Abstract
Importance of forming stable networks in Software projects
My STS research investigates how the National Health Service IT Programme failed due to its unstable network. My technical capstone report is on a software that I developed at my internship with the CoStar Group. These projects are related to each other because each is discussing software projects aimed to facilitate existing processes and have several actors involved in them. In my internship project, my team and I constructed a network of actors for the software product: Real estate researchers, and developers; so to further learn what makes such networks unstable, my STS research examines the failed network of the National Health Service IT Programme.
For my internship at CoStar, I developed a micro-frontend application: Match Evaluation tool, within CoStar’s existing internal software. This tool eliminated a lot of the manual work that researchers at CoStar had to do to obtain data from external sources. With features such as an interactive dashboard that allowed searching, sorting & filtering, and a map to visualize the data points, it made the process of approving data matches very efficient. We used React with Typescript, C# .NET framework, Microsoft SQL Server, AWS and Azure Devops to develop this application.
Large scale IT projects often fail due to a variety of reasons like complex requirements, compliance, power dynamics etc. However, the role that the network of actors played in the failure of that project is often overlooked. The National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the NHS, launched in 2002, was one of biggest failures in the history of public-sector IT projects ever attempted. With a total investment of about £12 billion, it aimed to revolutionize healthcare delivery in England by implementing a centralized electronic health records system alongside some additional features. My STS research draws on the STS concept of actor-network theory (ANT) to understand the network around this project (Cressman, 2009). My research focuses on the failure of the process of Translation: problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization (Callon, 1984). This included misaligned goals between central authorities and local trusts, inadequate translations of technical systems into clinical workflows, and complex power dynamics. This research aims to help future large-scale IT projects by helping understand the importance of inclusive problem definition, adaptive system design, equitable power distribution, user-centric approaches and concerns alignment in achieving network stability.
Having worked on both the projects consecutively allowed me to use my practical experience from my internship project where I had to build a network of actors: developers, data pipeline processes, and real estate researchers, and apply it to my STS research to further decompose the components of building a stable network. The experiences I had when communicating problem definition, role assignments etc. with the real estate researchers at CoStar allowed me to better understand the checkpoints that NPfIT missed achieving in their process of network building and translation. The STS research will further allow me to apply these lessons in my future technical projects and help me build a successful & stable network around a project to ensure its success.
References
Callon, M. (1984). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. The Sociological Review, 32(1_suppl), 196–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.1984.tb00113.x
Cressman, D. (April, 2009). A brief overview of actor-network theory: Punctualization, heterogeneous engineering & translation. Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/77438887/A_Brief_Overview_of_Actor_Network_Theory_Punctualization_Heterogeneous_Engineering_and_Translation
