Advice for in-coming Masters Students

Each incoming student in the Faculty of Information is assigned to a faculty advisor before they arrive. Last year, I prepared an "advice" document to share with each of the students who were assigned to me. I also shared it with some of my colleagues. Admissions Officer Laura Jantek suggested that I write a blog post with my advice so here it is!

Embarking on a Masters program is an exciting opportunity for life-long learning and professional and personal development. As a faculty member, I am looking forward to working with you to help fulfill your personal goals in this journey. We are here to provide advice and guidance but ultimately you are responsible for your success and attainment of your goals. You will be faced with several decisions during your program and your advisor may be able to help you learn how to think through the various choices and learn from making those decisions.

If you haven’t already done this, it is important for you to understand what motivates you. Take some time to explicitly articulate your personal and professional goals within this program. Doing this will help guide your decisions and the choices you make. Think about the following:

• Why you are here in the program
• What you hope to learn and accomplish
• What kinds of situations make you feel satisfied, frustrated, anxious, proud
• What are your preferred learning styles
• What are your short-term goals
• What are your long-term goals and aspirations
• What are your areas of strength and where you wish to gain experience
• How you define success

There are resources available to you to help you learn these things about yourself:

• There is a temperament study you can do (the basic one is free).
• There is a portfolio requirement for the Masters of Library and Information Science program at the University of Washington. The requirements of their portfolio program might be a good guide for you in determining your areas of strength and areas where you wish to gain experience.
• Your friends and family.

If you feel comfortable, share your goals and motivations with your advisor so he/she can help you achieve them during your time in the Faculty of Information. You may wish to keep a journal where you can keep track of different situations and experiences, what you did, and how things worked out. A word document, a blog, or locally-kept html document would work well.

There are many ways your advisor can provide advice throughout your time in the Faculty of Information. Here are some examples but there may be others that will be useful to you:

• Helping you reach decisions by listening to alternatives you’ve identified
• Broadening your network of people and organizations by introducing you to people and groups
• Sharing their experiences from their own work/academic life
• Helping you balance your school with the rest of your life activities (‘work/life balance’) by sharing strategies learned over the years
• Identifying opportunities for career development, leadership, projects outside your class work that will help you achieve your goals
• Providing advice for job interviews and finding a job

Think about where you would like your advisor to help you achieve the goals you have set for yourself. In general, as an advisor, I expect students to investigate issues and think about them before coming to me. Bring me various alternatives that you have discovered yourself and then ask for advice and guidance on the different alternatives.

There are many questions and issues you will come across where your advisor will not be able to help directly. For example, we will not help you complete assignments for your classes and will not intervene between you and your class instructors. In those cases, your advisor can provide general advice and strategies that will help you manage the issues yourself. And remember, advisors will not have all the answers!

Finally, each of us advise many students, teach courses, conduct research, and participate in conferences, etc. And you are also busy. Time is critical for all of us—so make (and keep) appointments with your advisor, decide on the best ways of communicating and meeting, and come prepared for your discussion in order to make the best of our time together.

We all look forward to getting to know you and sharing in your graduate school success!

Summer Plans: Research Project 1

For an academic, summer really starts when the marks are all submitted after the end of classes. So, my summer has already started. In fact I’m two months in (almost half-way). This is not a comforting thought. There was (is) so much I want to (need to) do this summer.

I started by (finally) writing up the service science research landscape I blogged about last year. It has been submitted as a book chapter to the theme: “Service Systems Implementation”, a Volume in “Service Science: Research and Innovations (SSRI) in the Service Economy” Book Series, Springer.

I’m also working on three fun research projects with smart people this summer. I will briefly introduce each of them in the next few posts.

The first is a project on the decision-making needs of future knowledge-workers. I’m working with PhD student John Peco in the Faculty of Information who is studying how young people use social networking sites and other online tools to help them engage with information and people for decision-making. A survey will be out soon to help us learn more. I'm also working with soon-to-be masters student in Computer Science, Fan Dong, who is looking into collaborative decision making in cross-site software engineering groups. Fan is conducting a literature review looking at research into what are key decisions that are made in software engineering, how those decisions are made (in what ways using what methods), when various decisions are made (at what stages of software engineering), with whom (when / why do they engage with others) and using which tools or models.

Fan and I are also compiling a list of the kinds of decisions that are made during a software development effort, whether during design and requirements gathering, coding, testing, release planning, deployment, configuration, maintenance, etc.

So, my question to all the software people out there is:

What are some of the decisions you make (or made) in your software development work?

Please respond as comments to this post or to me directly and I’ll summarize and post back.

Teaching Introduction to Service Science

I really should be given a “bad blogger” award. Come to think of it, maybe I don’t deserve to be referred to as a “blogger” at all. I haven’t posted in a while. I have, on the other hand, composed many blog posts. I do it all the time while: standing waiting for a bus, riding the subway, swimming lengths, and while trying to concentrate on my breath as I lie in savasana. These in-my-head posts rarely receive comments.

I have a lot to blog about. I’m teaching FIS2306 Introduction to Service Science again this year. I’m enjoying it even more this time around. I have 14 students and each bring very different backgrounds and insights into the discussion. They are currently working on their first assignment (or will be soon). They have been asked to select a service system and analyze it according to various criteria and definitions presented in some of the papers we’ve read (see below). I think it is a fun exercise and would like to go through it for several different diverse kinds of service systems. In cases where they feel that the terms or concepts asked for in the analysis do not fit their chosen service system or some aspects of their service system, I’ve asked them to discuss why that is the case and provide supporting examples to argue their points. At the end, I ask them to summarize by discussing how well the analysis fit or did not fit their service system.

I include the assignment information here. If anyone reading would like to analyze a service system in this way and post it here, I promise not to grade it, but I will enjoy reading it!

1. Give a brief overview of your service system. Provide the type or class of service systems to which your service system belongs.

2. Describe and discuss your service system in terms of the following definition from [1]:

... we define a service system as a dynamic value co-creation configuration of resources, including people, organizations, shared information (language, laws, measures, methods), and technology, all connected internally and externally to other service systems by value propositions.

Consider all aspects of this definition giving examples from your service system for each concept included in the definition. Discuss how well the definition fits with your specific service system and identify any relevant concepts in your service system that may not be included in this definition.

3. Given one of the points of view (or perspectives) in your service system, identify 5 resources. Discuss whether they are operand or operant resources and why. For each resource, determine if they are conceptual or physical, have legal rights or are treated as property.

4. Discuss the notion of value in your service system. Consider how value is judged in your service system and the possible frames of reference for judging that value.

5. Identify and describe 2 key service processes* in your service system and discuss why you feel those are key processes.

Consider the primary service processes* in your service system:

1. Select one service process in your service system and describe it briefly. Then, for that service process:

• Identify the client (customer) of the chosen service process based on the definition in [2]: “the individual or entities who determine whether or not the service provided shall be compensated for production”. Discuss any assumptions you made about the term “compensation”. If applicable, differentiate between direct and indirect customers as defined in [2].

• Given the 3 general kinds of customer inputs from [2] (customer self-inputs, tangible belongings, customer-provided information), which does the client (customer) in your chosen service process provide to the service process? (Give examples)

2. In [2], five “supposed” characteristics of services are given: heterogeneity, simultaneity, perishability, intangibility, and customer participation. Choose two of these and discuss one or more service processes in your service system in the context of these characteristics. Discuss how these two characteristics might (or might not) be “symptoms” of the customer inputs in your service processes.

3. Consider the definition of service interactions in [1]:

Value co-creation interactions between service systems are termed service interactions. Each service system engages in three main activities that make up as service interaction: (1) proposing a value co-creation interaction to another service system (proposal), (2) agreeing to a proposal (agreement), and (3) realizing the proposal (realization). ...

Discuss and compare service interactions and non-service interactions in your service system. Consider how you define value co-creation and the three activities that make up a service interaction given in [1].

4. Consider the ISPAR model of service system interactions presented in [1]. Select two interactions in your service system and discuss two possible outcomes for each as defined in the ISPAR model.

5. Identify a high-intensity service process in your service system as defined by the amount of information exchanged [3]. Discuss why you feel the information exchanged makes it a high-intensity process in your service system.

*The term “process” is used in [2] but you can consider this to be similar to “interactions” in [1] and “encounters” or “experiences” in [3].

References
[1] Jim Spohrer, Stephen L. Vargo, Nathan Caswell, Paul P. Maglio, “The Service System is the Basic Abstraction of Service Science”, Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan. 2008, 10 pages
[2] Scott E. Sampson, Craig M. Froehle, “Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services Theory,” Production and Operations Management, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 329-343, Summer 2006
[3] R. J. Glushko and L. Tabas, "Bridging the 'Front Stage' and 'Back Stage' in Service System Design", Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan. 2008

What has Kelly been up to lately?

Two people I respect a lot told me they were disappointed to see nothing from me blog-wise lately. Well, not as disappointed as I am in myself! So, here goes ...

I have been having a great term so far! I’m having fun in my class (Project Management). Hopefully the students are, too. I’m working on some papers (aka writing), taking the odd “how to” course at UofT, applying for things, submitting stuff, conducting research interviews, co-chairing workshops at CASCON, updating my webpage ... the usual professor stuff (I think). I need more students ... hint, hint.

One of my more exciting accomplishments of the term is coming up with a distinct statement about my research. Seems this should have been obvious to me but it wasn’t and it took some time for me to feel good about it. Here it is:

My current research interests include services science, social computing, data management, and business intelligence. In general, I am interested the application of technology in order to positively impact specific domains while taking into consideration the cultural and social implications of applying technology in those domains. Service science is an emerging discipline that looks broadly at the application of technology to positively impact services and the social and cultural impacts of doing so. Specifically, I am focusing on the technology and work practices that facilitate human-to-human exchanges and value creation in services which has led me to work in social computing technologies and virtual worlds.

More details are on my webpage in the “Research” section.

Something else exciting I accomplished since my last post was articulating my teaching philosophy.

To me, these are just a few of the wonderful aspects of being a professor (you can tell I'm still in the naive, honeymoon stage of this job)!

Proposed Service Science Research Landscape

Many individuals and groups are working to establish a research program and research projects in Service Science, Management, and Engineering or Service Science. These individuals and groups come from different research backgrounds and bring different perspectives and points of view to this emerging field.

The purpose of this blog post is to propose a research landscape which can help us situate service science research from across our varied disciplines. My hope is that, through this blog medium, we can collaborate to enhance and evolve the landscape so that it can serve several roles, including:

1. Help researchers understand how their research relates to existing service science research activities and that of specific researchers so that they may define effective collaborations;

2. Help researchers and project leaders determine which aspects of service science research are not addressed within a large research project or program; and

3. Help educators define service science curriculum and courses that cover specific aspects that are being addressed in service science research.

First I will provide some definitions, a practice which is extremely important when discussing topics that cross disciplines. For the context the proposed research landscape, “service” is defined independently of the notion of technology. In [1], a service is defined as “the application of competences for the benefit of another”. More broadly in [2], a service is defined as “the application of resources (including competences, skills and knowledge) to make changes that have value for another”.

A “service system” is defined as “a configuration of people, technologies, and other resources that interact with other service systems to create mutual value” [2].

By contrast, a “web service” is more narrowly defined as “a software system designed to support interoperable machine to machine interaction over a network” [3]. In the context of service oriented architectures (SOA), “services” are described as network-accessible software components that are aligned with business processes [4].

“Service Science” then is the study of the application of resources in one or more service systems to the benefit of another service system. Service Science is trying to develop a science of service systems and their interactions [2].

“Service Science, Management, and Engineering” (SSME) is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “service science” but it involves more than “service science” does. It includes applying management and engineering principles to services and has been defined as, “ the application of scientific, management, and engineering disciplines to tasks that one organization (service provider) beneficially performs for and with another (service client) [1].

Note that the definition of “services” has changed over time from meaning tasks that one performs for and with another in [1] to the application of resources for mutual benefit in [2]. This is evidence that the field is emerging and changing in such a way that it will benefit from having a landscape on which to ground various research activities.

The vision of service science remains boldly or ambitiously to be to create a coherent integrated body of knowledge to support ongoing innovation in service systems design, operation, and improvement [5]. A picture that has been used by IBM researchers to show the breadth of service science activities shows three layers:

The lowest level of this diagram represents the technical architecture, the middle layer defines work practices and on the top layer sits the services business. Research in service science or SSME spans these three different layers; thus, these three layers define one of the dimensions of the proposed landscape.

To articulate the other dimension of the proposed research landscape, we first look at the definition of a service system since research in service science requires researching service systems. A service system is defined as “a dynamic value co-creation configuration of resources, including people, organizations, shared information (language, laws, measures, methods), and technology, all connected internally and externally to other service systems by value propositions” [6].

Because organizations contain people and technology and information is shared through people and technology, the second dimension of the research landscape focuses on the people and technology resources in service systems.

Recall that a service is defined as the application of competence for the benefit of another entity. Services, therefore, involve at least two entities, one applying competence and another integrating the applied competences with other resources and determining benefit [6].

For benefit to be realized and competences to be applied, these two entities must interact in some way. The interaction could take place between two technological systems and be performed through web services. It could be that people in one entity are interacting with technology in another as in business to consumer e-commerce. Finally, it could be that technology is mediating people to people interactions such as when a researcher interacts through chat or email with a reference librarian to find information.

The second dimension of the proposed landscape, therefore, differentiates research as to whether it studies connections and interactions between people, between people and technology, or between technology and technology.

There are a couple of points to note about research that is situated within this landscape. First, the research may study interactions and sharing between two entities that are within the same organization or in different organizations. That aspect of the research is not differentiated on the landscape.

Second, the underlying goal of research that gets situated within this landscape has to explicitly address services as defined in [1] or [2]. In this way, we would not include research on the bottom level of this landscape picture that advances technology in a way that could simply be applied to service paradigms as well as being applied to several other paradigms. Rather, the research we situate on this landscape must study an effective and novel application of technology in new ways to enhance services or advances in technology that are motivated by specific kinds of services.

So for some examples of where research would fit within this proposed landscape, consider SOA and Web Services research which fits in the bottom to middle left side of the landscape. Two pieces of work I’ve collaborated on in virtual worlds fits in the upper right. And work I’ve collaborated on in understanding the structure of the social network in corporate blogs (technology mediated person to person interaction and sharing) fits in the middle right side of the landscape.

I think it’s important to realize that different kinds of business services may drive the research differently so I explicitly list 4 kinds on the landscape (large enterprise, small enterprise – although I’m not 100% sure there is a difference between them for the purposes of services research – government services, and non-profit services). Most of the work on theories of service science assume for-profit services and, while I haven’t looked at it very closely yet, I think it’s worthwhile to consider that some of the theories and definitions may not apply as well in non-profit services.

In a future blog post, I will describe how my current research activities fit within this landscape.

References:

[1] J. Spohrer, P. P. Maglio, J. Bailey, D. Gruhl, “Steps Toward a Science of Service Systems,” IEEE Computer, Jan. 2007

[2] J. Spohrer, S. L. Vargo, N. Caswell, and P. P. Maglio, “The Service System is the Basic Abstraction of Service Science”, Proceedings of the 41st HICSS, Jan. 2008

[3] W3C, http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-gloss/

[4] Wikipedia, SOAhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture

[5] Kieliszewski, C., From a presentation at a meeting of the Alberta CAS (Center for Advanced Studies) Research Board Meeting, December 2007.

[6] Maglio, P., From a presentation at a CAS Alberta Workshop on Service Science, Management, and Engineering, March 2008.

ACM, ACM-W, and Great Advice

I was recently elected to the Council of the ACM for a 4 year term as one of 5 members-at-large. My initial decision to run is thanks to much encouragement from my colleague and mentor, Gabby Silberman. I’m extremely honoured to be serving with the tremendous talented people who were also elected and to be counted among those who have served on ACM Council in the past.

Some time ago, I joined the listserv for ACM-W (the ACM committee on Women in Computing). From the website, ACM-W “celebrates, informs and supports women in computing, and works with the ACM-W community of computer scientists, educators, employers and policy makers to improve working and learning environments for women”. I have benefited from being part of that community by reading with pleasure and pride the posts which share information, encouragement, and suggestions.

The first ACM-W newsletter was recently published and it is full of interesting profiles and articles. There is an interview with Fran Allen (first woman to win the ACM Turing Award) that I thought was terrific. I knew Fran when I was at IBM and have been a long time admirer of hers. She is an amazing mentor to so many people. I really like the advice Fran gives in her interview so wanted to point to it here: "Focus on your work, not your career – that will happen later; build professional networks; get multiple mentors and be a mentor; nearly all projects involve teams and there is evidence that diverse teams produce the best results, also they are the most interesting; have fun."

I think it’s great advice whether you are working in industry or in academia or going to school.

My Decision to Leave IBM

I was at IBM for 22 years ... I started on June 10, 1985 and my last day was November 30, 2007. I joined the University of Toronto Faculty of Information Studies in January 2008. I took Dec. "off" to regroup and get prepared emotionally.

I must say it was a big decision ... something I tried not to think too much about but instead went with my gut. I don't have tenure and came in at the Associate level so only have 3 years to get tenure. I try not to worry about this too much but it lurks in the back of my mind!

I joined IBM right after my undergrad but I knew I wanted to be an academic. I had also applied for scholarships and grad school. I received a Canadian gov't scholarship (NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship) that was deferrable for 2 years to go into industry so I took the job at IBM to get some experience (it was in the area of compiler development). I left after 2 years to pursue grad studies (my masters) and my (wise) manager at the time convinced me to take an educational leave of absence. I remember his reaction, “Never say never, Kelly. Things change. You’ll change,” when I told him I was never coming back. When I finished my masters and started my PhD, I went into IBM to resign but they extended my leave (that was almost 20 years ago -- I don't think it would be possible today). After my PhD, I wanted to have children and at the time looking for a faculty job seemed like a stressful process. I was offered and accepted a great job at IBM, had 2 wonderful children, and worked for 13 more years taking advantage of excellent opportunities and jobs I was given at IBM. Then (all of a sudden), I realized I had spent half my life with IBM (!) and I decided academia was now or never so I applied for academic jobs (I had built a lot of contacts in academia in Canada through my work at IBM so that helped).

And, here I am! It's pretty exciting and scarey all at once! People ask me what I miss the most about IBM and the answer is always, "the people" but fortunately, as an IBM CAS Faculty Fellow, I have the opportunity to stay in touch with and continue to interact with many of those tremendous people.