A study of electronics engineering design teams

Abstract

The focus of this paper is methodological. It derives from a longitudinal study of electronics engineering design teams in industry, using ethnographic methods, which was conducted as a preamble to the development of a prototype computer-based support tool for project leaders and design engineers. The aim of the work was that the tool should be user-centred in its functionality. Ethnography was used to characterise aspects of the social behaviour of design teams and the results have been described in previous papers. A distinctive feature of the approach used was the combination of three methods: an ethnographic study, an information systems analysis and a technical analysis of the engineering features of the teams studied. It is these methodological aspects which are the subject of the present paper. In particular, we show how the findings from three very different methods of analysis can be triangulated with each other and how a comprehensive rich picture is obtainable using soft systems methods. Perceived impacts of the study's findings on the stakeholders are reported and the paper concludes with a review of the effectiveness of combining different methods in this way.