A “New” View of Proof-of-Concept Practices Through the Lenses of Activity Theory and Hermeneutics

Abstract

In this study, the authors acknowledge Proof-of-Concept (PoC) as an activity with a set of practices performed by its practitioners and consumed by organizations that aim to explore new products or technologies and achieve knowledge production and consumption. PoC practices are poorly explored and characterized in the scientific literature. The motivation of this research is the clarification of an approach to PoC. This article introduces a “new” and different view of PoC practices using Activity Theory and Hermeneutics. The authors debate that it is not possible to understand the whole PoC until its constituent parts and context have been understood. Therefore, the process of appropriation of knowledge in PoC occurs in social interaction between one practitioner and another, through an activity that is mediated in the relations between those practitioners, and an activity between the triad—subject (practitioner), object of learning (outcome), and mediating artifacts—with the aim of improving PoC practices.

Flow of knowledge in proof-of-concept activities : examining the problem of interpretation using hermeneutics

“…Thus, we highlight the "connection" between the Practice Context Models (Neto et al, 2020b) and Hermeneutics (Neto et al, 2020a) aiming to provide a language and a "new way of thinking" for its practitioners in the development and execution of PoC. In other words, a "connection" with the aim to contribute to a better understanding of where these practitioners are (in the current context) or will be acting in the future (the new context), with respect to the development and the flow of knowledge in the context of PoC.…”

“…It's not linear, so you can't just divide. 60 within a context", we cannot simply extract and transport them to a different world without the knowledge of its parts, which is, its past and its future (Neto et al, 2020a). On the other hand, based on the principle of suspicion that requires a "sensitivity to possible 'biases' and systematic 'distortions' in the narratives collected from the participants" (Klein & Myers, 1999, p. 72), if we consider the results obtained in this PoC activity as a truth, we question whether these values were only obtained due to the use (or misuse) of the software tool for the generation and simulation of I/O.…”

“…Understanding, therefore, appears as something produced in the dialogues instead of something reproduced merely by an interpretation, when faced with a text, action, situation, or result. This is the meaning that was worked on by Gadamer, under the inspiration of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for whom the experience is interpreted as being the product of the encounter between consciousness and an object (Batista, 2012;Neto et al, 2020a). Stagliano (2016) cited by Neto et al (2020a, p. 129) points to hermeneutics, which can be understood as a "set of theories to provide the interpretation of something, not only of written texts, but of everything that may give some meaning."…”

“…In this way, we understand that the capture of reality is performed when the practitioner in the context of PoC earnestly seeks to perceive the world in which he/she lives, not only based on his/her sui generis perspective, but also in relation to the different perspectives and actions of other actors in the context of this activity. Note that this set of different (Neto et al, 2020a).…”