It is important in software engineering to be aware of the human factors which color software development because of the non-routine, creative and intellectual nature of the work. Software developers are knowledge workers and need the right environment and structure to grow and be productive. This research identified twenty-six personal productivity concepts from forty popular self-help books and managed to map them to the Scrum framework. It suggests that Scrum provides that environment and structure
With this research I hoped to contribute to the field of software engineering by comparing the concepts, identified in the systematic literature review, to Scrum. This work hoped to give insight into how Scrum addresses the concepts to affect the productivity of software development. The Scrum framework helps an organization create an environment which empowers the knowledge worker and a structure which helps him use the skills and practices of personal productivity. The structure of Scrum creates best practices where the team, product owner and ScrumMaster learn to plan, be effective, get things done, limit interruptions, measure their own performance and improve continuously. Organizations should be able to increase the productivity improvement of using Scrum by training their employees in personal productivity skills.
Furthermore, I hoped to contribute to the field of operations management by giving insight into the qualities of the individual knowledge worker and how he factors into the productivity of the organization. The organization needs to be aware of the knowledge worker‟s needs and create an environment that supports him. The environment needs to support change, autonomy, creativity and energy management for the knowledge worker to
their employees in the skills and practices which the worker can use to increase his own productivity for example in collaboration, self-awareness, self-development, planning, action and effectiveness. All of the concepts are important and contribute to the productivity of the knowledge worker. By identifying and defining the concepts of personal productivity, I hoped to contribute to the creation of a common language in knowledge worker productivity research. Each of the twenty-six concepts identified and defined in this systematic literature review can be researched further in the context of knowledge worker productivity.
There is a need to take this research further and test that the personal productivity factors can actually improve the productivity of knowledge workers. Many of these personal productivity factors are included in frameworks and self-help theories which have been tested on individuals and organizations by consultancy companies founded by the authors of the self-help books. Most of them claim productivity improvement of implementing their theories. Personal productivity consultants have been successful in helping organizations improve their productivity and the key to how they do it can be found in their books. They give insight into empirical managerial problems which should be researched further. Identifying the underlying common concepts from forty self-help books is a first step in researching the personal productivity of knowledge workers. Organizations have become dependent on the value produced by knowledge workers. They need a solution to the problem of how to increase the productivity of knowledge workers. The next step is to create a framework of how to use these personal productivity concepts to improve the productivity of knowledge workers which organizations can utilize.
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Appendices
The appendices are organized into five sections: results, data synthesis, data extraction, selection and search. Below is the table of contents for the appendices.
Appendix A: Results ... 81