The Impact of Employee Participation on the Use of an Electronic Process Guide: A Longitudinal Case Study

Abstract

Many software companies disseminate process knowledge through electronic process guides. A common problem with such guides is that they are not used. Through a case study we investigated how participation in creating an electronic process guide, through process workshops, influenced the use of the guide. We studied developer and project manager usage with respect to three factors: frequency of use, used functionality, and reported advantages and disadvantages. We collected data from three rounds of interviews and 19 months of usage logs in a longitudinal study in a medium-size software company. Employees who participated in process workshops showed a higher degree of usage, used a larger number of functions, and expressed more advantages and disadvantages than those not involved. Our study suggests that employee participation has a long-term positive effect on electronic process guide usage.

Managing Knowledge in Global Software Development Projects

“…This knowledge is mainly seen as easy to manage, but from the Alpha projects we learned that the ways of working differ across sites, and even within a site, when a large project is divided into teams. This corresponds to previous findings on challenges with standardizing work practices through role and process descriptions on intranets [19].…”

Knowledge management in software engineering: A systematic review of studied concepts, findings and research methods used

“…Both of these schools require a technical infrastructure in order to facilitate knowledge sharing. However, a finding both from studies in other fields of the systems school [60] and studies of a specific engineering activities, electronic process guides, is that it is difficult to get such technology in actual use [37]. However, many companies have invested in such infrastructure, and this indicates that we need a better understanding of the factors that lead to effective knowledge sharing within these two schools.…”

Corporate-Level Communities at Ericsson: Parallel Organizational Structure for Fostering Alignment for Autonomy

“…Cotton et al [15] found that long-term forms of participation appear to be more effective than short-term forms. For example, search conferences [16], survey feedback [17], autonomous work groups [18], quality circles [9,18], process workshops [19], and learning meetings [20] are all predicated on the belief that increased participation will lead to better solutions and an enhanced organizational problem-solving capability.…”