What is an Activity? Appropriating an Activity-Centric System

© 2009 IBM Corporation

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What is an Activity?Appropriating an Activity-Centric System

Svetlana YaroshGeorgia Institute of Technology, Georgia, USA

Tara Matthews, Thomas Moran, Barton SmithIBM Almaden Research Center, California, USA

Activity-Centric Computing (ACC)Seeks to address fragmentation of work across tools & documents by allowing users to organize work around the computation construct of an Activity.

Activity-Centric Computing (ACC)Seeks to address fragmentation of work across tools & documents by allowing users to organize work around the computation construct of an Activity.

IBM, ActivityExplorer Microsoft, Scalable Fabric

Georgia Tech, Giornata Umeå University, UMEA

IBM Almaden Research Center

© 2009 IBM CorporationTara Matthews, USER Group 2009.8.264

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Tara Matthews, USER Group 2009.8.26

How do I represent work activities in a system?

People have a hard time articulating what an activity is in the early stages of work

Leads to adoption issues for ACC systems

We study how successful users define & represent their work activities in an ACC system to understand how to make this less of a burden for new users



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Study of ACC System Appropriation

Study usage of active users who had successfully appropriated an ACC system (i.e., adopted & adapted it to fit & evolve existing work practices)

ACC System = Lotus Activities

2+ year deployment 32,000 users from which to sample (we selected 15 very active users) 39,000 Activities created Users used system of their own accord

Research questions

What use patterns do active users develop in appropriating Lotus Activities? How do they divide and structure their work into effective Activities? How do these findings inform the design of ACC systems?

People

Objective

Tools

Artifacts

Lotus Activities

Tags



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Participants & Method

Participants: Selected 15 highly active users

Users # Activities

7,286 1

7,873 2 - 5

20,073 6 - 10

2,234 11 - 50

296 51+

Method

Analyzed content of selected public activities & templates (120 activities)

1. Open coding

2. Axial coding following interviews – use patterns evidenced in both content analysis & interviews converged into nine patterns

Semi-structured interviews & system tours (15 active users)

Studied active users to understand successful

appropriation

Activities Patterns of Use

Create a Document

Collect Resources

Organize an Event Solve a

Problem

Manage Personal

Tasks

0 users

15 users

Maintain a Team Space

Partial Activity Unifying ReuseComplete Activity

Manage Work Units

Exchange Formalized Information

Create a Tutorial

13 users

10 users

12 users

9 users

13 users

4 users

11 users 11 users

10 users


0 users

15 users Partial Activity Unifying ReuseComplete Activity

Create a Document

Collect Resources


Problem

Manage Personal

Tasks


Manage Work Units


Create a Tutorial

13 users

10 users

12 users

9 users

13 users

4 users

11 users 11 users

10 users


Create a Document

Collect Resources

Organize an Event

Manage Personal

Tasks

0 users

15 users



Solve a Problem

Manage Work Units


Create a Tutorial

13 users

10 users

12 users

9 users

13 users

4 users

11 users 11 users

10 users

manage a set of job-specific work units

“Each Activity corresponds to an account, so I call the Activity by the account name and then within there, I have different sections by brand and I put the opportunities within those sections and I notify the appropriate team members.”

Some units observed: Customer (Client Relationship Rep.)

Customer & Product (Sr. IT Specialist)

Version (Technical Sales Specialist)

Work Request (Bus. Support IT Analyst)

Proof-of-Concept (Sftwr. Sales Leader)

Customer Report (L3 Service Specialist)

Goal: manage your primary work

Method

Create multiple identically-structured “work unit” Activities (e.g., a customer account)

Created from a template, which facilitated work reuse

Often managed as a set (e.g., view status across all units; filter set to specific sub-sets of units)

Tracked status with a code prefix in the Activity title

Heavy use of tagging to provide alternate views

manage a job-specific work unit: customer report (also: personal, solve problem)unit definition

info to fill in

required APAR form

additional to-dos user does for APARs

user’s notes

filled-in version of the customer report

APAR infoAPAR number

user’s notes

checked-off to-dos

completed & re-uploaded APAR form

many tags for finding



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Manage a set of job-specific work units

Supplementing existing tools for work outside a workflow“I still definitely use Siebel, because we have to. But, like most CRM systems, they are for reporting only… It’s great for management, but it’s not so great for the sales reps, who have to track their own opportunities and their own communications with the client.”

Reuse & sharing“I had to show [a new team member] how to properly do the [customer report]… I just pointed her to the Activity… I didn’t have to do a lot of explaining of the [customer report] process. It was all kind of self-explaining.”

User needs Ability to templatize (for reuse & sharing) Awareness of status of multiple units Quick updating of status Custom views of units



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Create a Document

Collect Resources

Organize an Event

Manage Personal

Tasks

0 users

15 users



Solve a Problem

Manage Work Units


Create a Tutorial

13 users

10 users

12 users

9 users

13 users

4 users

11 users 11 users

10 users

Activity Centric Computing Research 2008.7.23

exchange formalized information

“What you're looking at here are Lotusphere proposals. I created a template that I asked people to instantiate and fill in what was being requested.”

Goal: Manage a workflow where specific info is requested from (often multiple) contributors

Methods

• Coordinators requested & managed specific info from multiple people

• Usually planned out & made into a template

• Included detailed instructions requesting specific info & indicating how to “submit” the info to coordinators

exchange formalized info: gather feedback about software (primary pattern: solve problem)

feedback & discussion

request for feedback

exchange formalized info: demo request

identification code

instructions, including how to enable form managers to see this request

post-form completion correspondence

goal of this is to remove email load these requests cause

enter info from step #2 here



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Exchange formalized information

User needs

Provide instructions & specify information needed

Define to whom info will be routed

Manage many completed responses or “submissions”



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Create a Document

Collect Resources

Organize an Event

Manage Personal

Tasks

0 users

15 users



Solve a Problem

Manage Work Units


Create a Tutorial

13 users

10 users

12 users

9 users

13 users

4 users

11 users 11 users

10 users

create a tutorial

“I take entries from a several different problems that share some common factor and start a new Activity around that. I invite others to it or make it public and others can now see how to solve this problem. Instead of coming back to me with questions, they can just refer to that.”

Goal: teach others how to do an activity

Methods

Often created by copying a successful Activity (process steps & useful info are already there)

Process tutorials

intended to be instantiated to guide users through a process

created as a template with directions for instantiator on how to use it

advantage over static guides or paper checklists: can be used to create an independent Activity & tailored to the needs of the user carrying it out

Teaching tutorials

intended to be read for educational purposes

tutorial: how-to material about a technical topic

technical topic

collection of documents, links, & how-to info related to this technical topic

tutorial: process w/lessons learned for setting up a technology demo (also: process)

checklist for setting up a technology demo

lessons learned from other users



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Create a tutorial

Needs

Enable finding of tutorials Motivate people to create or contribute to tutorials Enable users to distinguish instruction from process

Evolution of Activities

Manage Personal

Tasks

0 users

15 users Partial Activity Unifying ReuseComplete Activity



Create a Tutorial

Create a Document

Collect Resources


Problem

Manage Work Units

1

23



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What is an Activity?

Partial Activity

Unifying ReuseComplete Activity

The concept of an activity in the real world does not map in a simple way to organizing work in an ACC system

The Activity construct is used to support objectives at various levels of granularity

“The thinking is the startup cost”



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Common Process for Determining Activity Structure

1. Seeding: Seed structure from previous tools

2. Evolving: Evolve existing system Activities

3. Reusing: Reuse successful system Activities



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Provide ways to transition data between the previous tools used and a system Activity





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Provide effective tools for reorganizing Activities,

Selectively propagate Template changes to its Activity instances




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Provide effective tools for reorganizing Activities

Selectively propagate Template changes to its Activity instances


Improve discoverability of shared Activities

Create incentives for authors to share



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Opportunities to leverage rich accounts of work

An Activity is a rich account of how work was carried out (rather than how it is prescribed). Future opportunities:

Training or knowledge sharing (e.g., tutorials) Transitioning work among employees Idea sharing across teams Accounting for one’s time Reporting status Reflecting on past work to solve new problems



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Conclusion

Mapping real work into system “Activity” construct is a challenge for users

Study of active users’ patterns of usage & successful strategies showed potential of ACC systems & revealed ways to mitigate this challenge

1. Explicitly support common patterns identified in this study managing work units, teams, & personal tasks producing deliverable outcomes gathering information coordinating processes sharing knowledge

2. Enable transition from existing tools by suggesting similar, ready-made structures

3. Support incremental evolution over time & reuse



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Did you find this interesting? Come to our talk Thursday, 10:30am, “Human-Work Interaction” session

Ownership and Evolution of Local Process Representations

Thomas Moran, Tara Matthews, Laurian Vega, Barton Smith, James Lin, Stephen Dill



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Thanks!

Lana Yarosh Tara Matthews Thomas Moran Barton [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]



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Participant demographics

GenderEntries Authored

Activities Owned

Job Title

Female 3559 226Client Relationship Representative

Male 1579 80 Software Developer

Male 999 61 Technical Enablement Specialist

Male 826 45 Sales & Distr. Sr. Consultant

Female 649 73 Level 3 Service Specialist

Male 570 23 Certified IT Specialist

Male 408 25 CIO Architect

Male 281 17 Software Sales Leader

Male 230 43 Research Staff Member

Male 212 17 Technical Sales Specialist

Male 193 13 Technical Sales Manager

Male 173 83Senior Technical Staff Member Software Architect

Male 127 11 Senior IT Specialist

Male 91 14 Database Support Team Leader

Male 76 16 Business Support Ops IT Analyst

What is an Activity? Appropriating an Activity-Centric System

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