This is the final segment of my interview with Bob Glushko. Read parts 1 and 2.
Ed: At what point in the modeling exercises do you think it is appropriate to start thinking about the technical implementation of the content?
Bob: As much as possible you should focus on conceptual analysis and modeling and postpone implementation considerations. That’s becoming easier to do for publishing because of the improvements in the standards and technology for separating content from presentation. For purely transactional document types designed to be produced and processed only by computers, it is also becoming straightforward to create implementation-independent models and use them to generate code or configure an application.
As before, the messy stuff is where there is a mixture of people and processing, and we often have to be sensitive to implementation constraints in user interfaces when we create transactional models that people also interact with, as in forms and workflow applications. There is research underway to use document and process models in UI design patterns and model-based applications where implementation considerations are deferred until the very end, but it isn’t quite ready for prime time.
Ed: In your book you say that document engineering is a balance between anthropology and archaeology. Can you explain that a little?
Bob: You have to balance the complementary perspectives of the archaeologist and the anthropologist as you discover and interpret information sources. The archaeologist struggles to interpret document artifacts, legacy data sources or forms and their associated business processes that were created by organizations or people who are no longer there to help. The anthropologist studies people and phenomena in their natural surroundings with an open, nonjudgmental mind. The anthropologist’s perspective frees us from assuming that the methods or strategies that people use for organizing and storing documents are entirely rational, because they certainly aren’t (try analyzing how you manage the documents in your office).
I was in the archeologist’s mode when I noticed lots of coffee cup rings and grease marks on some repair manuals on the workbench of the auto mechanic working on my car. I thought the artifacts were telling me that the mechanics followed the factory-designed repair procedures. But when I mentioned my inference to the mechanic he laughed and said “we make them look used like that so that when they check up on us they think we follow their procedures. Most of the stuff in the books is wrong, or we’ve figured out a better way.”
So we can use interviews or questionnaires to find out how people think they use documents and information, but sometimes they tell us the conventional wisdom, their organizational policy, or whatever they think we want to hear. But even when they think they are telling us the truth, they may be wrong. That's when the archaeologist's perspective takes over and lets the information artifacts speak for themselves.
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