Demonstrating CWA Strategies Analysis: A Case Study of Municipal Winter Maintenance

Abstract

Widespread acceptance of Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) as a framework for design of complex sociotechnical systems is dependent on how well the theoretical foundations can be applied to real-world systems. Although literature on CWA has many application examples, the first phase, Work Domain Analysis, is over-represented. Later phases such as Strategies Analysis, the third phase of CWA, can provide comparable insight to designers. Understanding how activities can be performed can be instrumental in designing work support tools that are robust to changing priorities and conditions. In this paper, a Strategies Analysis is applied to the City of Toronto Municipal Winter Maintenance Program to illustrate how an analysis can be conducted. Both a traditional Strategies Analysis in decision-making terms and a novel Strategies Analysis in work domain terms are presented.

A formative approach to the strategies analysis phase of cognitive work analysis

“…However, Naikar and Pearce do not describe the specific method used to identify the five categories of strategies and without a full list of the constraints associated with each strategy, it is difficult to assess whether a comprehensive set of strategies and constraints has been identified. Two further formative Strategies Analysis methods were used by Hilliard et al (2008) (Figure 3) in a study of winter road de-icing. The first involved describing control activity on a decision ladder to identify the key transformational activities.…”

“…Therefore, even though this method identifies some constraints and potential ways in which an iPod can be charged, it does not describe all constraints or use general categories of strategies, thereby potentially missing possible strategies. In summary, the published Strategies Analysis research shows that some important but disparate advances have been made towards formative methods for Strategies Analysis, particularly in the work done by Naikar and Pearce (2003), Hilliard et al (2008) and Cornelissen et al (2012). The quest for formative Strategies Analysis methods would be further enhanced with techniques that help investigators identify generalised constraints and categories of strategies, as well as strategy-selection criteria and strategy-change prompts.…”

“…Since Rasmussen's work, methods for performing Strategies Analysis have been developed and demonstrated by various researchers, including Vicente (1999), Ahlstrom (2005), Naikar (2006), Peters (2005), Hilliard et al (2008), Burns et al (2009), Roth (2009) and Cornelissen et al (2012). Nonetheless, much work reporting Strategies Analysis from the CWA perspective tends to present domain-specific strategies that workers recalled, or that investigators observed, albeit at different levels of generality.…”