WP072: The Effects of Project Extranet Software on Project-Wide Communication Patterns

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This working paper describes an ethnographic study of the participants in a major office building project who were early adopters of a project extranet solution for exchanging project data and decisions. The extranet solution was provided as a hosted service by a software vendor. Participant observations and interviews reveal that the system provided some useful functionality, but failed to recognize and address some significant limitations in both extant communications technology and in the work culture of project participants. The resulting workarounds that project participants engaged in to address these gaps created extra work and some annoyance, particularly for employees of the general contractor on the project, who had an office with real-time Internet connections and computers on the site. Modern communication technologies such as wireless personal digital assistants can address some of the technological limitations of the project extranet implementation described in this working paper. However, the tendency of project participants to short-and in the time cut the system with direct person-to-person phone calls when they were facing really urgent requirements for decisions is likely to remain an issue for today's adopters of such technology.

Type of resource	text
Date created	June 2002

Subject	CIFE
Subject	Center for Integrated Facility Engineering
Subject	Stanford University
Subject	Communication Technology
Subject	Construction
Subject	Decision-Making
Subject	Ethnographic Study
Subject	Management of Technology
Subject	New Technology Adoption
Subject	Organizational Behavior
Subject	Project Extranet
Subject	Project Management
Genre	Technical report

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/yx111vs5111

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.

Preferred Citation: Mortensen, Mark and Kunda, Gideon and Triesch, Mark and Levitt, Raymond E.. (2002). WP072: The Effects of Project Extranet Software on Project-Wide Communication Patterns. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/yx111vs5111

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