26 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Keywords: Adaptive Structuration Theory, Document Management, Experts-Users Interplay, Finds
Management Systems, Information Systems and Archaeology, Information Systems Design
ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND
The case presented here concerns a project to design and develop an Information System (IS)
to support all the management activities of archaeological finds and their related documents.
This is a domain where technology has rarely been employed for such usage (Braccini & Fed-
erici, 2010, p. 139) and where several different professionals usually work separately. In order
to achieve the best possible results, the promoters planned the project to take into account the
The Interplay between
Practitioners and Technological
Experts in the Design
Process of an Archaeology
Information System
Tommaso Federici, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Italy
Alessio Maria Braccini, Università LUISS Guido Carli, Italy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This case describes the design and development process of a computer-based information system for the
management of archaeological finds and related documents. Adaptive Structuration Theory is used as the
conceptual framework to analyse the role and actions of different people involved in the design and devel-
opment process, during the different stages of the case. The case addresses key issues, such as an initiative
taking place in an organizational context where users show different needs, profiles and levels of information
technology literacy. It focuses primarily on the interactions between practitioners and technological experts
during the design and development process. Another matter of interest comes from the fact that, in this sec-
tor, no other information system for finds management was already available. Moreover, this case targets the
domain of archaeology that has not received so much attention by Information Systems literature to date.
DOI: 10.4018/jcit.2012010103

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 27
Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
novelty of the projects aims, as well as the preliminary need to share knowledge and exigencies
among all the involved professionals.
The project was then based on two fundamental choices: the participation of most of the
final users, first in the requirements definition, and later in the design discussion; and the adop-
tion of an iterative process along which the many different cultures (of archaeologists, restorers,
storekeepers and technological experts) may eventually converge on a solution able to answer
to everybody’s requirements.
The designed IS has a wide scope and adopts advanced technologies and solutions that will
be described in the paper. Nevertheless, the main theme of this case is the presence of many
different actors and the interplay among them during the long process of designing and devel-
oping the system. To investigate this phenomenon, we applied Adaptive Structuration Theory
(AST) which is devoted specifically to describing the social aspects of human interactions in a
technological context.
Even though this case deals with the field of finds and document-management systems in
archaeology, arguably a neglected topic in IS studies, some considerations regarding the sys-
tem and its development process also hold true for other domains. In particular, some specific
problems addressed by the system described in this paper are linked directly to the nature of the
objects (finds and related documents) and are close to those experienced in other domains that
manage perishable and valuable assets, such as ancient books, paintings or artworks in muse-
ums. Moreover, the issues faced in the development process, regarding the roles and actions of
final users and technology experts, are in our opinion also applicable to generic development
processes that try to design an operational IS to support managerial operations, particularly when
the multi-disciplinarity of the users and novelty of the solution come into play.
General Problems Regarding Finds Management
The management of archaeological finds is a process that encompasses all the activities per-
formed on a find, including excavation, restoration, study, conservation and exhibition (Brac-
cini & Federici, 2010). To perform all these activities, information is crucial but it is often not
managed properly.
Each object that comes out of the soil during an excavation is not only a discovery of the
past but also a potential valuable source of information. Just for the fact of being discovered in
a certain place, at a certain depth, close to certain other objects, each find is a testimony of the
presence and activities of mankind in that location. However, not every find is an object worth
displaying in an exhibition. The largest part of finds is formed merely by small fragments that
can only in a few cases be used to rebuild (virtually or physically) a partial or complete object.
Their contribution to the unveiling of cultural heritage is still crucial since they bring with them
valuable informative potential. For example, in 1900, the discovery of a part of a gear-wheel-
based mechanism in the shipwreck of Antikythera, built approximately between 80 and 50 B.C.,
significantly contributed after decades of study to shift the date of the workmanship of complex
mechanical machines from the first century B.C. to the fourteenth century A.D. This discovery
that deeply altered our knowledge about the technological level of the ancient Greeks was
achieved even though the mechanism discovered was only partial, and its original form, func-
tion, and shape could not be rebuilt with the parts discovered from the shipwreck. They were
derived thanks to the contribution and information exchange of many scholars (de Solla Price,
1975; Edmunds & Morgan, 2000).
Each archaeological find, starts a new life cycle through which it will cross several stages
(among them storage, cleaning, restoration, study, exhibition, grouping or consolidation),

28 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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sometimes repeatedly (Braccini & Federici, 2010). During this life cycle, many different play-
ers (such as archaeologists, restorers, storekeepers, archivists, photographers and others) may
perform different activities on the find. Each of these activities produces new information and
can change the nature of the find, for example, the combination in a single object of fragments
found in different moments. At the same time, every action can alter the stock of information
embedded in the find, such as the aforementioned example of Antikythera where a raw metal
mass covered by corrals only revealed a wheel-geared calculation machine after an X-Ray in-
spection (Freeth et al., 2006).
Organizational Setting in Finds Management
Archaeologists, restorers, storekeepers, archivists, photographers and others often perform their
activities on the finds in different places, in different organizational units and usually at different
points of time. They frequently work following individual methodologies and context pressure,
as in the case of urgent excavations during the construction of crucial infrastructures, such as
highways or railways. For example, during the construction of the high-speed railway from
Rome to Naples (204.6 km long) there were 130 interventions on archaeological finds discov-
ered during the excavations. Of the sites discovered, 20 were defined as being of high scientific
relevance (http://www.fsitaliane.it/). For each intervention, cooperation between the building
side and the archaeology side is required to devise actions that can simultaneously safeguard
the cultural heritage and the successful completion of the building project. Timely decisions are
crucial to respect schedule and costs of the construction project. Whenever possible, finds are
quickly removed from the site. In this case, the activities that might normally performed be on
site are postponed to a later moment.
Figure 1 shows the typical organizational structure of a European archaeological department.
The chart shows that professionals with the same profile may work in different divisions, usually
without direct connections. Moreover, each archaeological department has an exclusive (com-
monly regional) territorial competence, and even though it is subject to national laws about finds
conservation and cataloguing, it is partially autonomous in its way of acting. At the same time,
as some activities are highly specialized, each professional (namely archaeologists, restorers and
archivists) may develop individual practices. For all these reasons, many different procedures
are carried on in Europe and to a certain extent, within the same department.
In the finds management sector, both organizational and technological structures are unfit
to support an effective and worthwhile management cycle. On one hand, organizational structures
such as procedures, workflows and hierarchies are neither strict nor incontrovertible. They may
differ on the basis of each organizational practice, each professional way of working, and also
as a result of external pressures (as in the aforementioned case of urgent excavations during a
construction project). On the other hand, the technological structures do not substantially exist.
This does not mean that no technology at all is used in archaeology. Several technologies and
electronic tools have been designed and adapted for the needs of archaeology (Voorrips, 1998).
These are mainly extensions of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that help archaeologists
to track sites or finds geographically (Cosmas et al., 2001; Fronza et al., 2002; Tokmakidis et
al., 2004; Wüst et al., 2004; Braccini & Federici, 2010). Such tools are then targeted at only one
kind of professional out of the many that work on finds, and only target one piece of information,
the geographic location, related to a find.

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 29
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The Need of an IS for Finds Management
The sharing and management of all the information on a find is vital to fully exploiting its in-
formative potential, and giving value to its discovery and its expensive conservation. Despite
the importance of the possible information brought by each find, finds management practices
do not follow routines and procedures that are capable of fully exploiting the potential richness
of information. Information regarding a find is usually not specifically managed with proper
IS (Kintigh, 2006; Karmacharya et al., 2008), almost always not filed in digital archives, and
rarely transferred to people not involved in the single events (Watrall & Siarto, 2007). Data is
usually recorded without any sort of formalized protocol, using paper and pencil in personal
notes, and on the sides of the wooden or plastic boxes where finds are kept and stored. Rarely
is data keyed into computers, in this case into private files with different formats and content,
because the different players usually have different information requirements. This makes the
data more difficult to be transferred and interoperated (Lauzikas, 2005). Sometimes information
merely remains in the mind of a single individual. Moreover, many of the people working in
this field show low levels of IT literacy. All these elements hinder information sharing among
those involved in archaeology.
The absence of proper management procedures for information related to finds can produce
many problems. For example, when the finds do not have an aesthetic value and are thus not
suitable to be shown in exhibitions, in the absence of information (date, state, location, and depth
of discovery) they turn into scientifically dumb objects with expensive conservation costs. Also,
when the information regarding the storage depot is also not properly managed, finds stored
there can be forgotten and, with the absence of information about their location or their need for
conservation interventions, they can be damaged by the action of time and atmospheric agents.
For instance, during a large urban renovation project in the centre of Rome in 1939, many finds
discovered and catalogued in the same site were stored in 500 boxes in anticipation of the deci-
sion on their final destination. Owing to the events of the Second World War, these boxes were
forgotten. They were only recently rediscovered (September 2010) in the basement of a building
in Rome (Fulloni, 2010). These boxes were found to contain finds with a high, sometimes price-
Figure 1. Typical organizational structure of an archaeological department

30 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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less, scientific and aesthetic value. It has been estimated that it will take approximately two years
to properly study, catalogue, photograph and restore (if needed) all the contents of these boxes.
Another significant issue comes from keeping finds and documents separately, often in
different buildings and with different storing organizations. This reason, together with diverse
cataloguing practices, makes matching a find and its related documentation, such as photos,
drawings and reports, very difficult, and sometimes nearly impossible.
Given the context described in the previous sections, the creation of a brand new computer-
based Information System (IS) to track events and manage information on finds is a big challenge.
On the one hand, such a system has to be designed in detail to achieve its aims, and on the other
hand, organizational structures are neither fit (diverse, unstandardized procedures), nor ready
(novelty of IT use in operations) to adopt it profitably.
The Preliminary Context of the Examined Archaeological Departments
The case presented here involves seven European Archaeological Departments, from Italy,
France, Spain and Portugal, all partners of the Recouvrement du Potentiel Informatif des Sites
Archéologiques Démontés project called hereafter giSAD. The seven departments were (and still
Table 1. Description of the seven archaeological departments partner in the giSAD project
Department Country Territory Official Competences
Supervised
Structures
Direzione Beni Archeo-
logici e Paesaggistici della
Regione VdA
Italy Region Maintenance and safe-
guarding of archaeologi-
cal sites and finds
1 Museum
4 Archaeological
areas
2 Depots
Soprintendenza per i Beni
Archeologici di E
Italy Region Maintenance and safe-
guarding of archaeologi-
cal sites and finds
4 National Museums
3 Archaeological
areas
±50 depots
Soprintendenza Archeo-
logica di R
Italy Town Maintenance and safe-
guarding of archaeologi-
cal sites and finds
2 National Museums
±80 Archaeological
areas
>20 Depots
Soprintendenza Archeo-
logica di CO
Italy Two Prov-
inces
Maintenance and safe-
guarding of archaeologi-
cal sites and finds
2 Museums
>30 Archaeological
areas
±40 Depots
Atelier du Patrimoine de la
Ville de M
France Town Support and supervision
of the projects regarding
archaeological sites
5 Depots
Direccion General de
Cultura de la Comunidad
Autonoma de la Region
de M
Spain Region Supervision of the his-
torical and archaeologi-
cal heritage
5 Museums
Division Culturelle de la
Câmara Municipal de RM
Portugal Municipality Supervision of the
historical, cultural and
archaeological heritage
2 Museums (+2 in
preparation at that
time)
1 Depot

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are) very different in terms of laws, practices, territorial extension, number and type of finds
managed (Table 1).
The seven departments also varied according to their previous technological experiences
and equipment (Table 2).
However, before the start of the giSAD project (2003), all of them operated in a condition
similar to that described in the organizational background section, and experienced the same
problems with finds’ conservation, safety and exploitation.
Owing to the lack of correct, updated and shared information, activities on finds could not
be planned and sometimes (for example, when the person who had worked on a find was not on
hand for the necessary clarifications) it happened that an object could not be identified, or it was
even impossible to know where it was stored. Such issues were increasingly relevant considering
Table 2. Technological experiences and equipment of the seven departments at the beginning
of the giSAD project
Monument
Departments
Previous
Technological
Experience
Equipment
Direzione Beni Archeologici
e Paesaggistici della Regione
VdA
Development of an IS to manage
finds restoration
Cataloguing software
GIS
Intranet with 28 PCs connected
Soprintendenza per i Beni
Archeologici di ER
Cataloguing software
GIS to manage risks map
Local network in each building: direction,
museum, depot (35, 8, and 9 PCs)
Soprintendenza Archeo-
logica di R
Cataloguing software
GIS
Intranet with >300 PCs connected
Soprintendenza Archeologica
per CO
Individual spreadsheets
Some PCs
Atelier du Patrimoine de la
Ville de M
Individual database
1 Apple notebook connected to an Intranet
Direccion General de Cultura
de la Comunidad Autonoma
de la Region de M
GIS to manage risks map
Local network in each office
Division Culturelle de la
Câmara Municipal de RM
Individual spreadsheets
Local network in each building
Table 3. Figures on archaeological finds management: minimum and maximum values (ap-
proximate) among the partners
Voice Min Max
Number of managed archaeological sites 300 1,000
Number of excavation campaigns performed 500 3,000
Number of boxes stored in depots 10,000 100,000
Number of discovered finds 100,000 1,000,000
Cubic meters (m3) of finds stored in the depots 30,000 100,000
Square meters (m2) occupied by finds in the depots 1,000 10,000

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the amount of archaeological discoveries each year that are often kept in inappropriate places,
such as cellars, passages, or even grottos at the same archaeological sites. The figures in Table
3 can be of help to better appreciate the relevance of such issues.
The Monuments Department of the Italian Region VdA has been trying to address such
concerns since 1992. The solution then identified was that of designing a software devoted to
gathering information about managed finds. This experimental software, named Arkeokeeper,
was developed by external developers in collaboration with an internal professional who worked
as a restorer. The high level of newness for a software in this field, together with the presence
of a sole professional, and therefore of a unique point of view, were probably the cause of rel-
evant limitations of Arkeokeeper. First, this system had a narrow scope as regards finds manage-
ment as it was especially conceived to meet restorers’ needs (Pedelì & Pesciarelli, 1997). Second,
it presented several rigidities with regard to work routines and did not cover all relevant informa-
tion.
As a result, it was used mainly in the Restoration sector of the Department. In fact, even
though other users recognized the need of software for their work and tried to adopt Arkeo-
keeper, they ended up abandoning it because of its limitations and constraints. Nevertheless,
the experimentation with Arkeokeeper had the benefit of making most of the professionals in
the Monument Department of the VdA Region aware of the possibility of facing their daily is-
sues with a customized IS. This awareness provided the impulse to the start the giSAD project
some years later.
SETTING THE STAGE
Theory and Methodology
The primary aspect that this case describes concerns the interaction among practitioners and
technological experts during the development process of an IS for finds and document manage-
ment in archaeology. When an IS is introduced to manage the activities of groups of actors in
contexts similar to those described above, unexpected outcomes can be produced because of the
interplay among social structures, structural features and human agency. Users might distort and
misinterpret the intended way of using the technology. The actual appropriation of the technology
could then be different from the intended one (Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004).
An influential theory tackling the social dynamics between human actors and information
and communication technology in the landscape of IS studies is Giddens’ Structuration Theory
(ST) (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Pozzenbon & Pinsonneault, 2005; Jones & Karsten, 2008). ST
is a general theory of the social organization centred on the concept of the relationships between
individuals and society. According to Giddens, phenomena are determined by both social structures
(i.e., properties of the society) and human actions (Jones & Karsten, 2008). Every human action
is performed in a context of pre-existing social structures governed by specific, but variable in
time, sets of norms and laws. Every action is therefore partially predetermined by the contextual
rules under which it occurs.
ST views groups and organizations as systems. These systems are produced by human
agency (human actions) that creates structures. Systems and structures can reproduce themselves
through a structuration process that can be stable or evolve over time. This theory has been ap-
plied extensively to explain the organizational adoption of computing and other technologies
(DeSanctis & Poole, 1994) but in spite of this attention, ST completely neglects the Informa-
tion and Communication Technology (ICT) artefact (Jones & Karsten, 2008). To overcome this
limitation, scholarship has attempted to extend and adapt Giddens’ ST to include the technology

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 33
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variable more explicitly (Pozzenbon & Pinsonneault, 2005). Among these works, DeSanctis and
Poole (1994) proposed the Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST).
The AST still points at human agency but also addresses the ICT artefact directly, recogniz-
ing its role in shaping human action. The ICT artefact is described in AST by further concepts
that have been added to Giddens’ theory. Those concepts are: structural features, spirit and ap-
propriation. These concepts have found a broad acceptance for the study of ICT in organizations
(Markus & Silver, 2008).
The structural features are rules, resources, or capabilities offered by the system that govern
how information is gathered, manipulated and managed by the users (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994).
The structural features can restrain or empower final users when performing their activities
using the technology.
The spirit is the general intent related to the values and the goals underlying a given set of
structural features. The spirit is the official line with which the technology is presented to the
people. In the absence of procedures and norms that clarify how a certain technology has to
be used, the spirit helps users in interpreting the features and understanding how to use them
(DeSanctis & Poole, 1994).
Given the structuration process through which systems and structures are reproduced when
a technology is implemented, a complex pattern of users’ interaction and actors’ interplay leads
to appropriation. Appropriation can then be examined to tell how a specific rule or resource
of the technology is brought into action (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994). Appropriation can be of
different kinds. First, users might appropriate the whole system or just a portion. Appropriation
can then be faithful (consistent with spirit and structural features) or unfaithful (in the opposite
case). Finally, when appropriating technology, final users usually show an attitude that can be of
comfort (when they are confident and relaxed with the technology), respect (when they perceive
that the technology can be useful for their needs), or challenge (when they commit themselves
to work hard using the technology) (De Sanctis & Poole, 1994).
The AST is used in this case since it tackles the interactions among users groups and the
technology, which is close to the focus of our paper. In this case, we have decided to apply
the AST to investigate a development process rather than a post-implementation process, also
because this case involved a pilot experimentation by users in real activities during the design
phase. Since the canonical method of AST is very complex, to ease readability of the paper we
have decided to structure the case description following the elements proposed by Boudreau and
Robey (2005) in terms of sequence of events (inertia, reinvention and improvised learning), and
groups of actors (promoters and leaders, technology experts and final users).
Data for the case was collected from project reports, minutes of meetings and direct observa-
tion. One of the authors of this paper participated directly in all the activities described below.
The other had access to relevant project documentation and interview transcriptions.
Promotion and Design of the giSAD Project
In the situation described in the ‘Preliminary context of the examined Archaeological Depart-
ments’ section of this paper, having experimented the potentiality of using software to improve
the finds management, in 2001 the Italian Region VdA, by means of its Co-financed Projects
and Research Direction under the Monuments Department, promoted a project named giSAD,
co-financed by the European Union. A partnership was established with other six regional
Monuments Departments, three from Italy and one each from France, Portugal and Spain (Table
1). The Monuments Department of the Region VdA, in its role as first promoter, was the main
partner of the project.

34 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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As stated above, even though each partner’s context was slightly different, they operated in
the field of archaeological heritage management in a scenario similar to the one described at the
beginning of this paper. The involvement of several partners in similar conditions, although with
possible different practices, was a deliberate choice, with the aim of extending the experiences
and the needs to be analysed and addressed by the project.
The project intended to design and develop an operational IS (Pedelì, 2008), addressing
multiple objectives common to all the partners: the exploitation of the huge amount of finds
not studied; the availability of much more information based on more trustworthy data; the im-
provement in resources usage; the achievement of a higher finds’ protection; and the reduction
of management costs. In the background, the initiative promoters had also more general intents
(the spirit), which can be classified in three dimensions (Table 4).
In order to point out the human agency in the emergence of structures, the people interven-
ing in the project can be classified into three groups: project promoters and leaders (PL); tech-
nology experts (TE); and final users (FU). These groups, their roles and the output expected to
be provided by each of them, are described in Table 5.
In the archaeological context, the role of each individual appears hugely relevant, because
of the multiplicity of involved disciplines and the high level of everyone’s specialization. At the
same time, it must be noticed that the final users group was composed of people who, while
sharing similar competences and roles, came from different departments and so possibly ad-
opted diverse practices.
Table 4. Dimensions of the intents characterizing the ‘spirit’ of the initiative
Dimension Description
Integration
Promoting continuous cooperation among the diverse professionals, through the use
of the same platform
Knowledge management
Fostering the creation of knowledge through the availability and sharing of much
more information
Ease of adoption
Minimizing the initial impact on users’ daily practices and the changes in organiza-
tional structures (roles, rules …)
Table 5. Groups involved in the giSAD project
Group Description Role Output
PL
Most interested persons in in-
novation in each Department
External IS Project Manage-
ment expert
Local Project leaders of the seven
departments
Global project leaders
Project plan
Sessions reports
Project plan adaptation
Project reports
TE
External established experts
without any specific knowledge
of archaeological procedures at
the beginning of the project
Designers of technical aspects of
the system
Developers of the system
Initial technical design
Final technical design
Developed system
FU
Different professionals from the
seven departments: archaeolo-
gists, restorers, storekeepers,
archivists, photographers,
archivists and others
Setters of requirements (informa-
tion and way of use)
Verifiers of the compliance
Users of the final system
Requirements document
Multilingual system thesaurus

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Taking into account the innovation brought by the project to the environment, giSAD was
planned involving several phases and stages to iteratively present and discuss the outputs produced
so far with the users (Table 6), in order to provoke new suggestions and reframe individuals’
old ideas. At the same time, another two crucial decisions made during the project setting were:
• The involvement of all the roles engaged in different moments of finds management (ar-
chaeologists, restorers, archivists, storekeepers, photographers) which usually work
separately;
• The schedule of plenary sessions, including every professionalism in the analysis phase and,
later, for the IS project discussion.
Such decisions pursued the aim of accumulating and sharing as much knowledge as pos-
sible, in order to overcome the limited sharing and narrowness in scope formerly experienced by
the Monument Department of the Region VdA with its pilot software Arkeokeeper. Just having
in mind similar objectives, it was considered the future diffusion of the new IS to as many as
possible other cultural heritage departments, in order to create a larger community of practices
behind the system (Federici, 2010).
CASE DESCRIPTION
This case describes the history of the giSAD project whose aim was the design and the develop-
ment of an IS to manage the entire life cycle of archaeological finds. The IS was later named
ArcheoTRAC (Information Systems for the Tracking, Recovery, Assessment and Conservation
of the Archaeological and Documental Heritage).
The case history is structured as a sequence of three different stages with the following
contents:
Table 6. Phases of the project with outputs and people involved (summarized)
Phases Outputs
Main
Actors
1. Analysis of practices and
needs
Set of information needed (on the characteristics of finds, depots,
archives, events …); thesaurus for each piece of information; map
of the events to be managed
PL, FU
2. Preliminary design of the
system (performed only on
the basis of documents)
Documents including technical solutions (database model, structure
of the software, hardware …) and new workflow model
TE
3. Trial of pilot software (pre-
existing)
Acceptance and hints by the users about the software Arkeokeeper
(limited to some functions in respect of the target one)
FU
4. Discussion on the prelimi-
nary design and trial results
List of comments, suggestions and criticism by the users, both on
pilot experience and new software design
PL, TE, FU
5. Revised software design Detailed project to proceed at the system development TE, FU
6. Development Final software to be implemented PL, TE

36 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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• Stage 1: initial inertia.
This stage encompasses the first and the second phases of the giSAD project (cf. Table 6).
It describes the interest shown by the final users in the initial phases, and the way the techni-
cal experts were involved in the activities.
• Stage 2: improvised learning.
This stage encompasses the third and the fourth phases of the giSAD project (cf. Table 6).
It describes the reactions and the comments of the final users on the preliminary study
elaborated by the technical experts. This stage also describes the results and experience of the
final users during the trials of Arkeokeeper.
• Stage 3: reinvention.
This stage encompasses the last two phases of the giSAD project (cf. Table 6).
It concerns the reactions of technological experts to the problems and the difficulties high-
lighted by final users in the previous stages. It also deals with the deriving structure and features
of the ArcheoTRAC information system eventually developed.
Stage 1: Initial Inertia
When the project started, almost all the users from the various departments were very curious.
They were particularly interested in discovering possible ways of innovating their work (‘it’s
time to have more modern and efficient tools to improve our work’). At least at the beginning,
their attitude towards the technology was one of respect. At the same time, their experience with
managerial software was very low. They were not used to keying data into a piece of software,
and using it later to retrieve the information. They feared being restricted or bound by the system
in their daily work. Moreover, they were also not used to cooperating with other professionals
(working in the same or in different fields) in their tasks. The final users approached the start of
the project showing great interest and some difficulties, as with any similar innovation.
For their part, the technical experts (consultants with no previous experience in the archaeo-
logical domain) were introduced to the project only at the end of the analysis phase (phase 1 in
Table 6). They did not have any previous contact with the final users. The technical experts made
sense of the needs and the exigencies of the users on the basis of available documents. When
elaborating the first version of the software design, owing to the lack of interaction with final
users and their cultural bias, they placed too much emphasis on the security and efficiency objec-
tives with the intent of achieving a total process certainty, data completeness and trustworthiness
in the software use. The technical experts also paid much attention to the issue of distributing
the same piece of software to several partners operating in partially different situations. For
this reason, whilst also considering the will of diffusing the IS widely, they chose to use open
source environments, in order to lower the adoption barriers, and designed a system with fully
scalable solutions (i.e., from a sole personal computer up to a large client server network, using
only bar codes or even smart-tags, and so on), to ease its adaptation to the different economic
and technical contexts of the partners.
The first design of the system by technical experts then followed a purely rational approach,
with excessive focus on aspects such as the data model, the workflow model, the architecture

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 37
Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
of the system, the number of mandatory data and similar. By doing so, the technical experts
produced a system design in which the structural features were too bounded for final users. Such
a design implied indeed a correspondent organizational structuration (in terms of procedures,
flow of events, task content, and so on) that could not always find a correspondence in the real
world. For example in the aforementioned case of an excavation of finds discovered in a con-
struction site, the urgency is on taking the decision regarding how to proceed the construction
without damaging the finds and delaying the construction project. The decision can vary from
taking the finds away, to burying them once more, or also leaving them where they are, modify-
ing the construction plan. The alternative to take, and the subsequent actions, cannot be known
in advance (i.e., when the construction project begins) because it strictly depends on what will
actually be found under the ground.
Stage 2: Improvised Learning
Following this preliminary design of the system, the central phase of the project focused on its
presentation and discussion with the final users. An important step in this phase was the exami-
nation of the reactions of the same users after the trial of Arkeokeeper. The spirit with which
such a pilot was introduced was that of showing to the users the consequences of a complete
automation and rationalization of all the daily activities of the professionals. All these discussions
took the form of informal brainstorming sessions. In each session a diverse set of professionals
(the intended final users of the software to be developed), with their individual skills, faced a
group of technological experts. These sessions were facilitated with the support and mediation
of the project leaders.
The general sentiment of the final users on the preliminary design of the system elaborated
by the technical experts was that it posed too many constraints and prescriptions on many aspects
of their work. The reactions clearly showed the differences in the work practices of each user.
An aspect that was criticized was the restrictive data model (‘I could guess that an internal
automatic code can help you to univocally identify a find, but I need a mnemonic code created
by myself’). Moreover, following the rational design approach, the designed system used stan-
dardized forms, none of which appeared to be particularly targeted at the needs of a specific kind
of user (‘you put that data in this form, I don’t know who’s meant to use it, but I don’t need it,
and it confuses me’). The data that was needed to complete the forms appeared to compel final
users’ work too much (‘we cannot key in that data all the time at this stage of the process, even
if it would be both correct and useful’). Finally, overall, the final users found the underpinning
workflow of the pilot software to be too rigid and restrictive (‘yes, we agree, yours would be an
ideal flow, but we can hardly follow it. Let’s think of an open excavation: we must bring away all
the finds in a certain time, no matter the complete registration of their data’). All these elements
are evident signs of the initial fears of final users who actually found their activities hampered
or constrained by the software that was originally intended to support them. At the same time,
they are also evident signs of the cultural bias of the technical experts, which makes them dis-
tant from users’ position. The structural features of the initial design were then not in line with
users’ needs to start any kind of appropriation. As a result, final users rejected the initial design.
In contrast, the choices made by the technical experts with regard to using open source as the
environment and the scalability of the system (which obviously were not discussed in detail in
technical terms), was really appreciated by the final users as they promised an easier adaptation
to their different contexts and the possibility of sharing the system with a larger community of
users in the future. While rejecting the designed software, the final users were simultaneously

38 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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still finding these latter features useful for their needs, showing again a respectful attitude towards
(at least part of) the technology.
Critical comments were also registered during and after the evaluation of the planned trial
of Arkeokeeper. As already mentioned, the software used in the trial had only been developed
with the profile of the restorer in mind and had features targeted to support their (and only their)
activities. For all the other professionals, the software presented constraints such as the rigid
workflow and the usage of the ‘finds parcel’ concept that was unusual for most users. All these
elements led to some misinterpretation of the features and functionalities of the software by the
final users during the pilot trial.
As a result, many users abandoned the trial in advance even before the term fixed by the
project. Even though it was shorter, their experience with the software still produced some results,
in the sense expected by the project promoters. The final users, having experienced the useful-
ness of a computerized system in their work to record and manage data, tried to replicate the
experience and achieve some benefits by starting their own individual shadow systems (McAfee
et al., 2004). Many users tried to use simple systems based on spreadsheets or databases run-
ning on their own PCs. Obviously every system was different in terms of the data collected, the
structure, the codification and the completeness.
Stage 3: Reinvention
The experience of the second stage of the project was very helpful for technical experts who
learnt many lessons during the meeting with the final users. The peculiar aspects of the field
of application, the archaeological sector, then emerged quite clearly in terms of the differences
among the organizations, and the variety of cultures during the discussions. All the issues identi-
fied by the final users in the design and the pilot software were still relevant enough to convince
project partners to modify the original spirit of the initiatives. Among the objectives of the proj-
ect, technical experts, promoters and leaders decided to emphasize more the ‘ease of adoption’
dimension, even in favour of reducing the weight of other objectives. This also resulted in a shift
in the spirit of the technology; this was rethought with the objective of providing a support to
the final users’ activities, reducing to a minimum, and if possible avoiding, possible limitations.
The original design of the system was then reconsidered. The new concept was designed
interactively with the final users. The new concept involved many changes in the technical
structures and led to a less prescriptive and limited system.
With regard to the architecture of the system, to enable it to be suitable to the different needs
of different kinds of users, the main aspects that needed to be modified were:
• The data model;
• The set of mandatory data;
Figure 2. Initial strict workflow (simplified) designed by TE

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 39
Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
• The views and the navigation tools used by users to browse the different functionalities of
the system;
• The workflow model.
Concerning the data model, the new concept included an extensible ‘core’ model with
information common to all the partners and professionals. With the new concept any user now
has the chance to obtain, in certain cases, new fields as extensions to such a core model (i.e., for
other individual codes of the finds). These fields will automatically appear in the specified form.
Whenever possible, the set of mandatory data has been reduced to a minimum in each usage
scenario: for example, with the new concept, a find can be registered initially without the specifi-
cation of its material or discovery location. These details can be added at a second point in time.
To reconcile the need for each user to have a comfortable view, tailored to their specific
needs while safeguarding the heterogeneity of the needs of the different groups of final users
of ArcheoTRAC, the forms and navigation tools were altered for each professional profile. The
Figure 3. Final design based on a collection of events (reduced), with some example of real use
Table 7. Software chosen to develop and to operate ArcheoTRAC
Environment Software Use Licence
Development Abator Code generator for iBatis Apache License 2.0
Tibco General Interface AJAX framework and IDE BSD License
Eclipse IDE for development GNU General Public License version 2
Operation Apache Tomcat Application Server#J2EE-
compliant
Apache License 2.0
Spring Framework Framework MVC J2EE-based Apache License 2.0
iBatis Java Object Relation#Mapping
Framework
Apache License 2.0
ACEGI Framework for authentication Apache License 2.0
MySQL Database Management Sys-
tem
GNU General Public License version 2
Metro Web services framework Apache License 2.0

40 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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Figure 4. Screen view of a form of the depot management module
Figure 5. Different conditions of ArcheoTRAC use

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 41
Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
option to add data or change the position of these elements in the software is available to each
user at any time.
Finally, to reduce the degree of constraint during activities on the finds, the workflow model
initially designed by the technical experts rationalizing an ideal process for managing finds
(Figure 2), was deconstructed in a collection of events, which can be called up by users in many
different compositions, without any sort of constraint (Figure 3). Each user can insert data on a
new find, starting from the event considered more appropriate for that circumstance, and then
proceed with any other event (or stop there), without the need to follow a chronological sequence.
To ensure traceability of events, which is a crucial feature for the work of all professionals,
the system can rebuild the history of each find ex-post by aggregating all the atomic events that
relate to a specific find. With this feature the system produces a timeline of treatments, move-
ments and all other activities the find has received, starting from the collection of sparse events
related to that specific find.
Again for the need for traceability of finds, another feature was added to the new concept of
the system to automatically build a network of relationships among different finds. This feature
can be used to identify finds that are closely related to another one. The connections among the
finds can derive either from a scientific activity, or by a restoration action.
Most of the choices about technological design of the system were made to cope primarily
with the different technological levels of the partner and, subsequently, with those of other orga-
nizations wishing to implement it (Federici, 2010). The final system was been developed using
open source software technologies, both as development and operational environments (Table 7).
ArcheoTRAC is a web-based (Figure 4), natively multi-lingual, IS system that can be used
either in-house or via the application service provision (ASP) mechanism. On its client side,
ArcheoTRAC requires the final user to have only a web browser to use the system. The server
side can run either on Unix or Windows architectures. Users’ authentication and authorization,
using badges, has been implemented to ensure security and confidentiality.
The system is designed to be used throughout the network (Figure 5), either using worksta-
tions and notebooks over wireless or cable LANs (Local Area Networks), or using reinforced
notebooks over UMTS/HSDPA networks to work directly on the site of discovery or excavation.
A scalable design has been chosen for the main features of the system. ArcheoTRAC can, there-
fore, either use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags or bar codes to catalogue boxes or
finds (Federici, 2010). Handheld devices with a bar code or RFID reader can be used to speed
up operations.
ArcheoTRAC was developed by adopting an incremental approach: the six modules (Figure
6) were completed separately and tested one by one, starting from the “Finds management”
module (the core one) and then proceeding with “Archaeological Sites management”, “Excava-
Figure 6. Modules of the ArcheoTRAC system in its first version

42 Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012
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tions management”, and so on. This choice was taken both because of the huge complexity of
the entire system, and owing to the opportunity to reduce the number of final users involved
each time.
By the end of 2007, the development of the ArcheoTRAC system was finally complete. The
design and development process took a very long time (about four years) as a result of the
lengthening produced by the necessity to blend many different points of view. First, all the final
users from different departments had to share their knowledge and needs, in order to create a
wish list of system features and a common thesaurus to be used for labels, texts and voices in
the dropdown menus. Later, technical experts with no skill in archaeology had to present and
discuss their proposal of solutions for the system with the final users (experienced practitioners
with low or no IT literacy). The increase in time should, however, be considered as a source of
improvement, because the resulting system was then based on the best possible combination of
knowledge and experience, and the designed solutions were shared consciously by all the play-
ers. A different way of proceeding might have been shorter but it would probably have resulted
in the rejection of the system by most of the users excluded from the definition of needs, or from
the stages of discussion with the technical experts.
The implementation plan was designed to minimize the impact on the adopting structures,
in terms of investments in technological equipment, overheads on the ordinary activities to be
carried on, and effort for people to be trained. For this reason, a programme was planned to
implement one or more modules of the IS in a single area at a time (i.e., firstly a depot, then an
excavation site). Moreover, the introduction started with a simpler technology set (i.e., a PC or
a LAN with some printers), to move step by step towards a more advanced one (i.e., bar code
use with printers and readers, or RFID tags with printers and handhelds), once the former was
sufficiently known and adopted by users.
At the beginning of 2008, an experimental programme was started to validate the system
against the requirements. This pilot was performed with selected users of the main partner (the
VdA Region), already involved in the design activity. During the evaluation, the users asked for
minor changes to further customize the views in the system. However, as a first result, it could
be observed that the first users started to use ArcheoTRAC in a short time and expressed quite
positive judgements regarding their experience, since they noticed some speeding up in their
work and an increased opportunity to keep and organize information previously dispersed across
various locations. It can be said that the final users are moving from a respectful to a comfortable
or even challenging attitude in the appropriation of the system.
CURRENT CHALLENGES/PROBLEMS
FACING THE ORGANIZATION
Archaeology runs at a very slow speed. This limitation is aggravated by the public nature of the
monuments departments. Owing to the lack of human and economic resources, the full imple-
mentation of the system experienced a delay. A year later, another important Italian partner started
a larger pilot, but it was halted after few months (only end user training and system set-up were
completed by that time), because of a change in the leading management. For this reason, no
further conclusion can be drawn from such experimentation.
The realization of a large, flexible and technologically up-to-date IS in the virgin context
of archaeology has to be considered as a positive result by itself. The success is even greater
because such a result has been reached involving all the professionals, and through a constructive
and improving interaction between practitioners and technological experts, which often leads to

Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 14(1), 26-45, January-March 2012 43
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a dead-end. Nevertheless, the partner organizations have still to face some challenges in order
to consider the initiative as fully successful.
First of all, they want to make sure of the full achievement of the expected improvements
in the finds management activities, in terms of:
• The exploitation of the huge amount of finds not studied, through the recovery and sharing
of their information potential;
• A better use of resources, by estimating intervention costs, and planning them on the basis
of their possible information contribution;
• Higher finds protection;
• A greater collaboration and involvement of all professionals.
To evaluate the reaching of this objective, the changes in the users’ behaviours should be
observed once ArcheoTRAC is fully deployed in all sectors of the departments.
Moreover, the project promoters want to evaluate to what extent the structure and features
of ArcheoTRAC really meet the needs and attitudes of a larger number of users. The software,
as already stated, was finally designed avoiding most of the possible constraints. However, the
individual practice of some users, or a specific urgency, may ask for much greater freedom. At
the same time, new, still unthought-of, ways of using the software may appear as either faithful
or unfaithful appropriation. The promoters are interested in these emergences of appropriation:
on the one hand, to judge the quality of the designed solutions; on the other hand, to single out
new improvements and add-ons for the software.
Finally, the giSAD project was conceived as a sort of community of various experts, in
order to share their knowledge and practices. A further challenge for the promoters is now that
of diffusing the software and it’s embedded new management approach, to other monuments
departments in Europe. Their adoption of ArcheoTRAC could extend the knowledge exchanged
and increase the critical mass beyond the software even more. With such an aim, a specific set
of rules and steps to enter the community of ArcheoTRAC adopters has been designed.
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Tommaso Federici (1960, Italy) is adjunct professor of Information Systems Management and
Organization Theory at the University of Tuscia, in Viterbo, Italy. He has also taught at other
universities (University “La Sapienza” and LUISS G.Carli University, in Rome, Italy) and
Schools of management. As author or co-author, he published papers, articles and books (a list
of them is available at: www.tommasofederici.it). He is fascinated by the innovation process,
particularly when a new IT artifact is introduced for the first time into a class of organizations.
This is a frontier territory to be understood according to multiple perspectives and by following
a multi-disciplinary approach. Beside the innovation in the archaeological sector, other recent
research domains are: e-procurement and FLOSS, both regarded as boosters to foster organi-
zational change in the public sector, and the ERP introduction in the SMEs segment.
Alessio Maria Braccini (1977, Italy) is a PhD Research Fellow at the CeRSI research center of
the LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, and he teaches Information Systems Management at
the Faculty of Economics of the same University. In the past years he has been actively involved
in research activities managed by the CeRSI research center. As author or co-author, he has
published research papers, books, and book chapters (the full list is available at http://www.
cersi.it/abraccini). His research appeared on the Communications of AIS, VINE – The Journal
of Knowledge Management Systems, and the International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Studies. His current research interest, besides information systems for archaeology, concerns
the assessment of IT business value, and the impact that ICT might have on organizational be-
haviour of digital natives.