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Some of Paul
P. Maglio's Projects
System Administrator Work Practices
Computer system administrators (sysadmins) configure,
maintain, and troubleshoot the computer infrastructure that underlies
much of modern life. Despite their importance, not much is known about
the needs and practices of these highly specialized and highly
important computer users. To remedy this lack of knowledge, we have
been conducting ethnographic field studies of IGS's service delivery
centers, observing organizations, work practices, tools, and
problem-solving strategies of system administrators. Given their
large-scale, complex operating environments and their special skills,
system administrators face technical, social, cognitive, and business
challenges that make them a unique class of computer users. We aim to
inform the design of tools for sysadmins by understanding how work
practices and the coordination of technology and people in service
delivery centers have an impact on individual and group effectiveness
and on total cost.
References
Conference on the Human
Impact and Application of Autonomic Computing Systems (2004).
Maglio, P. P. & Kandogan, E. (2004). Error messages: What's the
problem? ACM Queue, 2(8), 50--55.
Barrett, R., Haber, E., Kandogan, E., Maglio, P. P., Prabaker, M.,
& Takayama, L. A. (2004) Field studies of computer system
administrators: Analysis of system management tools and
practices. In Proceedings of
the Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW 2004).
[ PDF ]
Barrett, R., Maglio, P. P., Kandogan, E., & Bailey, J.
(2004). Usable autonomic computing systems: The administrators
perspective. In Proceedings of
the International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC). [ PDF ]
Russell, D. M., Maglio, P. P., Dordick, R., & Neti,
C. (2003). Dealing with ghosts: Managing the user experience of
autonomic computing. IBM Systems Journal, 42,
177--188. [ PDF ]
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| Address |
| Paul P. Maglio |
TEL: |
408-927-2857 |
| IBM Almaden Research Center |
FAX: |
408-927-1920 |
| 650 Harry Road |
EMAIL: |
pmaglio at almaden.ibm.com |
| San Jose, CA 95120-6099 |
WWW: |
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/pmaglio/ |
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