Blog – Page 11 – perspectives

18th August 2013

Content analysis

Krippendorff (2012, p.24) describes it thus: “Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use“. The nature of a research design using this technique is shown in the figure below (source: Krippendorff, 2012, p.83). The framework is simple and general, employing only a few conceptual components:

1. A body of text, the data that a content analyst has available to begin an analytical effort .
2. A research question that the analyst seeks to answer by examining the body of text.
3. A context of the analyst’s choice within which to make sense of the body of text.
4. An analytical construct that operationalizes what the analyst knows about the context of the body of text.
5. Inferences that are intended to answer the research question, which constitute the basic accomplishment of the content analysis.
6. Validating evidence, which is the ultimate justification of the content analysis.

He goes on to explain what this means.

“As a technique, content analysis involves specialized procedures. It is learnable and divorceable from the personal authority of the researcher. As a research technique, content analysis provides new insights, increases a researcher’s understanding of particular phenomena, or informs practical actions. Content analysis is a scientific tool.

Techniques are expected to be reliable. More specifically, research techniques should result in findings that are replicable. That is, researchers working at different points in time and perhaps under different circumstances should get the same results when applying the same technique to the same phenomena. Replicability is the most important form of reliability.

Scientific research must also yield valid results, in the sense that the research effort is open to careful scrutiny and the resulting claims can be upheld in the face of independently available evidence. The methodological requirements of reliability and validity are not unique to but make particular demands on content analysis.

The reference to text in the above definition is not intended to restrict content analysis to written material. The phrase “or other meaningful matter” is included in parentheses to indicate that in content analysis works of art, images, maps, sounds, signs, symbols, and even numerical records may be included as data – that is, they may be considered as texts-provided they speak to someone about phenomena outside of what can be sensed or observed. The crucial distinction between text and what other research methods take as their starting point is that a text means something to someone, it is produced by someone to have meanings for someone else, and these meanings therefore must not be ignored and must not violate why the text exists in the first place. Text – the reading of text, the use of text within a social context, and the analysis of text – serves as a convenient metaphor in content analysis.“

Reference:
Krippendorff, Klaus. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage, 2012.

2nd August 2013

Complexity management?

“…it does appear that the way that uncertainty is managed in projects (through risk and opportunity management) could be broadened to complexity management. Uncertainty is only one type of complexity, and there are well-developed approaches for this. Beyond simply assessing and understanding the complexity of a project, the active management of complexity is worth exploring. An assessment of the complexities could result in some of the indicators being actively managed.”

Geraldi, Joana, Harvey Maylor, and Terry Williams. “Now, let’s make it really complex (complicated): a systematic review of the complexities of projects.”International Journal of Operations & Production Management 31.9 (2011): 966-990.

9th July 2013

PPM model updated

In earlier postings, most recently here, I have used a model to explore the concepts of programme and project management. It appears simple but has hidden depths. Discussions with Richard Watson and with my tutor group suggest that we should adapt the model by including (a) the concept of ‘benefit’ as something that can be delivered through programme ‘outcomes’ and (b) the idea that, over time, benefits will impact the wider environment. For example a variety of project outputs enable the outcome of a school that is educating local children. That outcome gives rise to the benefit that better-educated people are entering adult society. Over time that benefit has an impact on economic and other conditions in that society.

22nd June 2013

MSP under scrutiny: the meaning of capability

MSP section 2.2 lists seven principles that underpin a successful programme. One of these is “designing and delivering a coherent capability”. That fits nicely with systems thinking: a system provides some sort of capability to its users.The system engineer wants to know what is the boundary of the system, what is the nature of the capability it is required to provide and who are the users of that capability?

MSP goes on to define the term ‘capability’ as being: “The completed set of project outputs required to deliver an outcome; this exists prior to transition. It is a service, function or operation that enables the organization to exploit opportunities.” In other words, MSP sees the capability as a set of project outputs. How does that square with systems thinking, where a capability is more than the sum of its parts? Those parts – the project outputs – are integrated to create a system that is capable of performing functions which the project outputs alone cannot. These functions perform to a certain standard which must be specified at system-level. That is to say, the capability needs to have system-level specifications of functionality, performance and other non-functional requirements. Typical non-functional requirements are usability, availability, reliability, maintainability, adaptability and enhanceability but there will often be others.

MSP’s take on this (see section 7.1) is that “… projects create outputs, which build capabilities, which transition into outcomes that serve the purpose of realizing benefits.”

An outcome is defined to be “The result of change, normally affecting real-world behaviour or circumstances. Outcomes are desired when a change is conceived. Outcomes are achieved as a result of the activities undertaken to effect the change; they are the manifestation of part or all of the new state conceived in the blueprint.“
A benefit is defined to be “the measurable improvement resulting from an outcome perceived as an advantage by one or more stakeholders, which contributes towards one or more organizational objectives.“

MSP tries to clarify these somewhat confusing statements by using the V-diagram and the flow diagram shown below. How do these stand up to scrutiny when compared with the engineering V-diagram and its underlying concepts?

21st June 2013

A project-product lifecycle management approach

Sharon et al (2008) have written an interesting paper about “three intertwined domains: the product, the project and the enterprise“.

Their figure, above, shows how the “program management” overlaps in a number of issues with the product’s “systems engineering” process. The paper goes on to explain how “the combined Project-Product Lifecycle Management (PPLM) approach is intended to help the
system engineering manager to properly tailor the specific product to be delivered by its specific project within a specific enterprise“. It’s a bit geeky but there are some thought provoking ideas.

Reference
Sharon, Amira, Valeria Perelman, and Dov Dori. “A project-product lifecycle management approach for improved systems engineering practices.” Proc 18th Annu INCOSE Conf, Utrecht, The Netherlands. 2008.

21st June 2013

Systems engineering management

The Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge contains a section on Systems Engineering Management. This is about “managing the resources and assets allocated to perform systems engineering, often in the context of a project or a service, but sometimes in the context of a less well-defined activity. Systems engineering management is distinguished from general project management by its focus on the technical or engineering aspects of a project.”

29th April 2013

School governance: learning from the best

Ofsted report – School governance: learning from the best

6th April 2013

Types of research

Kumar (2010, p9) suggests a good way to begin describing your type of research. He says that research can be looked at from three perspectives: (1) application of the findings of the research study; (2) objectives of the study; and (3) mode of enquiry used in conducting the enquiry.

Reference:
KUMAR, R. 2010. Research methodology: A step-by-step guide for beginners, Sage Publications Ltd.

6th April 2013

Primary and secondary data

What is the difference between primary data and secondary data? Suppose that an author has obtained primary data from ‘the field’ and published findings from an analysis of that data. If the author’s primary data is accessible you can use it yourself to carry out your own analysis and publish your own findings, which might differ from those of the original author. For you, the data is secondary data. Wikipedia describes this well. Suppose, however, that you take the author’s document and, instead of using the underlying raw data from which the document was created, you carry out a content analysis of the document itself. For example you might analyse a project feasibility study to evaluate its compliance with standard project management methodology. Your content analysis will produce primary data. There are, of course, other ways of obtaining primary data. For example you might interview people who worked in the organisations associated with the feasibility study. But the point is that you don’t have to carry out surveys, interviews and the like in order to obtain primary data.

6th April 2013

Literature review

A literature review enables you to identify the various concepts (ideas) that are relevant to your topic and to describe those which are important. Depth and subtlety are often a result of the relationships amongst concepts. Your description should therefore explain those relationships where they are relevant to your line of reasoning. It should also compare and contrast the differing ideas and meanings that are uncovered in this way. The literature review therefore enables you to define the boundary of your topic and to find the puzzles (or gaps) that lie within it. It is these puzzles which are your potential research questions.
Note: See my postings on ‘theory’ and ‘variable concepts’ for a reminder of what we mean by a concept and how we use concepts to explain the meaning of things.