Capability and intervention

Intervention to enhance capability demands activity across four zones. Each zone is characterized by a different discourse, a specific process of argument (or dialectic) having a particular perspective and goal.

Some of the interactions between discourses

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Negative discourses

In the previous section, the four discourses were described in positive terms. Understanding, action, change and knowledge - these are all Good Things. We should remember that each of these discourses contains its opposite:

• The Discourse of Misunderstanding
• The Discourse of Inaction and Excuses
• The Discourse of Resistance and Inertia
• The Discourse of Not-Learning and Ignorance
In many organizations, these negative forms of the discourses will be more familar than the positive forms.

We are implying an ethic in which the positive discourses are better than the negative ones: thus understanding is better than misunderstanding, and so on. We are also implying an epistemology in which the positive discourses can be distinguished objectively from the negative ones: thus change is objectively different to inertia. Who would question these two implications?

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Zonal Issues

Various issues gravitate towards particular zones. To put it another way, each discourse makes visible (or audible) certain issues, allowing them to be problematized:

• Change ecological issues: problem, stakeholder, benefit, cost, risk, …
• Knowledge epistemological issues: progress, paradigm, commodity fetish, ownership, …
• Action ethical issues: authority, responsibility, agency, …
• Understanding practical issues: perspective, purpose, reflexivity, …

Zone Theory

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Medical intervention

For a very simple illustration of the four-zone intervention model, we can consider a medical intervention.

We said above that descriptions of the four-discourse structure tend to privilege one of the four discourses. This diagram, for example, privileges the KNOWLEDGE discourse, showing it on a different logical level to the other three.

Although this is shown as a simple sequential loop, this is only true for the simplest cases, if then. The doctor contract (which may include the selection of practitioner, as well as the negotiation between practitioner and client) is always subject to review. Medical actions may be designed to increase the practitioner's knowledge of the patient - thus a surgical operation may be diagnostic in intention yet therapeutic in effect, or vice versa. The zones overlap/iterate, and the activities within each zone overlap/iterate.

Note: This model seems to apply just as much to so-called holistic medicine as to orthodox medicine. In the one case, the sufferer has to make a choice of alternative practitioners (acupuncture versus homeopathy versus aromatherapy); in the other case, the sufferer's representative (the GP) may have to procure treatment through a so-called internal market.

Four zone model applied to medical intervention

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Authority and knowledge

One of the issues raised by this view of medical intervention is the relationship between authority and knowledge.

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Intervention and requirements

Now let us examine the four-zone model as it applies to technology transfer. The sequence starts with a lack, or rather a perception of lack. This is easy to see in the case of demand-pull, but is not so easy to see in the case of technology-push. Our model is based on the assertion that the most glib technology sales person will fail to sell a product unless it echoes, at least subjectively, with something in the customer organization.

The fact that the customer is prepared to sign a purchase order is evidence that the customer lacks something, although it of course doesn't follow that there is any match between this lack and the product he has bought.

Both assimilation (the adaptation of the solution to the organization) and accommodation (the adaptation of the organization to the solution) presuppose some understanding (or misunderstanding) of both. We may suppose that understanding is better than misunderstanding, since we can often detect the consequences of each.

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Authority in organizational interventions

In the medical intervention example above, we discussed the question of the authority of the doctor, and its relationship to knowledge. The same question applies to organizational intervention.

If we identify an organizational agent of change, be it a consultant, systems analyst or requirements engineer. What (or who) gives this agent his/her authority? What is the source of this agent's knowledge? These issues are usually overlooked by requirements engineering or systems analysis methods.

Four zone model applied to technology transfer

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Roles and responsibilities

Very crudely speaking, the model allows us to see four different roles and their responsibilities:

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Supplier demands

The model presented in this paper is assymetrical, with the user organization playing the role of the one-who-demands, and the technology supplier playing the role of the one-who-satisfies. Clearly, however, there is a sense in which the technology supplier also has demands which the user organization must satisfy.

References

• R.A. Veryard, 'IT Implementation or Delivery: Thoughts on Assimilation, Accommodation and Delivery' in Proceedings of IFIP WG 8.6 Working Conference on the Diffusion and Adoption of Information Technology, (Oslo, October 1995)
• R.A. Veryard & J.E. Dobson, 'Third Order Requirements Engineering: Vision and Identity', in Proceedings of REFSQ 95, Second International Workshop on Requirements Engineering, (Jyvaskyla, Finland:June 12-13, 1995)

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	Content revised on March 6th, 1997. Technical edit: February 22nd, 2002 Copyright © 1996, 1997 Veryard Projects Ltd http://www.veryard.com/tcm/ds4ztt.htm