Work characterized by brevity, variety and fragmentation

Brevity, variety and fragmentation further characterize the work of the manager. On average, their telephone calls last for 6 minutes, desk work for 15 minutes and scheduled meetings, the most time consuming, last for an average of 68 minutes (Mintzberg, 1973). In addition, the job of the manager demonstrates little routine and the tasks they perform are often not repetitive. They rarely face the same decision or situation twice.

Little structure in the work of the senior manager

Since there is little structure in the function and tasks of the senior manager, how can we figure out what information should be placed on which screen? Other knowledge-based systems that automate the design of a user interface are partly based on the task model of the user (Puerta, 1997). In addition to the general task model examined earlier, it is not easy to model the tasks of the senior manager. In general, the task model has the function of determining the navigation element and the actions that can be undertaken via the user interface. I have already discussed the general tasks of the manager but these are general and not concrete. One important general task is to make decisions and to stay in touch with corporate and environmental events. As already discussed, without information, steering makes no sense. Information acquisition and processing activities can be specified as operations (like drill-down, nesting, exception reporting) that are part of OLAP and business intelligence tools.

Goal related information should be more prominently positioned

The question is ‘When and where in the system should a specific domain element or function be accessible for information or update operations?’ and ‘What other types of models can be used in order to formulate a proper navigation strategy?’ I have suggested, in a previous blog, that goal related information should be more visible or accessible. This conclusion requires some information to be placed in screens that is not directly visible. The arrangements of the windows can be partly organized in order to conform to this principle. However, this is not sufficient since many measures can be linked to the goal.

Two other potential solution strategies

Apart from those first class properties (which can partly govern the navigation the user habitually wishes to perform) we have already discovered and will continue to confirm in the following blogs, that there are two other potential solution strategies that will allow us to determine how windows should be arranged:

1. Create a concrete dialogue model which is linked to domain elements and which tells the computer system that domain object A should be displayed in dashboard page 1 and domain object B should be displayed in dashboard page 2.
2. Enable intelligent agents that keep track of user actions and those screens that are accessed very frequently should be easier to access.

Solution 1 requires a lot of work and is not satisfactory from the perspective that the navigation (and the location of information on the screen) of the system depends highly on the state of the data. New data can, for example, remove a certain product from the top five list. Solution 2 is not compliant with the biases-prevention mechanism, which will prevent managers from looking only at their favorite information.

Methods to determine where elements should be placed

There are a few methods and indicators to determine where information elements should be placed on the screen:

• Exploit use cases to extract which informational element at which time should be available (Puerta, 1997);
• The general task model of the decision making process;
• The goal-relatedness of measures;
• The BSC-model and a multi-dimensional model are top-down oriented and the interface can be organized alike;
• Hierarchies and causal cards provide a simple and natural way to navigate through information;
• Information that is more remarkable can be placed in a more prominent place. 

Use cases and Business Intelligence

The employment of use cases for business intelligence systems is not yet worked out. This is conceivable since managers reveal little structure in their execution of tasks. Regular use cases are convenient methods to ensure that the interface will follow the order of the steps of the user task (the criteria of task and workflow compatibility). Further research should be performed in order to exploit use cases for business intelligence tools and management information systems.

Next blog about this subject: Managers are often interrupted and disturbed