Evaluation of Knowledge Work Productivity – Case Distributed Software Development

The increased attractiveness of knowledge work offerings in cost competitive countries has pushed companies to seek for even more intensive forms of outsourcing. Striving for higher competitiveness and productivity, companies are looking beyond their current ways of outsourcing to create partnerships related to their core operations like research, development and innovation (RDI). Today and in future the success of distribution of knowledge intensive efforts in globally operated businesses is dictated by game changing capabilities such as quality of services, dynamic competence building of individuals and teams, as well as management of decentralized work. Yet, these are just examples of a larger spectrum of factors manifesting the dynamism of distributed software development. The DD‐SCALE research program (2014‐2016) has been targeted at investigating especially the aforementioned matters. The lack of feasible evaluation practises for explaining productivity of knowledge organizations in a comprehensive way has been an important driver. Managing and measuring productivity in the global settings of knowledge work has been in the focus of the program. Thus far, a baseline concept of the DD‐SCALE evaluation framework, containing some 90 aggregated indicators, has been constructed. These Capability Indicators are related to individual, team and organizational capabilities, aiming to explain productivity in software engineering organizations. The development work was supported by context related theories concerning distributed knowledge work and Intellectual Capital (IC), which has been a key in capturing the less visible elements of productivity. Intellectual capital lenses were utilized in analysing interviews and workshops conducted with managerial level software RDI professionals in two globally operating case‐companies. The contribution of this study is finding new dimensions for complementing the rather short‐term input‐output approach in assessing productivity. Also further elaboration about factors underpinning productivity in building a comprehensive evaluation framework is exercised. Eventually, the emphasis of this article is to bring forth the practical uses for the DD‐SCALE evaluation framework. Initial instantiations of the framework include assessing 1) the influence a change in an organization’s operation model has on software developers’ perceptions, and 2) organizational impacts of technology transfer activities. As further research, the plan is to evaluate the comprehensiveness of the framework and advance its development into an actual tool to support managerial decision making