Another group I work with regularly is for my job with Cornell Information Technologies (CIT). As a lead operator (position formerly known as team leader) we normally met face to face roughly 3 times a month to discuss on-the-job issues. About twice a semester we meet together to finalized our work schedule. In particular (for this post) I’ll talk about our late-semester scheduling. About a week before study week we have a meeting to figure out how we’re going to appropriate the hours; taking into consideration peoples’ final schedules and their campus departure dates. Our goal, simply enough, is to complete a preliminary schedule to be put into our shift management system (SMS).
The task does require a good amount of collaboration, which I have come to learn, is actually a little more difficult face to face. Partial to our group, external representations came in the form of a Google Document; more specifically the cells in a Google Spreadsheet. By assigning colors to each employee we were able to create a time table in the spread sheet and select available hours by shading in our respective colors. We also kept a running tally of how many hours each person had. The representation was transformed by each person when they added (or removed) hours from their preliminary schedule.
It helped to reduce the load on any one person (unlike how we run our scheduling meetings for the entire public labs staff) because we were responsible for our own schedules and could work at different times. The spreadsheet was accessible and editable by all of the members in our group so we had the opportunity to work whenever it was convenient for us…There was probably more incentive to enter your hours first so you had a better pick at the hours available.
Once the schedule was drafted, we gave our final say and proceeded to input it into SMS, signifying the end of our task/accomplishment of our goal. The task seemed to be loosely coupled. There was little interdependency, when it came to actually performing the task. Also, the task was routine and very simple for us. Obviously the hours in the schedule because less available as time passed (read: as others picked them up.) Nonetheless, we brought our own resources (knowledge of our personal schedules and desired work hours) to the table and were able to navigate through small conflicts without having to interact with our other group mates.
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Using a Google Spreadsheet seems like a great way to make your work schedule and keep track of people's hours. I worked at CIT one summer, but we didn't use Google Docs because each individual's hours were pretty much the same each week. But during the semester, when people have classes and tests to worry about, the schedule needs to be more flexible. The system you describe here provides that flexibility in such a way that each worker can pick up hours when he or she is available without needing to meet face-to-face (tightly coupled) with other workers. A good use of collaboration technology, I would say!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of choosing work hours in a google spreadsheet using colors. External representations such as colors seem to be an effective way in making tasks loosely coupled. Once I worked in a newspaper that used colors so that staff members were able to see what articles were finished as well as art work and photos. The colors were also used in a spread sheet.
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