# Presentation: 574376

## Governance as a Socio-Technical System

- Kate Ehrlich, IBM Research
- GDFR Governance Workshop
- Nov 14 2007

## Agenda

- Governance as a socio-technical system
- Social Network Analysis (SNA): Making collaboration visible
- SmallBlue:  Using social networks to find people
- Many Eyes: Open environment to support collaboration about data

## Governance

- Decision-making
- Tracking
- Compliance
- Policy
- Audit

## Governance as a socio-technical system

## Dependencies between software artifacts set up coordination requirements
When coordination requirements are met by human communication, development is faster
We can identify and prioritize gaps which identify which people should be connected

- Socio-technical governance of software teams

- Dependencies between software artifacts set up coordination requirements
- When coordination requirements are met by human communication, development is faster
- We can identify and prioritize gaps which identify which people should be connected

## Agenda

- Governance as a socio-technical system
- Social Network Analysis (SNA): Making collaboration visible
- SmallBlue:  Using social networks to find people
- Many Eyes: Open environment to support collaboration about data

## Social Networks: Beyond the Org Chart

- Source: Cross, R., Parker, A., Prusak, L. & Borgatti, S.P. 2001. Knowing What We Know: Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Social Networks. Organizational Dynamics 30(2): 100-120.

- Organization charts are not the best indicator of how work gets done
- Senior people are not always central; peripheral people can represent untapped knowledge
- Central people can be bridges or bottlenecks
- Making the network visible makes it actionable

**Notes:**
Social Networks get at the underlying relationships
These relationships reveal – fragility of organizations, are people in the right roles, is the group positioned for growth/innovation, 
Revealed through SNA
What can we do about it
Sample projects - 

## Identifying the roles individuals play in information flow helps in understanding the effectiveness of a network

**Andy**

**Bob**

**Carl**

**Darren**

**Earl**

**Frank**

**Indojit**

**Gerry**

**Harry**

**Jeff**

**Sam**

**Karen**

**Leo**

**Ming**

**Neo**

- Central people: Sam
- Hold the network together
- But they can become bottlenecks
- Knowledge Brokers: Earl
- Critical connection to external knowledge
- Need to be connected internally to be effective
- Peripheral people: Carl
- Out of the loop.  At risk for leaving the company.
- Sub-groups
- Group split by function.  Very little information shared across groups

## Organization at risk:  What happens if Sam leaves

**Andy**

**Bob**

**Carl**

**Darren**

**Earl**

**Frank**

**Indojit**

**Gerry**

**Harry**

**Jeff**

**Karen**

**Leo**

**Ming**

**Neo**

-   Marketing, finance and manufacturing are isolated from each other

## Breakdowns in communication 

- Breakdowns most often occur at one of these common boundaries:
***Functional:***  Breakdowns between divisions (e.g., marketing and finance)
***Geographic******:***  Breakdowns between geographically separated locations (e.g., US and European offices, East Coast and West Coast offices)
***Hierarchical******:***  Breakdowns between employees of different levels (e.g., executives and junior managers)
***Tenure******:***  Breakdowns between long time employees and new employees
***Organizational******:***  Breakdowns because of M&A scenarios, or among leadership networks

***Case Example:*****  Functional Boundaries**

***Case Example:*****  Geographic Boundaries**

## Is the network well structured for governance

**SOCIAL NETWORK**

## Is the network well structured for governance

**SOCIAL NETWORK**

- Are the decision-makers getting the right information?
- Are some people getting overloaded and becoming bottlenecks for decision-making?
- Is decision-making aligned with the goals of the group?
- Is there sufficient awareness of others to coordinate work?
- What happens if someone leaves?

## Agenda

- Governance as a socio-technical system
- Social Network Analysis (SNA): Making collaboration visible
- SmallBlue:  Using social networks to find people
- Many Eyes: Open environment to support collaboration about data

## Documents

- I have to finish this client proposal and I need information on resource management

- Intranet

- Google

- Personal Networks

## Personal Networks

- Benefits
- Quick, reliable, trusted information
- “Intermediary” – interpretation, referrals (content or people), reframing
- Get the right level of detail
- Drawbacks
- Not good for new hires; takes time to build a network
- Several referrals before get to the right person
- Doesn’t scale well -- too many like-minded people

## SmallBlue – Making Big Blue a small world

- Uses automated expertise mining and social network analysis to identify the people with topic expertise and the shortest paths to reach them

**SmallBlue Find**

**SmallBlue Reach**

**SmallBlue Net**

## SmallBlue Find – Find Experts

- 1*  *My collaborator or contact

**2**

**3**

- Second life

- 2*  *Ask: Vicky

- 3  Ask: Mary => Sandra

**1**

## Small Blue Reach – Browse for more information 

**Formal Groups**

**Blue Groups**

**Recommended **
**and alternate connection paths**

**CommunityMap**

**Dogear Tags**

**BluePages job desc****.**

**BlogCentral**
**Post**

**IBM Forum**
**Posts**

**Dogear bookmarks**

## Social Network Visualization 

- Views
- Color coded by unit
- Thumbnail of people
- Superimposed on map
- Gauge the health of the network
- Emergent communities
- Experts (hubs)
- Connectors
- Succession and workforce planning

**Notes:**
ability to provide a clear picture of the collaboration / knowledge flow across the org / geos
    ability to identify (and correct) issues in collaboration, connectedness and knowledge flow across specific parts of the organisation (e.g. LOBs, Services, geos)
      identify over connected / over burdened people
      identify and bridge information silos
      create awareness of expertise distributed across the organisation
      identify and draw in peripheral members
      identify and address barriers to innovation
        fragmentation in networks that may undermine innovation
        domination of networks by particular perspectives
        insularity / relational biases
      Uses
        improve communication in a team / business unit / community
        ability to identify key collaboration and information flows to enable post acquisition integration
  Small Blue Connect
    automatic generation of organisational social network diagrams – no need for surveys

## Agenda

- Governance as a socio-technical system
- Social Network Analysis (SNA): Making collaboration visible
- SmallBlue:  Using social networks to find people
- Many Eyes: Open environment to support collaboration about data

## Many Eyes

- What?
- A public website for shared data and visual analysis.
- Who? / Where?
- Team of researchers & developers
- Visual Communication Lab, IBM Research, Cambridge, MA
- When?
- Public site launched in January 2007

## Slide 22

## Slide 23

## Slide 24

## {

- comments about
- the visualization

## Slide 26

## Stack graph

- Line graph

- Bar chart

- Scatterplot

- US Map

- World map

- Block histogram

- Bubble chart

- Pie chart

- Treemap (2 types)

- Stack graph for categories

- Network diagram

- Matrix chart

- Tag cloud

- Word Tree

## 1 User “crossway” uploads co-occurrence 

**1** User “crossway” uploads co-occurrence
- data for biblical figures to Many Eyes

**2** Crossway uses the network diagram
- tool to create a graph visualization

**3** Crossway writes about the
- visualization on ESV blog

**4** Many blogs (almost 100 by Google’s count)
- write about crossway’s blog entry.

**5** One of these bloggers posts new data to
- Many Eyes—and, of course, blogs about the results.

- The long list of responses /
- trackbacks on the ESV blog
- entry: a discussion about
- the visualization and analysis.

## Governance as socio-technical system

- Social dimension
- Social network analysis as method of uncovering the connections between people
- Tools – SmallBlue – to augment informal methods of finding the right people
- Environments – Many Eyes – for sharing data and discussion
- Issues
- Embedding people, decisions, artifacts in work setting
- Provide feedback and awareness
- Remediation
- Get the right people connected to each other
- Re-assign work responsibilities
- Re-factor task dependencies

## Questions?