3 Methodology
3.7.2 Creating the interview guide
The interview guide was created as a tool to facilitate the interview and give the participants an indication about what questions they could expect to be asked. When creating the interview guide it was decided that it had to cater to three major needs. Firstly, the interview guide should help ensure that all major areas of interest are covered. Secondly, it should contain questions that enable further comparison between the different companies. Finally, the interview guide should ensure a natural progression in the conversation. This was important because all the participants had fixed time constraints. The process of creating the interview guide was an iterative process with numerous cycles of tweaking and improving (See figure 5).
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Figure 5 How the interview guide was created
To start off, the central theories and concepts about a specific idea or context were examined. The research team then brainstormed questions that would be sufficient for covering the relevant topics of our research. When this was completed, all questions were then re-examined, and it was decided which questions would be applied in the final version of the interview guide. The process was then restarted, where new areas were examined, followed by a brainstorming session for creating new questions followed by the reviewing phase to ensure that the interview guide did not contained any unnecessary redundancies, and an overall good flow. The first overarching category of questions was regarding the company's use of WFH.
Figure 6 Questions for Pre lockdown Examine theory &
concepts
Writing questions Reviewing
the overall structure &
flow
Pre Lockdown
•How many empoyess were WFH before?
•Did the people initially have the technical skills to smoothly start WFH
•Do you think this has improved?
•What steps will you take in the future to maintain/improve these?
•Did you have the infrastructure needed to facilitate large-scale use of WFH?
•If not how have you handled this?
Page 36 of 132 The first section in our interview guide was investigating the WFH situation before COVID-19 and the following lockdowns. These questions are designed to give the foundation for initiating a discussion regarding the companies’ situation of WFH prior to the government mandated lockdowns. The second focus area was to gain information about the employees’ technical competencies, and which strategies the companies use to improve and maintain these. Finally, we wanted information about the company’s technical infrastructure and any improvements to these as a response to the larger scale use of WFH (see Figure 6).
Figure 7 Questions regarding WFH and the participants own experiences
The next sets of questions follow a natural progression in the conversation and is regarding the experiences and steps taken during the lockdown. The first section of questions contains mainly factual questions that in many cases are easy to answer. These questions serve as a basis of comparisons between the different companies. The second section of questions asked the participants to reflect on their experiences during the lockdown (See figure 7). The purpose of these questions is to identify areas where the company was challenged or changed as a response to the new condition of WFH. The final set of questions regarding the lockdown and working from home is related to the post lockdown situation of the company. These questions are mainly reflective and designed to discover changes in the organisation, and any lasting impact of WFH (See figure 8).
Facts regarding WFH
•What steps have the company taken in order to comply with the government recommendations?
•How many of your employees are working from home now?
•What is your approach to maintain effective communication and collaboration with WFH?
•What types of WFH tools and softwares have you used and how do you use them?
Questions reflecting on
expericens
•What were the most challenging and surprising things when you first started WFH from a IT view?
•What are the key elements to making sure a project is successful when WFH?
•How has WFH affected the company's deadlines?
•In your opinion, what capabilities/IT skills are most important for your employees to possess in regards to being effective and productive when WFH?
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Figure 8 Questions regarding changes and impacts in the company
After creating this first set of questions, it was decided that there was a need for an additional standardized set of questions that would allow us to determine the digital maturity of the different companies. This was important because the companies came from different industries and situations. The digital maturity of the companies could help to create a basis for comparison between the companies and might function as a modifying factor in regard to the impact of the large-scale use of WFH. The questions regarding digital maturity were develop from inspiration in the IT-CMF framework created by Martin Curley2. Central to the IT-CMF is the four macro capabilities. The questions in the interview guide were therefore created with the purpose of gaining the most information possible about these. In practise this was achieved by creating a set of questions for each of the four macro capabilities (See figure 9).
2 See section in supporting theories for more information.
Changes inside the company
•How do you perceive this to have affected your company's performance?
•Have the use of WFH changed the way IT is perceived in the organisation today?
•People inside IT department
•People outside IT department
•Has the use of WFH changed the way IT is used in the organisation?
Relections &
impact
•How do you perceive WFH, as a temporary stop gap measure or as a permanent tool?
•Do you think that we will see a lasting increase in the use of WFH in the future?
•Do you think that the forced government's restrictions and WFH have provided the company with a more digitized approach?
•Are there any lessons in this that you can use in the future?
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Figure 9 Questions regarding the four macro capabilities.
When the questions were finalized and the order determined, the first interview with Svend Nyegaard was conducted. Based on the experiences we gained from this interview we decided to change the structure of the interview guide. The rest of the interviews were conducted using this new structure that starts off with the questions regarding macro capabilities and ends with the questions centred around WFH. The decision of changing the structure in our interview guide was based on, that the questions regarding WFH were more open ended and provided a better pacing at the final part of the conversation in comparison to the macro capability questions.
How is IT managed in the organisation?
•How are the IT and business values aligned?
•What is the primary focus of the IT department, what is your mission?
•How does the IT department manage its relationship with other internal partners? (other departments/employees in the organisation)
•How does the IT department manage its relationship with IT suppliers?
•Do you report the IT departments value/progress and if so, how?
How is the IT budget managed?
•Who is responsible for the IT budget?
•Do you have a clear overview of IT costs?
•Is the funding of the IT department flexibel or do you have to adhere to a strict budget?
•How does the IT budget allow you to support business goals?
•Do you use IT investment portfolios?
•How concerned are you with reducing IT costs?
•What happens if you have a surplus at the end of the year?
How are the IT capabilities being
managed?
•Who is responsible for purchasing & maintaining IT systems?
•How does IT support value creation in a specific business area?
•How do you think people view IT?
•How does the company view IT? (Utility support or a aligned business partner)
•How do people/the company use the IT department?
•Have you felt a change during the lockdown/working from home?
How is IT management creating business
value?
•How do you predict the value of a potential IT investment?
•How do you think current investments affect future options?
•Do you measure and monitor the business value of IT investments after they are completed?
•Through your IT investment, how do the company focus on optimizing the current business?
•How do the company take advantage of new IT investments to explore new business opportunities?
•Is the company able to easily implement new IT initiatives? Why? Why not?
•Do you feel that your current IT is hindering business goals or helping to drive/achieve them?
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