Work sampling of product development activities

For effective management of development projects, it is necessary to take into consideration its socio-technical perspective-working processes, teamwork and features of the working environment. Data gathering about socio-technical aspects of the product development activities is often hampered by constraints of the actual working environment in R&D organizations. For that reason, to support practical data collection, the work sampling application for mobile phones has been introduced. The work sampling application consists of sequence of input screens with predefined input menus enabling data gathering about different aspects of the product development activity (such as work type, activity type, context, participants, execution manner, information transaction and motivation). For validation of the proposed application, the empirical study was carried out in the company whose research and development activities are focused on the systems for the generation, distribution and transformation of electrical energy.