Agile Development of Prevention Tools in Occupational Health and Safety: A Gender Consideration

The Work-Oriented Training Path (WOTP) is a Quebec school program offering people aged 15 to 21 to develop their employability by alternating between school and internships. Among other tasks, teachers in this program must ensure that students are healthy and safe in their work environment. Our team wishes to develop new technological tools to address this role. The work activity of the WOTP teachers is complex and modulated by several determinants. It could be assisted by technological tools, which will change this activity in a way that can be anticipated through the Future Activity Approach. The tools must also consider the influences of sex and gender in occupational health and safety prevention. The design team has proposed an Agile approach for the technology’s development. A methodological questioning is necessary to assess the capacity of these three approaches to be mobilized in an integrated way. To do so, a content analysis of articles describing the methods has been carried out (Future Activity Approach, Gender-Based Analysis+, Agile methods). They all promote an iterative approach with flexible steps. In theory, the stages of these approaches can be superimposed. Their combination address some of their respective criticisms and could have an added value. Since they come from different fields of expertise, combining them could be challenging; it requires a multidisciplinary approach that is not always available. The combination represents an advantage in the face of a complex work situation influenced by sex and gender, for which a technology development is being considered.