Syddansk Universitet Værktøj til videndeling og interaktion Dai, Zheng Published in: inform Publication date: 2009 Document version Peer-review version Citation for pulished version (APA): Dai, Z. (2009). Værktøj til videndeling og interaktion. inform, (0309), 43-45. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 19. Dec. 2018
CPD and ITPD, Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark Developer s Assistant A interactive tool for enhancing cooperation between developers Dai Zheng 2009/6/15
The target users of this toolkit are IT product developers in Research and Development team (R&D). This toolkit helps information interacting among developers in a project and improves team cooperation. Two important issues in R&D projects are uncertainty and complexity. Developers use experimental and analytical methods to deal with them respectively (Figure 1). Based on this principle, the toolkit is designed for planning and documenting, in order to guide developers carry out projects. For different needs and teams, the toolkit has different interface including paper version, software version, and tangible IT device version. This toolkit provides three levels of functions: reminding and recording, suggesting and connecting, sharing and collaborating. There are three tools in the toolkit: a project map, information cards, and transparency layers (Figure 2). The project map is a two axes table that includes several work-boxes (Figure 3). The horizontal axis shows the project process, and the vertical axis shows the participants groups. Three statements stand around the map showing the origin, the goal, and the main challenge of the project. Developers use the project map as a framework to remind what should be done for the next steps and to record what have already been done in previous steps. The information cards are used for providing previous experience or possible solutions, and also for collecting the information from all participants. Developers use the information cards to log their requirements and ideas. The cards are to be put on the project map to construct the project map. The transparency layers show the suggestive workflows. Based on this structured map, the developers can clearly make connection between information cards and work-boxes, Thus the project information is available to all participant on a visible map at all times, and it makes the collaboration in team much easier based on this unify diagram. The paper toolkit is more flexible. The developers can combine these paper tools in their own ways, and write the information or make changes directly. It is more suitable for small discussions and informal meetings. For easier documenting and sharing information, the paper toolkit turns to a flash software application which can run on different platform of IT devices, such as computers, PDAs, and cell phones (Figure 4). One possibility is an interactive wall in public workspace of an R&D team (Figure 5). The interactive wall could be any touchable display surface displaying the project map. Each developer in the team needs to select the color before he/she start to interact with the map. In this way, the map could differentiate the source of information by color. In another case, the flash software could run on a website (Figure 6). Thus the software is available to all developers through internet. Developers could construct the map and store the results remotely. The most useful part of this toolkit is that it includes many workflows for different styles of projects. These workflows guide developers analyze their project in a reasonable way (Figure 7). It also shows the valuable experience from predecessors. The workflow goes through each work-box on the map in a certain sequence, and shows the level of urgency and importance for each box. When developers working on one of the boxes, a thinking-triangle (Figure 8) can guide them balance between planning, implementation, and communication. These triangles make sure that each step in the process is under control and revisable. Based on these features and functions, this toolkit guides developers to build a visible project map, and provides a better place to create ideas, share information, and manage project by multiple interactive ways.
Figure 1 R&D issues Figure 2 Paper tools
Figure 3 Working map
Figure 4 Working with IT device Figure 5 Interactive wall
Figure 6 Online application Figure 7 flash software application
Figure 8 Thinking triangle