Identifying new temporal coordination requirements for calendar systems through a temporal structure lens

Abstract

Temporal structures have been argued to be an important element of business affecting both the processes that are undertaken within an organization and the overall productivity of the organization and its members. As such, organizations should engage in temporal coordination planning in order to ensure that previously ad hoc temporal structures are streamlined and used to enhance and integrate business processes. This research is at the task analysis stage in the development of such temporal coordination systems. Forty interviews with management, exploring the types of temporal structures used in temporal coordination process, were conducted to capture preliminary functional requirements for temporal coordination systems. The temporal structure difficulties uncovered in this research are used to suggest modifications to current emerging electronic temporal coordination systems, e.g., the personal and collaborative electronic calendar systems. We summarize by giving a set of new requirements that can be used by designers to build the temporal system of the future.