ABSTRACT
In the mid-1990s, Abbott Training1 ran an IT training organisation which spanned the United Kingdom. As the complexity of the business increased, the partners saw a need to link all of their training establishments and trainers, many of whom worked from home, to improve the integration of their training services. As network technologies were becoming more widespread, Abbott decided to commission a study into how they could build a strategy for improved integration over the medium and long term. The strategic document, when produced, abounded with ‘workstations’, ‘hubs’, ‘routers’ and various other technical specifications, but said little about how the network was to be used. The sole concession to usability seemed to be a statement that: ‘Once the network infrastructure is in place, the organisation will be able to use it for whatever it needs.’ Unfortunately, this optimism proved ill-placed, and by 1999 the network, which was installed and running at an equipment cost alone of some £5,000 per workstation, was being used almost exclusively for electronic mail.
