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Recent industrial trials with applying the technique ‘pragmatic modelling’ are producing positive results, according to the comments received from the companies taking part. Pragmatic modelling is a technique developed to examine the social interactions occurring in team-based product introduction. It is capable of capturing the subtleties of communication and can produce objective, impartial information which can go forward to an agenda for process improvement. The technique is empirically grounded and, unlike conventional modelling tools, is not biased due to preconceived notions or degraded because of the application of rigid modelling formalisms. It has been nicknamed ‘truth modelling’ by the industrial collaborators. This paper describes the technique in terms of the modelling approach, how the technique is applied, and the value it brings to understand team-based activity. An extract from a case study is included to provide a flavour of the type of information the technique can reveal.

Before a business process can be improved, it is necessary to have a detailed and accurate picture of how the process is currently working, including its strengths and weaknesses. Most business processes rely on social interaction, which is an essential characteristic of teamworking, but conventional modelling techniques (e.g. IDEF) do not lend themselves to capture the ‘soft’ interactions and the nuances of discourse. The technique referred to as pragmatic modelling has been designed to capture the subtleties of communication during team-based product introduction. It can produce ‘grounded knowledge’, i.e. the detail of what really goes on in the product introduction process. Applying the technique in team-based activity results in pragmatic models which contain and highlight particular issues of concern to the company involved in the study. The issues contained in the models can go forward to an agenda for process improvement cycle. Fig. 1 gives an overview of the technique in the context of a process improvement cycle.During its development period, the technique has been applied to a number of organisations, both large and small, and has revealed important issues to the companies taking part. More recently, the technique has gone through a series of trials, aimed at validating the technique in an industrial context. This paper provides the background on the development of the technique and its essential characteristics and includes extracts from a typical validation study carried out as part of a 1 year EPSRC technology transfer project, which is a pilot EPSRC innovation aimed at exploiting research activity and enhancing the training and industrial experience of the contract researcher.

This paper has outlined a technique referred to as pragmatic modelling which has been successfully tried at the collaborator companies. Industrial comment from the trials has been positive. Experience from the trials indicates that the technique has the potential to expose the truth of a situation occurring in any type of team-based activity, providing a basis for organisational learning in a cooperative and non-threatening but systematic manner.