Socio-technical system

System Engineering

Systems engineering is the activity of specifying, designing, implementing, validating, deploying and maintaining socia-technical systems. Systems engineers are not just concerned with software but also with hardware and the system's interactions with users and its environment. They must think about the services that the system provides, the constraints under which the system must be built and operated and the ways in which the system is used to fulfil its purpose.

Organizations, People and Computer systems

Socio-technical systems are enterprise systems that are intended to help deliver some organizational or business goal. This might be to increase sales, reduce material used in manufacturing, collect taxes, maintain a safe airspace, etc. Because they are embedded in an organizational environment, the procurement, development and use of these system is influenced by the organization’s policies and procedures and by its working culture. The users of the system are people who are influenced by the way the organization is managed and by their interactions with other people inside and out-side of the organization.

Therefore, when you are trying to understand the requirements for a socio-technical system will need to understand its organizational environment. If you don't, the systems may not meet business needs, and users and their managers may reject the system.

Human and organizational factors from the system's environment that affect the system design include:

           

        Process changes: Does the system require changes to the work processes in the environment? If so, training will certainly be required. If changes are significant, or if they involve people losing their jobs, there is a danger that the users will resist the introduction of the system.

         Job Changes:  Does the system kill the users in an environment or cause them to changes the way they work? If so, they may actively resist the introduction of the system into the organization. Designs that involve managers having to change their way of working to fit the computer system are often resented. The managers may feel that their status in the organization is being reduced by the system.

        Organizational changes: Does the system change the political power structure in an organization? For example, if l am organization is dependent on a complex system, those who know how to operate the system have a great deal of political power. 

   Legacy systems 

Because of the time and effort required to develop a complex system, large computer-based systems usually have a long lifetime. For example, military systems are often designed for a 20-year lifetime, and much of the world's air traffic control still relies on software and operational processes that were originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is sometimes too expensive and too risky to discard such business-critical systems after a few years of use. Their development continues throughout their life with changes to accommodate new requirements, new operating platforms, and so forth.

Legacy systems are socio-technical computer-based systems that have been developed in the past, often using older or obsolete technology. These systems include not only hardware and software but also legacy processes and procedures old ways of doing things that are difficult to change because they rely on legacy software. Changes to one part of the system inevitably involve changes to other components

Legacy systems are often business-critical systems. They are maintained because it is too risky to replace them. For example, for most banks the customer accounting system was one of their earliest systems. Organizational policies and procedures may rely on this system. If the bank were to scrap and replace the customer accounting software (which may run on expensive mainframe hardware) then there would be a serious business risk if the replacement system didn't work properly.