Work Practice Services PROGRAM

One of the goals of the Work Practice Program is to transfer its research methodology to Xerox consultancy groups. Consultants use a variety of methods in order to determine the services and solutions they recommend to their clients. The Work Practice Program is providing 'ethnographically grounded studies of work practice' as a new methodology that can support consultants' existing practices and also allow consultants to offer new services to their clients: work practice analysis of clients' organisations.
The program is drawing off work practice research in two ways. First, it is taking the very methodology used in work practice research in order to develop a set of pedagogical tools for consultants. Second, the case studies draw off past work practice studies. The major study presented is past work that tracks through from initial observations to technology design. The other case studies draw together a range of past studies in particular domains.

The advantages this program brings are threefold:

• It supports the drive to reduce technology failure. Remarkably 50% of IT projects fail because they do not properly understand user requirements.
  
  
• It allows consultants to better manage the risk of their solution by allowing them to understand the impact of new technology on client organisations.
  
  
• It allows consultants to take their 'clients' inside their own organisation in new ways that allow them to overcome the inevitable information seals that organisations develop.