'The actual workers are very ok. ... Even when there was major problems with phase II it didn't really cause them that much grief. In fact they're under massive pressure, they're understaffed, their boss is looking for excuses if you like. They can't reach their targets. ... When management in London come down on Services' boss, it seems to be that problems with the system provide them with a ready excuse. Which is unfortunate.X042 page 002.01b (tape 05.1.01b) Matt Notes/Tape 14/06/94It also make some things very very difficult because you can end up with Gordan going down to London and talking to managers and me going and talking to the people who actually use the system and having completely disparate views. ... I'll come away with a short list and Gordan will talk to somebody who doesn't have access, they just talk to other people lower down the chain and he'll come back, you know saying: Oh, ... everything is going completely wrong. They've lost three month's work in the last two days. Quite crazy stories sometimes.
... She [Jenny] doesn't use the system. She is fairly good at over-reacting in a fairly major way. ... Essentially Jenny, sits in London and the closest she gets to the system is that she has some underwriters working directly for her who use the system. There's some interesting stories about that but we won't go into all those. On the Services side, Jenny can but doesn't always talk directly to Lucy who's essentially head of Services. ... These are the actual Services people, they do the vast majority of the work on the system. There are also underwriters.
Like I say if we have problems these are the people who are going to know about it but they're fairly realistic about things. ... when I go and see users, ... I'll talk to the workers, these people at Services a lot. There's Claims as well but they use it very little. And I'll talk to Lucy a fair bit as well. They'll say there's been this, this and this problem but they're generally happy to me. But then Lucy will tell Jenny that they're 8 weeks behind and one of the causes will be the system. Jenny will see that and she'll hear the system has crashed as soon as it happens because people go and tell her and she'll explode. She'll then go through and talk to Kevin who's IT's X head who will come down on Gordan and we'll just get grief despite the fact we're already working as hard as we can, because we hear about it from these people. They're not going to..if some thing goes wrong on the system they call us, obvious thing to do. And you know we've already started on the problem by the time things come down on us from above.
Social influence: | Organisation: Culture |
Technical influence: | System characteristics: Reliability & robustness |
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Social influence |
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Technical influence |
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© Clare Tagg 2000