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A Brief Report from Pegasus Dr Will Venters Dr Tony Cornford Dr Yingqin Zheng Dr Mark Lancaster

A Brief Report from Pegasus Dr Will Venters Dr Tony Cornford Dr Yingqin Zheng Dr Mark Lancaster Miss Avgousta Kyriakidou. EPSRC: Grant No: EP/D049954/1 www.pegasus.lse.ac.uk. Data Collection. Interviews: nearly 60 with GridPP members, technical experts and users at CERN;

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A Brief Report from Pegasus Dr Will Venters Dr Tony Cornford Dr Yingqin Zheng Dr Mark Lancaster

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  1. A Brief Report from Pegasus Dr Will Venters Dr Tony Cornford Dr Yingqin Zheng Dr Mark Lancaster Miss Avgousta Kyriakidou EPSRC: Grant No: EP/D049954/1 www.pegasus.lse.ac.uk

  2. Data Collection • Interviews: nearly 60 with GridPP members, technical experts and users at CERN; • Thanks to Pete Clarke who somewhat pointed the direction. • Participant Observation: • GridPP meetings • PMB meetings • DTeam meetings • GridPP collaboration meetings • London Site reviews • WLCG workshop, EGEE user forum, All Hands Meetings • GridPP survey 2007 • Secondary data: • GridPP websites • Documents • GridPP publications

  3. Pegasus Output Publications • Zheng, Y., W. Venters and T. Cornford (2007) "Agility, Improvisation, or Enacted Emergence?" Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2007), Montreal, Canada. Nominated one of three finalists for the ICIS 2007 best paper award. • Zheng, Y., W. Venters, T. Cornford (2007) "Distributed Development and Scaled Agility: Improvising a Grid for Particle Physics", London School of Economics Working Paper Series - 163, London: http://is2.lse.ac.uk/wp/pdf/wp163.pdf ISSN 1472-9601 • Kyriakidou, A. Venters, W (2007) The Multi-Disciplinary Development of Collaborative Grids: The Social Shaping of a Grid for Healthcare. 15th European Conference on Information Systems, St Gallen, Switzerland. (Nominated Best Paper). Available Here. • Venters,W., Cornford,T. (2006) Introducing Pegasus: An ethnographic research project studying the use of Grid technologies by the UK particle Physics Community. Second International Conference on e-Social Science, 28-30 June 2006, Manchester, UK. Available here. • Uribe, L.M. (2007) Socio-technical elements of e-Research and libraries. MSc Disseratation, Information Systems and Innovation Group, London School of Economics, supervised by Dr. W. Venters. Posters • Venters, W., Cornford, M., Lancaster, M., Zheng,Y., Kyriakidou, A (2007) Studying the Usability of Grids: Ethnographic Research of the UK Particle Physics Community. (Poster) UK e-Science Programme All Hands Meeting (AHM2007) • Venters,W., Zheng, Y (2007) Users, Usability and Grids: Introducing Pegasus, a social study of the development and use of GridPP. (Poster) EGEE User Forum, Manchester, 9th-11th May. Available here. • Venters,W., Zheng, Y (2007) Pegasus: An Information Systems Research study of Grids for the LHC. (Poster) GridPP Stand: Institute of Physics Conference. Available here. Presentations • E-Social Science conference Guest Lecture LSE UCL Salford IS Research Forum Oxford Internet institute

  4. GridPP Survey • 56 responded. Results based on 44 complete responses. • Four themes: • GridPP • Improvisation • Distributed Management • Usability

  5. GridPP in General GridPP has been a successful project The funding regime for particle physics in the UK has a significant impact on the process and outcome of the UK particle physics Grid The development of the LCG has been strongly influenced by politics The UK particle physics Grid will work when LHC starts. Grids will contribute to the democratization of science. The IT industry would have done a better job if they were to undertake the development of the LCG

  6. The Most Positive Aspects Of GridPP

  7. Is the PMB sufficiently engaged with problems on the ground? • Attendance by PMB members at working meetings • Having an occasional joint dteam-PMB meeting is a good idea. • Improved information flow from experiment users to PMB; I sometimes wonder how much real user representation is at PMB level • More regular feedback from PMB on specific high-level issues (as they emerge) might be useful. Having the PMB minutes published is very useful. PMB does not need to be fully engaged with all problems on the ground.

  8. Do you consider the UK particle physics Grid as mainly … “I have never seen so much money wasted on providing solutions to problems that industry solved 20 years ago.” “Innovator, leading in many technical areas”

  9. Improvisation & Bricolage Careful planning is necessary to develop effective solutions I enjoy a high level of autonomy at work I wish I had more authority and control over people and resources I have a pretty good idea of what's going on in GridPP at a general level The limited control over issues like available resources, hardware, and technical solutions is a big challenge for GridPP Practical solutions are more important than rigorous methodologies

  10. How do you know what needs to be done in your job? Frequency: 1 - Never 2 - Rarely 3 - Occasionally 4 - Regularly 5 - Very often Comment: using meetings to update others

  11. If you have to suddenly leave your job and someone has to replace you, what essential skills should this person have? “Patience. The ability to remove your eye with a fork as it is less painful than being in some meetings.” “Large frustration threshold.”

  12. Distributed Management Value your experts. Motivate and keep them. It is hard to work in GridPP because it is so distributed? The collaboration works because there is a high level of trust in the community In GridPP, valuable knowledge is sometimes lost due to personnel turnover I don't pay much attention to who does what in GridPP apart from those I directly work with Developing duplicate solutions are a waste of resources Competition among parellel technical solutions is necessary in order to find the best one

  13. Frequency and effectiveness of communication methods Frequency: 1 - Never 2 - Rarely 3 – Occasionally 4 - Regularly 5 - Very often Effectiveness: 1 - Very ineffective 2 - Ineffective 3 - Average 4 – Effective 5 - Very effective

  14. How do you share your knowledge with other people at work? Mobilize “clusters of competence” Frequency: 1 - Never 2 - Rarely 3 - Occasionally 4 - Regularly 5 - Very often Effectiveness: 1 - Very ineffective 2 - Ineffective 3 - Average 4 - Effective 5 - Very effective

  15. Usability The UK particle physics Grid is easy to use The UK ticketing system is working well GridPP has worked closely with the users GridPP deployment and operations in the UK has done an excellent job in ensuring the usability of the Grid The EGEE middleware is easy to deploy and use The GGUS system has improved and is now working well The security of the UK particle physics Grid is sufficient The UK particle physics Grid is robust

  16. Communication methods with users Provide up-to-date contact details of technical experts. Frequency: 1 - Never 2 - Rarely 3 - Occasionally 4 - Regularly 5 - Very often Effectiveness: 1 - Very ineffective 2 - Ineffective 3 - Average 4 - Effective 5 - Very effective

  17. Theoretical perspective : organizational improvisation • Metaphors • Jazz (Weick 1992, 1999; Barrett 1998, Hatch 1999) • “discussions of improvisation in groups are built on images of call and response, give and take, transitions, exchange, complementing, negotiating a shared sense of the beat, offering harmonic possibilities to someone else, preserving continuity of mood, and cross-fertilization”. • Improvisational Theatre (Crossan, 1998) • Facilitative leadership, trust, influence and persuasion, fluid communication • Definition of Improvisation: “the conception of action as it unfolds, by an organisation and/or its members drawing on available material, cognitive, affective and social resources”. (Cunha 1999) • Convergence in time of conception and execution • Bricolage – finding solutions from available rather than optimal resources

  18. Analytical Framework : improvisation paradoxes

  19. Research Findings

  20. Contributions • Agile systems development can be scaled? • Embeddedness of agility • Large group performance is possible when the ambience is right. • Science vs art • Improvisation paradoxes • Scaled Agility should embody a deliberate or natural mixture of structure and improvisation, order and changes, intentionality and flexibility, spontaneity and reflexivity, collectivity and individuality • Practical implications: develop “organizational capability” to • Embrace uncertainties and risks • Enforce collaboration with strong motivation • Encourage innovation with supportive atmosphere (trust, autonomy, communication)

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