Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Step 1: Consider each To-do list of a process member as a case. For analysis use the entire text material.
Step 2: If the roles of the process members are known, group the To-do lists of the same roles and analyze
the cases considering their group affiliation. Cases of the same group are analyzed in sequence.
Considering the roles during the analysis supports a faster identification of possibly identical To-
do's and similar labeling. The designer develops a particular understanding of the context of
work. If the roles are not known, the designer may identify other hints towards a particular order-
ing in analyzing the cases, e.g. data transfer or delegation to other persons mentioned in the To-do
lists which allows a sequential analysis of the process flow views.
Step 3: Define the unit of analysis. The unit of analysis may be, e.g. a set of semantically related To-do's,
one To-do (thematic unit) or a sentence. To face the challenge of a uniform level of granularity of
the To-do's, compare with Section 3.5.
Step 4: Paraphrase the units of analysis. Reduce text to the key essence of the unit of analysis. In this
phase, the identification of process elements takes place (compare with section 3.6).
Step 5: Label or code To-do's. There are mainly two alternatives to perform labeling (compare with
section 3.4): inductive or deductive labeling.
Step 6: Evaluate results. For example, list all units of analysis with the same code, analyze the codes'
frequency, the number of cases in which the codes were found, etc.
3.4 Homogeneity of Activity Labels
The labeling of activities as recorded by process members might vary. Synonyms and
homonyms need to be handled in order to design an understandable process model
[10]. The content analysis supports two ways of determining unique labels [5]: the
inductive and the deductive elaboration of labels.
Inductive elaboration of labels
. Performing the inductive elaboration of labels
means to derive labels from the text material. The labels are elaborated in a process of
generalization. This procedure is used to attain a close reflection of the language and
terms used in the material. Labels should reflect the content of the text material as
good as possible. The inductive elaboration of labels can be complemented by the
frequency measure of terms used in the material [11]. A visual representation of the
terms' frequency offer word clouds. When the frequency measure is used to label
operations misinterpretation may arise due to technical terms used by persons work-
ing in different roles and unequally long text segments. Therefore, designers always
need to be aware of the content of the text material.
Deductive determination of labels .
The deductive determination of labels implies
that the labels are defined a priori. This means that the labels are specified before the
text material is analyzed. In this case, terms are considered that are, e.g., commonly
used in practice, in a particular sector or in a company. Formulations actually used by
process members are not explicitly considered in the phase of labeling process steps.
3.5 Dealing with Different Granularity
The descriptions of the To-do's listed by the process members might vary in their
granularity.
Summarization
is a technique that supports the structured and meaningful
aggregation of activities according to their semantic relation [5].
The goal of the summarization is to reduce material towards a particular level of
abstraction and thus supports the designer to find related tasks and activities in the
text material. The technique includes a stepwise generalization of the text material.
In a first step, the text segments are paraphrased which includes the omission of
decorating text passages, the translation into a consistent level of language and the
