Understanding and supporting personal activity management by IT service workers

Abstract

Many recent studies provide evidence of the challenges experienced by knowledge workers while multi-tasking among several projects and initiatives. Work is often interrupted, and this results in people leaving activities pending until they have the time, information, resources or energy to reassume them. Among the different types of knowledge workers, those working directly with Information Technology (IT) or offering IT services -- software developers, support engineers, systems administrators or database managers --, experience particularly challenging scenarios of multi-tasking given the varied, crisis-driven and reactive nature of their work. Previous recommendations and technological solutions to ameliorate these challenges give limited attention to individual's preferences and to understanding how and what tools and strategies could benefit IT service workers as individuals. Based on the analysis of characteristics of IT service work and a consolidation of findings regarding personal activity management processes, we present the design of a software tool to support those processes and discuss findings of its usage by four IT service workers over a period of eight weeks. We found that the tool is used as a central repository to orchestrate personal activity, complementing the use of e-mail clients and shared calendars as well as supporting essential aspects of IT-service work such as multi-tasking and detailed work articulation.