Hello, everyone.
My name is Mannat Kaur and I'm a PhD researcher at TU Delft.
Today I will be presenting our work that focuses on understanding
how system administration work was impacted by the COVID 19 lockdown
To begin with.
What is "system administration"?
System administration, in simple words, is the work of managing computer
and network systems on behalf of another, such as an employer or a client.
The professionals who perform this work are called system
administrators or sysadmins for short.
Sysadmins' work is collaborative in nature
as they have to communicate with others and coordinate their tasks.
Coordination is defined as the act of managing interdependencies
between activities in order to achieve a goal.
Coordination can be formal, such as via formal meetings
or informal, such as talks during a coffee break.
To be able to better understand sysadmins' coordination during a time of crisis
such as a global pandemic, we used the co-ladder model
of communication and coordination for distributed anomaly response.
This model was
created to help find communication
processes among practitioners working in a distributed way
in the complex domain of space station operations.
And even though system administration is not rocket science,
we decided to use this model for our study because we are also studying
coordination processes among practitioners working in a distributed way
in order to respond to an anomalous event,
which was the COVID 19 lockdown.
The research question that we wanted to answer was:
How did system administrators' work change
due to the lockdowns imposed in response to the
COVID 19 crisis?
This begs the question why study
the impact of COVID 19 on sysadmin work?
This is important because sysadmins facilitate
other employers to adapt during the crisis in addition to adapting themselves.
And so the ability of sysadmins to adapt
has a cascading effect on other workers' ability
to adapt.
Our research process started with a pre-study where we performed
naturalistic observations in a team of six sysadmins,
and we did this to obtain a practical understanding
of what day to day sysadmin work looks like.
This helped us prepare for the interview protocol and also highlighted
the importance of coordination in sysadmin work
leading us to use the co-ladder model.
Once we obtained the ethics approval, we conducted online interviews
with 22 sysadmins and also received two written responses.
To analyze the interview data,
we used an inductive thematic analysis approach and also used the co-ladder model
to identify specific coordination mechanisms.
The thematic analysis
led us to two main narratives regarding sysadmin work.
The first
narrative is about supporting others. While supporting colleagues and system
users has always been part of sysadmin work, even pre-lockdown,
it was amplified during the lockdown.
For example, projects supporting online work
such as deploying video communication tools were prioritized.
End-users needed support to set up their work from home stations
and sysadmins provided the support by talking to the users.
We titled our work using a participant quote, which is
"I needed to solve their overwhelmness",
which refers to the support being provided
overwhelmed employees by sysadmins.
This highlighted the care work aspects
embedded within sysadmin work.
The second narrative is about increased formal coordination,
except for those already working in remote scenarios.
We found that there was an increase in the form of coordination as
compared to pre-lockdown.
This was because firstly
to compensate for the reduction in or lack of informal coordination
because of the absence of in-person interactions.
And secondly, there was an increase in the formal coordination
for routine tasks, such as updates or security reviews.
Many routine tasks already had formal processes, but these had to be
adjusted for a remote working scenario, usually by adding
more formal processes.
Increased formal coordination had mixed effects on micromanagement
and on perceived system security.
Many participants felt that increase in formal coordination
and reduction in informal interactions
led to less micromanagement of their work.
For instance, because there was nobody looking over their shoulder.
However, some participants felt that increased formal processes,
such as more meetings, meant increased
micromanagement of their work and also increase in their task load
In terms of perceived security,
majority of the participants
felt that more online communication added additional security risks,
while half of the participants felt
that system security remained unaffected during the lockdown.
Some felt that system security had improved because of increased
formalization and security awareness at an organizational level,
which led to all the tasks being done
by following due process.
However, there were also fears that this added risks
because of the added layers of formalization.
Next, the co-ladder model was used to identify four coordination processes
used by sysadmins in response to the lockdown.
I will explain these in the order of most common to the least.
The first mechanism is the shift
of resources to support remote work.
We saw that many participants' plans changed
during the lockdown in order to support online work.
This also included transformation of interactions which often
required additional planning.
The second mechanism is regarding the creation of distinct
tasks for sysadmins. Due to added formal coordination
and the impact on users due to the lockdown,
a range of new tasks were expected from sysadmins.
The third mechanism is about changes
in expectations due to asynchronous work, As increased
formal coordination also involved increase in asynchronous communication,
people were more patient and expecting responses from others.
And the fourth mechanism, which we only identified in one case,
was the link between sysadmin work and organizational priorities.
In this case, the participant was working in
a healthcare sector and therefore the COVID 19
lockdown had a significant effect on their plans and priorities.
Based on our findings, we have three recommendations
for enabling sysadmin work.
Firstly, examine existing formal processes
to assess their practical benefits and subsequently keep the formal processes
and the associated coordination costs to an effective minimum.
Secondly, sysadmins' tools both for communication
and for system configuration should help in establishing common ground
without adding additional coordination costs for sysadmins.
And thirdly, allow for sysadmins to exercise ownership of system
administration by deferring to their expertise
and ensuring sysadmins have sufficient authority over their work and systems.
This brings me
to the final takeaways of our study.
Firstly, we must better account for care work
as part of sysadmin work.
Secondly, we need to audit formal coordination processes
so as to ensure that they serve the sysadmins and their work.
Thirdly, we found that the lockdown had mixed effects on micromanagement
and perceived system security, and these could be further investigated.
And finally, we found that the co-ladder model was useful
in identifying the lockdown's impact on sysadmin work,
and we suggest to perform long term studies using this model
to better understand how the coordination mechanisms evolve with time.
So do you know how your sysadmin dealt with the lockdown?
Trust me, you have some somewhere, so go talk to them and find out
about how they supported your working from home over the past two years.
And of course, please read our paper.
Thank you.