Understanding and Supporting
Personal Activity Management by IT Service Workers
Victor M. Gonzalez
Manchester Business School
University of Manchester, UK
vmgonz@manchester.ac.uk
Leonardo Galicia
Computer Science Department
CICESE, Mexico
lgalicia@cicese.mx

Jesus Favela
Computer Science Department
CICESE, Mexico
favela@cicese.mx


ABSTRACT
Many recent studies provide evidence of the challenges
experienced by knowledge workers while multi-tasking among
several projects and initiatives. Work is often interrupted, and this
results in people leaving activities pending until they have the
time, information, resources or energy to reassume them. Among
the different types of knowledge workers, those working directly
with Information Technology (IT) or offering IT services –
software developers, support engineers, systems administrators or
database managers –, experience particularly challenging
scenarios of multi-tasking given the varied, crisis-driven and
reactive nature of their work. Previous recommendations and
technological solutions to ameliorate these challenges give limited
attention to individual’s preferences and to understanding how
and what tools and strategies could benefit IT service workers as
individuals. Based on the analysis of characteristics of IT service
work and a consolidation of findings regarding personal activity
management processes, we present the design of a software tool to
support those processes and discuss findings of its usage by four
IT service workers over a period of eight weeks. We found that
the tool is used as a central repository to orchestrate personal
activity, complementing the use of e-mail clients and shared
calendars as well as supporting essential aspects of IT-service
work such as multi-tasking and detailed work articulation.
Keywords
Multi-tasking, Personal Activity Management, Planning, Time
Management, Productivity, Information Technology Workers.
1. INTRODUCTION
Studies conducted within the last ten years provide vast
evidence of the challenges experienced by modern knowledge
workers while multi-tasking among several projects and initiatives
[3-6,8,9,13]. Researchers show that in general, knowledge
workers’ activities are varied, fragmented and overlapped, which
forces people to limit the focus on each activity for a short period
[8, 9]. These conditions are reported to leave people with a feeling
of frustration, a so called, time famine, “having too much to do
and not enough time to do it” [13]. Studies also report that
knowledge workers try to cope with the challenges of multi-
tasking and hectic schedules by using different practices to
manage, prioritize and focus on what they have to do [9,13].
These personal time and task management practices can be
understood as a type of meta-work encompassing and focusing on
the orchestration of all the tasks, projects or work the person has
committed to complete [9]. Results of previous studies show that
to a minor or greater extent all knowledge workers, included
Information Technology (IT) service workers, engage in meta-
work efforts on a regular basis and the time devoted to this
activity can be significant [4,6,8,9]. We understand IT service
work as a particularly instance of knowledge work that
characterizes those working directly with IT and offering IT
services. Some examples of this kind of role are: Software
developers (people designing, coding or testing software),
database managers (people creating, managing, updating or
backing up database servers), or support engineers (people
operating or maintaining technical infrastructures). Previous
research confirms that IT service workers often multi-task among
several projects and tasks [3,8,9] and highlights the typical
“heroism” characterizing the job, as they have to work for long
hours, meet very tight deadlines and struggle with the pressure of
balancing work and life commitments [3, 13]. In this paper, we
analyze previous work and draw from our empirical data to
consolidate a better understanding of the needs of IT service
workers with regards to the personal planning and management of
activities. We aim at contributing to the efforts of other
researchers by discussing and analyzing the personal dimension of
activity management. We present an analysis of personal planning
strategies that have been revealed from ours and others’ studies
and compare it with popular time-management tactics. Using both
perspectives we defined a guiding framework to inform the design
and development of a tool we called the Personal Activity
Manager. Finally, we also present here some preliminary results
on the adoption of the tool by four IT services workers, and
discuss their experiences with regards the support it provides for
personal task and time management.
2. THE NATURE OF IT-SERVICE WORK
IT service work is characterized by a number of aspects
identified by the literature. Firstly, IT service workers often
experience tension to manage what can be considered proper
engineering (or technical) work versus all those other tasks
resulting from collaborating with colleagues and being part of an
organization. Perlow highlights this tension, while describing how
the participants in her ethnographic study constantly referred to
having to balance between “real engineering work” and
“everything else” that they do [13]. This tension can in part be the
result of engineering training which often prepares people to
design, analyze and test software and hardware, with less
emphasis on the organizational context framing those processes.

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The tension, however, can also result from a second common
characteristic of IT service work: the degree of structure of their
work activities. Empirical evidence shows that IT service workers
carry out a mix of structured and unstructured work activities [2].
Structured activities refer to standardized processes, procedures,
and tools in order to provide and guarantee high quality IT
services for the clients and meet regulations established in
contracts signed with them or certifiers (e.g., ISO, ITIL). In
contrast, unstructured activities involve local work practices,
custom developed tools, ad hoc collaborations with colleagues,
and informal procedures [2]. Through unstructured activities, IT
service workers obtain and share information with co-workers,
and reach agreements that serve to clarify the scope and time
constraints for their own work [9,13]. Both structured and
unstructured activities demand collaboration with others at some
points in time, and these collaborations lead to multi-tasking, a
third common characteristic of IT service work. Because IT
service workers have to collaborate with many people in parallel,
this often results in the need to constantly switch from one activity
to another [8]. Interestingly, the actual level of multi-tasking is no
less intensive for IT services workers than for other professional
roles. Previous studies have compared managerial, business
analysts and IT workers, finding that the number of projects, and
the time spent per day on each one are similar among roles [8].
Because of its nature, however, IT-service work may demand less
interactive activities and more extended periods of solo work.
Perlow reports participants in her study spending close to 60% of
their time working alone [13]. Similarly, Gonzalez and Mark
found that the software developers they studied spent longer
periods of uninterrupted work on their personal computers [9].
Later on, as part of the same study, Mark et al. found that software
developers and business analysts experience fewer interruptions
when compared with managers [13]. They observed that because
the nature of work done by developers or analysts is generally
intellective, and because they interact with fewer people, the
chances of work being interrupted might be reduced.
The previous results might appear contradictory if one misses
a fourth common characteristic of IT service work: its crisis-
driven nature. The life of IT service professionals can be
described as a chain of periods of solo, preplanned work, where
sustained focus and concentration are essential, and periods of
collaborative, intensive and inquiry-based work, where results
have to be achieved immediately. Previous studies found how IT
service workers experience critical situations and emergencies
that suddenly drive them away from the task at hand without any
chance to complete what they were doing [3,13]. Barrett and his
colleagues describe how the systems administrators they studied
have to deal with so called “critical situations” resulting from
failures in the systems they manage for their customers (e.g., a
server crash) forcing them to stop all other activities and focus on
reaching a solution immediately [3]. Similarly, Gonzalez and
Mark, studying a related IT-service context, found how the
potential financial implications resulting from systems errors,
became strong ‘magnets’ diverting software developers from
whatever they were doing to bring the systems back to normal
operation [8]. Thus, IT-service workers often have to deal with
being able to recover from interruptions and drive through the day
with their work. This demands a constant adjustment of plans, and
priorities at the personal level.
Providing adequate support for IT service workers and their
multi-tasking needs has resulted in a number of proposals, some
based on technology and others based on implementing specific
strategies or tactics. For instance, the work by Bailey, and his
colleagues, aims at providing better support for the delivery of IT
services with the help of a system that facilitates the management
of both structured and unstructured activities [2]; similarly,
Perlow comments on how strategies of negotiated time allocation
introduced during her study – quite time during the morning when
people were not supposed to interrupt each other –, reduced work
fragmentation and maximized sustained focus on solo work [13].
One can argue that a solution to help people cope with the
challenges of multi-tasking must consider the collaborative nature
of IT service work; at the same time, it is also important to
recognize the limits of providing generic templates or models for
working, since individuals often develop their own strategies,
conceptualizations and particular ways of tracking and managing
their work. For instance, Bailey and colleagues comment on an IT
transition manager who developed a personalized spreadsheet to
track information from a number of computer servers [2].
Although they highlight this as a case where the artifact could
potentially become a barrier for collaborative work – co-workers
who could find it difficult to make sense of the personal artifact –,
the scenario also highlights that the strategy in fact could be
foremost optimal for the individual. At the personal level the
spreadsheet is a useful tracking tool and, in the first place, perhaps
never designed to be used by others. Crafting and personalizing
personal tools is a well documented phenomenon of task
management and multi-tasking [e.g. 5, 6]. Following Kidd, we can
say that each knowledge worker can develop “a different internal
“configuration” based on changes wrought in their thinking and
outlook by the situations they have encountered, the information
they have absorbed and the particular way they have made sense
of these” [11]. This ‘configuration’ includes task and time
management practices and the actual definition and articulation of
work [13]. Consequently, and without ignoring the need for
supporting collaboration, our research aims at shedding some light
on the way individuals manage their work activities and providing
tools and strategies that can be adequate for their needs.
3. THE ROLE OF META-WORK
The efforts that people make to get things done go well
beyond those specific actions directly related with achieving the
goals of each commitment. Much effort is devoted to organize,
plan, manage, coordinate, and retrieve all that is required to create
the material and mental conditions to effectively engage in
specific actions. Preparing a to-do list, reviewing a weekly
schedule, creating file structures, updating a list of contacts, or
checking ones computer for viruses, are all examples of what it is
referred to as meta-work [8]. We can identify two distinct types of
meta-work: one related to the management of resources, and the
other related to the management of work activity. The
management of resources is related to the provision of operational
physical or digital elements to get things done. The management
of activity is about the allocation of efforts where it matters, to
engage into a more strategic view and management of one’s
efforts. Meta-work can be understood as a phenomenon involving
both situated and non-situated aspects [14]. On the one hand, the
changing demands of one’s work require a constant adjustment of
plans, bringing and allocating resources on demand. On the other,
meta-work is a conscious effort of pre-defining work activity,
sequences, and schedules. Consequently, we can say that meta-
work can be situated when carried out, but defined when outlined