Guiding product developers to software tool education
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Examensarbete för masterexamen
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Due to an increasing complexity of the product development processes at Volvo Cars, where development
is iterative with interdependencies of upstream and downstream consumers of product data. It
is important to ensure the quality of the product data and to create and use it efficiently. One way
of ensuring this is through education. Hence, this study has investigated the software course needs of
developers and how developers can be guided to courses in order to ensure quality of product data. The
study contains four objectives: (1) An investigation of what software developers use to execute their
work tasks. (2) An investigation how developers currently are guided to relevant software courses for
their work tasks. (3) An investigation of the developers’ needs regarding guidance to relevant courses.
(4) Develop a concept, based on the needs, that guides developers to relevant software courses. The
study was carried out in iterations with a Design Thinking approach. Meetings with experts, user
interviews and observations and sitemaping have been carried out to research the current state and
the user needs. The research of the current state resulted in the definition of two developer types,
(Design engineer and GDL) along with recommended courses for each type. Additionally, six channels
that guide developers to relevant courses were identified. For two of these channels, sitemaps were
created. Three general course overview formats were identified: documents, tables and links. Lastly,
three available education formats has been identified: in-person training, eLearnings and instruction
material. Furthermore, personas and journey maps were created to define user needs. The research
and definition of user needs resulted in three opportunities: increase awareness about courses, enhance
the possibility to find specific courses, and enhance exploration of courses. To develop a concept to
meet the user needs, brainstorming, idea screening and voting, benchmarking, prototyping, sitemap
creation and wireframe creation were carried out. To perform evaluation, interviews and observations
were carried. The concept creation and evaluation resulted in a concept for a course platform intended
to guide developers to relevant courses. Furthermore, a suggestion of how the platform could
be implemented is presented. Lastly, suggestions for further Development is to create a functioning
prototype in SharePoint in order to evaluate with additional stakeholders. Furthermore, to address
additional user need a suggestion is to develop a standardized course guidance process and investigate
the potential to have all courses available as eLearnings.