PATTERN 8: DOING A WALKABOUT

Essence of the Pattern:

This pattern is concerned with the activity of 'doing a walkabout' for different workers in different organisations. Doing a walkabout may be a directed or undirected activity in which a worker wanders around a site or areas of a site as a way of gathering information about what is going on, what others are doing or to find out the actual situation at locations on the 'shop floor', or to 'keep in touch'. It may be a directed activity in that the worker is seeking to find out what the actual situation is in order to update or gain the 'real' or current picture on partial or out of date information they hold. For example, when an artefact or computer system does not provide the accuracy of information they require, and less direct communication channels (e.g. phone, email) are either unavailable or deemed insufficient. It may be less directed, just to see what people are doing, and serve to simply to facilitate an understanding of what is going on. This in turn can be useful and help in promoting shared knowledge, ad hoc collaboration and so forth.

Why Useful?

Doing a walkabout is a crucial part of everyday activity for many workers. This can serve as the best way of finding out what is actually going on now and can be seen to be provoked by or augment, for example, computer-based information. The seeing-things-for-yourself and the face-to-face interaction seem to be important components of this type of activity. Secondly, the activity itself serves as the context within which ad hoc collaboration of various kinds and the sharing of knowledge, expertise and so on can take place. It provides the chance to ask what people are currently doing, to converse based on what they are doing and to just bump into people - all of which have been shown to be important aspects of work.

Where Used?

This pattern has been described in two settings so far. The focus is on individual workers who conduct walkabouts around areas of a site as a part of their work. In the consultancy firm, it is a general staff activity for keeping up to date and aiding collaboration and is fairly undirected while in the hospital directorate manager example it is a specifically directed activity aimed at finding out accurate information from the 'shop floor'.

This pattern is illustrated with vignettes from the following field work:

* ConsultancyFirmSecondExample. Doing the walkabout as a general activity for facilitating teamwork, checking etc.

* HospitalDirectorateManager. Focuses on how the directorate manager does a walkabout to gain the real picture of bed availability on the wards to augment what the system figures tell her.

Dependability Implications

In the consultancy firm doing a walkabout has specific benefits in the achievement of work. For individuals working closely together on a project it facilitates integration of the group, allowing collaboration and the sharing of expertise and knowledge. The small size of the group and the site is important, and notably collaboration with workers at a different site is less and has to be more structured. In the hospital it is a necessary response to system information that is often not necessarily up to date and accurate for the purposes of the directorate manager. Where possible, design for such activities and collaboration can seek to design office layout and group constituency to facilitate such activities. In considering distributed settings one can consider a number of solutions for technical support of the activities of doing a walkabout. Shared access to computer systems, that for example, allow access to other's work, local environment and so forth can be thought of as possible solutions, particularly when supported by different communications technologies. For example, the directorate manager is particularly interested in talking to the ward managers in relation to the public artefacts (PublicDisplayedArtefact)that are the bed boards (indicate bed allocation status) located in each ward. Another important component is the face-to-face contact with the ward managers. Therefore any solution might seek to make a version of the bed boards available electronically in distributed locations as a shared application. This might be achieved through video snapshots of the wards and videoconferencing technology or by providing an electronic version of the boards along with some kind of audio communication channel.