Developing Activity Systems Diagrams (ASDs) and Activity Network Diagrams (ANDs)

Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin

At the macro level, activities are

• Strategic
• Long-term
• Object(ive)-oriented
• Cyclical

Start with the activity system that is evident in the space(s) you directly observed. The object(ive) is the key: identify it first, then the rest of the activity system will come into focus.

Developing the Activity System Diagram (ASD)

The ASD is a way of systematically examining the overall activity at your research site. Why do people do what they do? How has the site developed to meet its objectives and outcomes?

In this section, we'll refer to ASD Worksheet 1 as we develop an ASD for the research site. Right now, we're just generating a systematic idea of how the activity works; soon we'll examine how it interacts with other activities and where it has developed contradictions.

1. What does the work cyclically transform? [Object(ive)]

Description:

The object(ive) is that which the work transforms over and over. For instance,

• Farmers transform empty fields into full ones that can be harvested.
• Doctors transform sick people to well people.
• Factories transform raw materials into products.
• Graphic designers transform a company’s direction and ideas into an identity system.

The object(ive) is the seed of the activity system. The object(ive) is the recurring issue, problem, or opportunity around which an activity system forms. People, tools, rules, and so forth are aligned to make sure that this transformation happens, whether the transformation is a product, market, or service.

These transformations can and do happen at different scales. For instance, a web development group may form around the objective of keeping a website fresh and accessible. But that web development group might be a unit in a larger organization, such as a mobile phone manufacturer. And their activity might help the manufacturer to continue to market its products. More on that in a moment.

Sources:

To identify the object(ive), start small. Think in terms of a unit, such as the web development group above.

• Interviews: Ask people what their unit does.
• Artifacts: Examine the unit’s mission statement, plans, and collateral. Sometimes these are vague or overblown, but they will give you ideas about what the unit is doing.
• Archives: Look at the history. How has the unit evolved? Look at what has changed and what hasn’t.

Now that we have an idea of the object(ive), let’s go to the outcome.

2. Why do they transform the object(ive)? [Outcome]

Description

We now know what the “seed” of the activity system is – the object(ive). But why do they keep pouring their effort into transforming it? What’s the intendedoutcome?

When we talk about the outcome, we might think of it as the motivation – but motivation is an individual term. Activity systems are systems of people, tools, and rules. They often last longer than individuals. So what are they set up to achieve?

Think in terms of the activity's strategic direction here: motivations, desires, values. Understanding these will help you to make sense of why people conduct their activity in a certain way.

• Farmers may want to turn a profit - or maintain a family tradition.
• Doctors may want to build a thriving practice - or make their community a healthier place.
• Factories may aim at higher short-term production - or a more stable business that supports long-term viability.
• Graphic designers may want to help convey a client's message - or generate strong pieces for their portfolios.

Sometimes the activity's desired outcome is not what you might assume, and understanding that outcome is key to understanding why the activity is organized the way it is. For instance, farmers who simply want to turn a profit will make different choices about crops, organization, and tools than those who see themselves as maintaining a family tradition.

And, of course, sometimes the activity attempts to achieve multiple outcomes. As we'll see in the section below on contradictions, interference between these outcomes can lead to systemic destabilizations.

Sources:

To identify the outcome, think big. Think in terms of the unit’s values, its strategic direction, and the criteria used to evaluate it in annual reviews.

• Interviews: Ask people how they hope their unit is making a difference – and how their unit is evaluated.
• Artifacts: Examine the unit’s mission statement, plans, and collateral again. Especially look at values, direction, and future projections. If you can get your hands on annual reviews, do so.
• Archives: Look at the history. When the unit has evolved, what has been abandoned? How has the unit been evaluated?

3. How do they transform the object(ive)? (Tools)

Description

Now that you know what is being transformed and why, ask: how is it being transformed? The answer is usually going to be long, because the typical activity uses many, many tools or meditational means to get things done. In fact, you’ll observe an entire ecology of tools – especially texts – in work.

Watch out for anything that someone uses to transform the object(ive). For instance, the web developers might use web browsers, web standards, technical references, graphics programs, and testing suites to produce and update their websites. But they may also use communications tools to coordinate their work on the site – IM, texting, writing on printed pages, sticky notes on each others’ desks, whiteboards. And they might use hacks, tips, and tricks to deal with different challenges. They might also use specific written or diagrammed processes to get this work done. All of these are meditational means – tools.

Sources:

To identify the meditational means, look around. What do people touch and use? What do they report touching and using? What can’t they live without?

• Observations: Your key technique will be to observe people as they work. What do they touch? What do they pile or stack or arrange on their desks? What do they draw on? What do they attach to other things? Most importantly in knowledge work – what do they write on, annotate, type, or share?
• Interviews: Ask people about the meditational means they used in interviews. They’ll sometimes forget what tools they use and why; prompt them with your list from the observations, then ask if you’ve missed anything.
• Artifacts: Examine the meditational means you saw the people using. Especially texts.

4. Who transforms the object(ive)? [Actors]

Description

You’ve identified the object(ive), outcome, and meditational means. Now for the easy part: who’s involved?

Well, sometimes it’s not so easy. If you’re studying a small unit, such as the web development unit, you can probably find all of the people at their desks or on an org chart. But when you examine larger activity systems, you may find that things get more complicated. Maybe a key team member works off site, or isn’t even part of the official organization. I once interviewed a grantwriter for a nonprofit, and found that two key collaborators were her husband and son, who would review her drafts for her!

To identify the actors, look for anyone who is using the meditational means to transform the object.

Sources:

To identify the actors, you’ll have to trust your eyes, but also your ears: watch the people, but also ask them who else is involved. Who does work on the object(ive)?

• Observations: Your key technique will be to observe people as they work. Who touches or contributes to the object(ive)? Who uses the meditational means with that object(ive) in mind? Their job titles or positions might give a clue, but look beyond them to how people are actually acting.
• Interviews: Ask people who their collaborators are – who else is working on this object(ive) (issue, problem, opportunity). Ask how and why they interact with others in the workplace. Ask about phone calls, emails, IMs, texts. Ask where their meditational means came from.
• Artifacts: Examine the meditational means you saw the people using, and find out who else has touched them, where they came from, and where they go next.

5. Who else is involved in the wider circle? [Community]

Description

People don’t just come from nowhere and start working at a job. We’re all in different communities: broader, pre-existing groups with shared ideas, values, or characteristics. In the workplace, obvious examples are fields, trades, and disciplines.

For instance, in one study I conducted at a telecommunications company, service technicians worked to establish and maintain service for the company’s customers. They had to work with salespeople, switch technicians, the network operations center, provisioners, and others in the company. But they also had to work with service technicians at rival companies: others who were in the same trade, even though they weren’t in the same company. Switch techs shared terms and training background across companies, and they also shared the same viewpoint. They had a community that intersected the different companies.

That’s important, because we get values and viewpoints from our communities.

Sources:

To identify communities, you’ll need to think in terms of professional background: what fields, trades, or disciplines are in the actors’ backgrounds? How were they educated and trained, and do they continue to be trained? How do they describe themselves? What are their titles, and what titles and jobs did they hold before now?

• Interviews: Here, the key technique is the interview. Ask people about their job history, how they describe themselves, and where they were educated. Ask for their job title. Consider asking for a resume or look at their online portfolio or LinkedIn. Finally, ask them to describe other groups in their unit: sometimes they’ll come up with surprising groupings that indicate communities.
• Observations: You may also be able to see communities through people’s interactions. Do certain people group together?
• Artifacts: Examine the organizational chart, if there is one.

6. What rules do they use? [Rules]

Description

We already talked about set processes that people use as meditational means. But when we look at rules, we are more interested in the ways people expect themselves and others to behave in the community or between communities. Think in terms of formal guidelines and protocols, but also dos and don’ts, guidelines, unwritten rules, and “the way things are done.”

For instance, I once talked with graphic designers about how they conducted themselves with clients. One said, “There are some clients you can cuss with and some you can’t.” His business partner followed up with an example which is, unfortunately, unprintable. That’s an example of an unwritten rule that the graphic designers had developed over time to deal with other communities with which they had to interact.

Sources:

To identify rules, look for standards of conduct that are followed in a community or set of interrelated communities. These might be as binding as a legal code, as rigid as a code of conduct, as explicit as a set of procedures, as idealistic as a manifesto, or as unwritten as the graphic designers’ rule about cussing.

• Observations: Start with what you see. How do people conduct themselves? What seems unusual to you as an outsider? Do people change their conduct when dealing with people in different communities? Do people have rules, procedures, or guidelines posted in their workspaces?
• Interviews: Ask about those differences in your interviews. How do they conduct themselves in different situations? How do they expect others to conduct themselves? Do they follow rulebooks, procedural manuals, or other standards?
• Artifacts: Examine any artifacts, especially texts, that indicate written rules. Common texts such as posted guidelines or manuals are great, but you may also find very informal texts – such as a sticky note by the telephone reminding someone to “be friendly!”

7. Spread out how? [Division of Labor]

Description

So at this point, you have a good idea of what actors are doing to transform the object(ive), using certain meditational means, obeying certain rules, drawing on the values and expertise of certain communities. But how are they dividing up the labor? That is to say, who does what, and how do they decide? How are jobs handled out and broken up? Who do people contact? Who do they find themselves waiting on?

Sometimes divisions of labor are obvious, based on job description or specialty. If you’re studying a web development shop with coders and graphic designers, you can make a pretty good guess about how they divide big chunks of their work. But sometimes people develop divisions of labor based on convenience, habit, or strengths: for instance, maybe the coders have an agreement about who works with web forms – or who makes the coffee in the morning. Teasing out the division of labor will give you clues about how people split their duties, why people become experts in certain things, and often, why bottlenecks form.

Sources:

To identify the division of labor, start with the communities you’ve identified. But go beyond that to see how they identify local expertise and how they associate people with tasks. When someone says “That’s Alan’s job” – whether they’re talking about a decision, a product, a process, or simply who makes the coffee – they’re talking about a division of labor. And when they regularly pass a certain text to Alan for processing, and get a different text back, that’s a division of labor too. How do you capture these?

• Observations: Observe how people handle information and artifacts at the site. Does an individual (or group) always give a certain text to another individual (or group)? Does an individual (or group) characterize another individual (or group), such as “they always do things that way”?
• Interviews: Confirm those observations. Start with what you find about communities. Do the divisions you observed break down along community lines? Why do these divisions form?
• Artifacts: As with communities, start with the organizational chart, if there is one. But also examine the artifacts, particularly texts, that get passed between divisions. How are they processed, annotated, changed, or fed into other texts?

EXERCISE: Now that you have a good idea how to examine your site as an activity, fill out ASD Worksheet 1. Base your descriptions on the data you collected, and make sure you can point to a piece of data for every assertion you make about the activity.

Developing the Activity Network Diagram (AND)

Activity systems are interlinked in two ways. This interlinking is what forms activity networks – networks of activity systems that interact. The AND helps us to see these two kinds of linkages.

In this section, we'll refer to ASD Worksheet 2, starting from our original ASD to find links from the research site's activity to adjoining activities. Then, we'll use AND Figure 1 as a model for our own AND, which will show how this activity interacts with other activities.

Chained

As ASD Worksheet 2 suggests, each corner of an activity system comes from somewhere. Sometimes it is developed within the activity, but often it is developed somewhere else and imported. But from where?

• Tools: We pick up tools from other activities. Sometimes they come to us as part of a chain (for instance, someone designs a piece of software, their object(ive), and it becomes our tool).
• Actors: People in an activity don’t just appear there: they are trained or educated somewhere, then hired, drafted, or otherwise persuaded to join in an activity.
• Community: The actors interact in communities, including trades, fields, and disciplines. Graphic designers, for instance, have professional organizations and contacts beyond their own workplace.
• Rules. Professional standards, legal standards, and rules of politeness often come from outside the activity.
• Division of Labor: Similarly, the division of labor might come from somewhere else. For instance, someone who forms her own company might take the organization of other companies as a model.

Similarly, the activity’s object(ive) may be the input for some other activity. For instance, web developers might spend time developing and updating a website for a company – and that website can serve as a tool for customers wanting to buy the company’s products and services.

Now that you have developed your ASD, use ASD Worksheet 2 to figure out where its components come from.

EXERCISE: Now that you have developed your ASD, fill out ASD Worksheet 2. This worksheet will help you figure out where the activity's components come from.

• Again, base your descriptions on the data you collected, and make sure you can point to a piece of data for every link you assert about the activity.
• If you aren't sure about a component, put a question mark in the box, then investigate further.

EXERCISE (optional): If your data indicate strong intersections between your site's activity and these other chained activities - for instance, if some of the tools are clearly designed for different actors - strongly consider developing ASD Worksheet 1 and ASD Worksheet 2 to depict these activities in detail.

Overlapping/Intersecting

Activity systems aren’t just chained together. Sometimes they intersect in other ways.

For instance, maybe two activities share the same object(ive). Let’s suppose that while our web developers are updating the site, the company’s legal team is also examining the site to make sure it’s compliant with legal restrictions. They share the same object(ive) – the website – but they need to transform it in entirely different ways. This overlapping usually requires the two activity systems to develop ways to coordinate their efforts – and if handled improperly, it can lead to frictions and mistakes. More on that in a moment.

But other components might be shared as well. For instance, suppose that someone at your research site happens to have other relationships with her customer: maybe they go to the same church, maybe they belong to the same club, maybe they're married - or divorced. In such cases, the same actors are trying to interact in two different activities, using two sets of rules, communities, and so forth.

EXERCISE: Take a second look at ASD Worksheet 2. Does the activity overlap other activities you can identify? Rather than originating somewhere else, are the components active in different activities in ways that identifiably overlap?

• Are other activities attempting to transform the same object(ive)?
• Are other activities attempting to achieve the same outcome?
• Do other activities share components of the ASD in identifiable ways?

Base your descriptions on the data you collected, and make sure you can point to a piece of data for every assertion you make about the activity network.

EXERCISE: Now that you have completed the ASD Worksheet 2, use AND Figure 1 as a model for drawing your own AND.

1. Start with the ASD for your research site.
2. Draw the chained ASDs, with lines connecting them to the research site's ASD.
3. Draw any overlapping ASDs over the research site's ASD.

Base your descriptions on the data you collected, and make sure you can point to a piece of data for every assertion you make about the activity network.

Detecting Contradictions in the ASD and AND

And that brings us to contradictions, points at which an activity system encounters basic frictions at or across the elements. Like activities, contradictions take a bit of time to form, and can take a long time to work themselves out.

In this section, we'll refer to ASD Worksheet 3 and the AND you drew. We'll look at three kinds of contradictions¹:

Within a point. For instance, suppose that the activity system involves two tools that are incompatible – usually originating in two different activities. Or suppose that the system has two contradictory rules: for instance, salespeople might be told to focus on corporate rather than residential accounts, but they might also be told that they must fill a sales quota, which sometimes requires them to pick up residential accounts.

Across points. For instance, perhaps someone must fill out a form that assumes they have certain information, but because of the local division of labor, someone else has it.

Across activities. For instance, suppose that the web developers have created an elegant site that provides clear information to customers, but the legal department insists that they include a long disclaimer on each page, wrecking the design.

Contradictions are strategic disturbances. They’re tensions that form and often increase as activities develop. But they’re also a source of innovations. When you see innovations, workarounds, or clever practices in the activity, they are usually symptoms of contradictions.

EXERCISE: Use ASD Worksheet 3 to identify possible contradictions. Not every activity has a blatant contradiction, and certainly activities usually don't have every single type of contradiction. What contradictions can you detect?

• Within a point: Do two sets of tools have different logics? Do different actors come from very different backgrounds? Look for critical differences at each point.
• Across points: Do different communities of stakeholders expect different rules to be in play? Do the tools assume a division of labor that's not in place at the site? Look for critical differences across points.
• Across activities. Do rules originate from another activity that's at cross-purposes with the one at your site? Is another activity also attempting to transform the object(ive) your site is trying to transform? Look for critical differences across activities.

Base your descriptions on the data you collected, and make sure you can point to a piece of data for every assertion you make about each contradiction.

Bringing Your Insights Together

Now we have three different ASD worksheets. But we want to pull these into a single ASD that describes the activity's context. To do that,

1. Use Worksheet 1 as the basis for your final ASD. This worksheet describes the activity.
2. Examine the possible contradictions in Worksheet 3. Do you have solid evidence that each possible contradiction is actually disrupting the activity? If so, overlay that contradiction on Worksheet 1.
3. Examine the contradictions again. If some of these are contradictions across activities, consider extending the ASD to represent that second activity - that is, turn it into an AND.

notes

¹ Engestrom calls these contradictions secondary, tertiary, and quaternary contradictions, respectively. The primary contradiction in capitalist society, he asserts, is the contradiction between the exchange value and the use value within every element of the activity system.