Data and software are currently changing and growing by leaps and bounds. Consequently, the way we used to understand the world until now has radically changed. Many authors know this era of change and exponential growth that we are living in as the 4th Industrial Revolution. It is a context characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, among many other problems, known as a VUCA environment. This situation worsens work performance, preventing workers from maintaining a high level of productivity. These problems afect knowledge workers in many diferent ways in their day-to-day work, as has been studied in [ 1], getting an ordered taxonomy of fourteen challenges that negatively afect productivity.
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Current business work has been characterized as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world since some years ago. This is known as a VUCA context, taking the acronym of each of the previous adjectives. One of the context in which these problems increase the most are digital transformation context. In these two contexts (VUCA and Digitalization environments) there are some software tools that have become very popular for managing knowledge work: Workstream Collaboration Tools (WSCTs).
Although productivity has been widely studied by many authors as Drucker [
In this work we will focus on the conjuction of the three previously cited areas: VUCA
context, knowledge work in digitalization processes and productivity, as represented in Figure 1.
To do so, we will delve into the study of the four most frequent challenges detected in the above
cited work [
The rest of this document is organized as follows: next we will present the Research Questions that we will address during the PhD Project, in Section 2. Later we will sketch the Research Plan that we will follow in this PhD Project, and we will resume our Current Results in Section 3. We will finish the document with the conclusions in Section 4 and the References.
All the project summary described above could be outlined around the following Research Questions that structure the whole PhD Project in the context of digitalization knowledge work in VUCA environments: • RQ1: What are the relationships between the four most frequent productivity challenges? What is the impact of having them together? Are there common solutions for them using WSCTs? • RQ2: Are design patterns for BBTs useful in practice? What are their benefits and their impact of use in terms of eficiency and efectiveness? Are they useful to solve or mitigate organisational coordination and planning/task management challenges? • RQ3: Is it possible to automate the board design process including the knowledge of our eight design patterns? Does it have practical benefits? • RQ4: Can we infer knowledge from the traces of use of the boards? Is there relationship between their use and their expected theoretical knowledge?
We have studied yet some of the problems that negatively afect the work productivity, in [
In [
For the analysis performed in [
Interruptions
Prioritisation/goals Organisational coordination Planning/task management
Work overload Lack of knowledge or training
Email management
Volatility Concentration/focus
Bureaucracy
Meetings Software
Motivation Information overload
In addition, besides analyzing the previously cited problems itself, in section 6 of [
In [
In this PhD Project, we aim to empirically analyze the impact of using the WSCTs and measure
how productivity is expected to be enhanced, applying in practice some of the solutions proposed
in [
Default card name: string Do cards flow between lists?
Order relationship between lists? Semantic precedence
Card flow 0..* 0..* previous list 1 next list 1
2..* * restriction: string
Free Card Flow
Precedence Card Flow
Complex Card Flow
Task list
Resource list
Task card
Resource card
We believe that the theoretical knowledge of this work should suppose a substantial benefit in its use, reducing design errors, reducing the time spent on that design, allowing its reuse, and improving the performance of use of these applications. One of the goals of this PhD Project is to check whether these potential benefits are met in practice by conducting several controlled empirical studies, as detailed below.
As a brief summary of Figure 2 and Table 2, all boards have an implicit design that can be
captured by the board design metamodel introduced in [
The first one determines the board’s content, distinguishing between cards representing tasks
and those representing information or resources. The semantic precedence specifies that there is
some high-level connection between two lists in the board besides their visual representation.
For example, we can have an order relationship between the phases of a project (requirements
before execution), the states of a task lifecycle (doing before done), or just temporal order (day
1 before day 2). Having an order relationship between two lists does not mean that cards can be
moved between them. For instance, when lists represent phases of a project and cards represent
specific tasks for each phase. In this case, there is a semantic relationship between lists, but
cards do not move between them. Therefore, we need a third element, card flow , to specify the
set of lists between which cards can be moved. The meaning of a card flowing between lists
depends on the specific board. For instance, a board in which lists represent people and cards
are tasks, moving a card from one list to another means assigning a task to another person.
Instead, a board in which lists represent states and cards are resources, moving a card from one
list to another means changing the state of the resource. Attending to how the type of cards,
the semantic precedence and the card flow are used, it is possible to define eight board design
patterns (cf. Table 2) that determine diferent ways of using the board [
In this PhD Project, we want to test that benefits in practice, studying the applicability of
the design patterns for BBTs defined in [
After that, we plan to develop a software tool to help and guide the user in the board design process, including our design patterns and their related knowledge (Design Tool). With this tool, we aim to speed up the design and facilitate this task to the user, at the same time that we want to reduce errors in this phase. This tool should characterize the user’s problem, analyze it, determine the solution that best fits its needs, and in last term, it should implement it in a BBT, including the corresponding best practices and restrictions of use imposed by our eight design patterns. Once developed, we should conduct another empirical study in order to analyze the benefits of using this tool, measuring the time saved at the design process (eficiency) and the usefulness of the support of the tool (efectiveness). All this should be understood as a set of actions carried out to enhance the use of BBTs and, consequently, reduce the related productivity challenges when using them.
Finally, we also want to study the design process of BBTs in reverse: analyzing traces of
board’s use to see what behavior is behind it (Board Mining, similar to process mining). With
this we will try to obtain additional information about the use and about the board that we
could not obtain only with its design. In addition, this could help us to analyze if the board is
being used as expected and if there are more eficient ways of using it for that purpose. Finally,
this study will allow us to correlate the theoretical knowledge of [
As we have seen, this PhD Project has two main and diferent parts. The first one is the analysis
of the problems that hinder good working performance in actual VUCA context for knowledge
workers immersed in digital transformation processes, and how the WSCTs can solve, reduce
or even mitigate those challenges. As represented in Figure 1, we will deepen the study of the
four most frequent challenges. To do so, we plan to empirically analyze the impact of some of
the solutions related with these four challenges, using WSCTs. Secondly, we will focus on the
practical applicability of one particular WSCT, which are BBTs, in order to reduce some of the
previous challenges (especially planning and task management). To do so, we will empirically
analyze the practical benefits of using the eight design patterns for BBTs defined in [
We can see it as the two faces of the same coin: on the one hand, we have the motivation and the problem that we want to solve with this PhD Project (the productivity challenges), meanwhile, on the other hand, we will deep in one of all the possible solutions that we have previously sketched: BBTs, as represented in Figure 1.
This work has been funded by grant RTI2018-101204-B-C22 funded by MCIN/ AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033/ and ERDF A way of making Europe; grant P18-FR-2895 funded by Junta de Andalucía/FEDER, UE; and grant US-1381595 (US/JUNTA/FEDER,UE).
Thanks to Joaquín Peña and Manuel Resinas, my PhD Directors, and also thanks to Antonio Ruiz, Adela del Río, Beatriz Bernárdez and Cristina Cabanillas, who have also collaborated in several papers aligned with my line of research.