Assessing e-mail intent and tasks in e-mail messages

Sappelli, Maya; Pasi, Gabriella; Verberne, Suzan; Boer, M.H.T. de; Kraaij, Wessel

doi:10.1016/j.ins.2016.03.002

Cited by 25 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…[79], [80], [81]), and more efficiently dealing with emails (e.g. [82], [83]). Finally, spending more quality time on activities most described as good days (e.g.…”

Section: Optimizing Developer Workdaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Today Was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers

Meyer

Barr

Bird

et al. 2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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What is a good workday for a software developer? What is a typical workday? We seek to answer these two questions to learn how to make good days typical. Concretely, answering these questions will help to optimize development processes and select tools that increase job satisfaction and productivity. Our work adds to a large body of research on how software developers spend their time. We report the results from 5971 responses of professional developers at Microsoft, who reflected about what made their workdays good and typical, and self-reported about how they spent their time on various activities at work. We developed conceptual frameworks to help define and characterize developer workdays from two new perspectives: good and typical. Our analysis confirms some findings in previous work, including the fact that developers actually spend little time on development and developers' aversion for meetings and interruptions. It also discovered new findings, such as that only 1.7% of survey responses mentioned emails as a reason for a bad workday, and that meetings and interruptions are only unproductive during development phases; during phases of planning, specification and release, they are common and constructive. One key finding is the importance of agency, developers' control over their workday and whether it goes as planned or is disrupted by external factors. We present actionable recommendations for researchers and managers to prioritize process and tool improvements that make good workdays typical. For instance, in light of our finding on the importance of agency, we recommend that, where possible, managers empower developers to choose their tools and tasks.

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“…[79], [80], [81]), and more efficiently dealing with emails (e.g. [82], [83]). Finally, spending more quality time on activities most described as good days (e.g.…”

Section: Optimizing Developer Workdaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Today Was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers

Meyer

Barr

Bird

et al. 2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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“…A large source of stress at work originates from information overload, and more specifically email overload (Bawden & Robinson 2009;Gantz et al 2009;Sappelli et al 2016). However, the findings of this study showed that 82.3% of respondents indicated they are able to cope with current volume of email that they receive and therefore do not deem themselves to be overloaded because of email.…”

Section: Email Overload and Stressmentioning

confidence: 61%

Email communication in project management: A bane or a blessing?

Smit

Bond-Barnard

Steyn

et al. 2017

S. Afr. j. inf. manag.

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Background: Project success used to be measured solely in terms of efficiency metrics such as scope, cost and time; however, there are proposals that more attention should be paid to process-related performance factors such as communication. The advent of email has significantly impacted the way the world communicates.Objectives: This study investigates the preference of email communication relative to other communication mediums in project environments and the effect of email communication on feelings of stress and overload in the workplace.Method: A survey with 430 responses was conducted to determine the communication preferences of project practitioners in a typical project. The average rank and frequency response methods were used to analyse the data.Results: The findings indicate that the communication preferences of project practitioners still support the media richness theory and that face-to-face communication is the preferred communication medium in most situations. Despite email being disruptive and a cause of stress, the respondents did not indicate being overloaded because of email.Conclusion: Even though there has been a dramatic shift towards email and electronic communication in projects, face-to-face communication is still the most preferred communication type for most situations. Furthermore, email is perceived as an effective tool to delegate, can be used to build and develop relationships and trust, and is an efficient and effective tool that contributes to project communication success.

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“…In four articles, the KW were selected based on the criterion of respondents being users of knowledge repository tools (Chen, Hsieh, van de Vliert, & Huang, 2015; Durcikova & Fadel, 2016; Huang, Barbour, Su, & Contractor, 2013; Lai, 2015). Two articles defined KW as professionals that made intensive use of e‐mail management software (Kalman & Ravid, 2015; Sappelli, Pasi, Verberne, de Boer, & Kraaij, 2016). One article considered those who made intensive use of diverse information systems as KW (Lin, 2010).…”

Section: Definition Of the Term Kw In The 223 Articles From The Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

Defining the term knowledge worker: Toward improved ontology and operationalization

Sordi

Azevedo

Bianchi

et al. 2020

Knowl Process Manag

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Despite the strategic value of organizational knowledge as a source of sustainable competitive advantage, researchers have voiced their concern over the potential imprecision and undue use of the term “knowledge worker” in the relevant research literature. In order to identify the nature of this imprecision and discuss ways of overcoming addressing it, we analyzed 223 articles from diverse fields that make reference to the concept of “knowledge worker”. Applying content analysis, we analyzed the definitions identified and the types of worker considered by researchers to be knowledge workers. It was observed that the term ‘knowledge worker’ has been used for occupations and professions with different levels of complexity, including those that were mostly operational. In addition, we observed that the term ‘knowledge worker’ is used, in a majority of instances, without any definition being offered (67.7%). Subsequent semantic analysis of the set of actions attributed to knowledge workers aided in the identification of additional descriptors that assisted in the conceptualization the term. In the analyzes, the sole appearance of the verb exploit in an article in the field of Geography & Transport stood out, leading us to consider a link between the active work conducted by knowledge workers and the exploitation‐exploration dyad in accordance with the concepts of the fields of innovation and learning. The analysis of the article did not confirm our initial perception. After observing the non‐use of the exploitation‐exploration dyad in none of the definitions of the term knowledge worker in the 223 articles that were analyzed, and in the literatures cited in these articles, we considered this fact an opportunity for contribution. Therefore, this study presents the development of an innovative new definition for the term knowledge worker, associating it with actions of the exploration of organizational knowledge, whereas the term information worker is associated with actions of the exploitation of organizational knowledge. We close the discussions by addressing the impacts of these definitions for the practitioners and academics who work with the themes of knowledge management, organizational learning, core competences, and process management.

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Assessing e-mail intent and tasks in e-mail messages

Cited by 25 publications

References 17 publications

Today Was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers

Today Was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers

Email communication in project management: A bane or a blessing?

Defining the term knowledge worker: Toward improved ontology and operationalization

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