COORDINATION THEORY - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 106

manage them. In particular, we can look for processes supported by extensive use of ICT, thus
contributing to system design for collaborative systems.
Summary of Contributions
To summarize, Malone and Crowston (1994) made several contributions in defining coordination
theory. Substantively, their 1994 paper provided (1) a succinct and actionable definition of coor-
dination; (2) a framework for task analysis and modeling for collective processes; and (3) the
beginning of a typology of dependencies and coordination mechanisms. The paper also advanced
the field by drawing attention to coordination as a topic for research and providing examples of
coordination topics in multiple disciplines. Coordination mechanisms are now an integral topic in
fields such as distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems.
EXAMPLE: COORDINATION IN RESTAURANT SERVICE
In order to make the previous presentation of CT more concrete, we will present two examples of
its use for MIS HCI, in restaurant service and in software development. The first example is a short
analysis of the customer service aspects of a restaurant. Restaurants have long been studied as
important forums for coordination. The essential characteristics of restaurants—many customers,
many orders, frequent deliveries, continuous monitoring of customers and of personnel in accom-
plishing work, and perishable products—makes them particularly illuminating for studies of logis-
tical flows, information flows, and resultant needs for coordination. As Whyte (1948, pp. 18-19)
noted, “Failure of coordination is perhaps the chief enemy of job satisfaction for the worker. And
the varying and unpredictable demands of customers makes this coordination always difficult to
achieve.” He noted further that in a small restaurant, everyone was in direct contact “and the prob-
lems of communication and coordination are relatively simple,” while in a larger restaurant, “coor-
dination must be accomplished through people who are not generally in face-to-face contact with
each other” (p. 47). Finally, we assume that all readers are familiar with the basic process of restau-
rant service, allowing us to focus on the coordination aspects of the analysis.
The first step in a CT-based analysis is to develop a description of the activities involved in the
process. A simple description of these steps is shown in Figure 7.1, which shows actors on the left
and activities performed by each across the page in time-order. Activities performed jointly are
connected by dotted lines. While there may be some disagreements about details (note in partic-
ular that the kitchen is modeled as a single collective actor and cooking as a single high-level
activity), the sequence of activities is recognizable as representative of a traditional sit-down
cook-to-order restaurant.
Dependencies in Restaurant Process
The next step in the analysis is to identify dependencies in the process. Particularly important in
this case are the producer/consumer dependencies between activities. These dependencies can be
easily identified by noting where one activity produces a resource required by another. The
resource flows and resulting dependencies for the restaurant process are shown in Figure 7.2. For
example, the activity of cooking creates food that can then be served and eaten; customers' depar-
tures produce a table ready for busing; and busing and resetting a table produces a table ready for
another party. One could also analyze shared resource dependencies between customers needing
the same table or attention in the kitchen, but for brevity, we will omit this discussion.