Vacation Exchange Management : Investigating the Vacation Exchange Process at Karlstad Municipality Through Document Analysis, Interviews, and Task Analysis to Elicit System Requirements

Abstract: The study aims to investigate the current process for vacation exchange at Karlstad municipality to elicit system requirements for a future system. The investigation includes creating an understanding of the vacation exchange process, the roles involved, and their tasks performed in the process. Further, the limitations, the information used, and the decisions made in the vacation exchange process were also a part of the investigation. The investigation of the vacation exchange process is performed by analyzing an internal document from Karlstad municipality and interviews conducted with the three roles involved in the process. The interviews are transcribed, summarized, and modeled by process models using 2c8 Modeling Tool to explain the vacation exchange process, inputs, and outputs, and the tasks each role performs. The findings showed three specific categories in the vacation exchange process that should be improved when a future system is designed and developed to support the process. The three found categories were: lack of information, information flow, and distribution of responsibilities. In conclusion, the future system should have a function to notify the roles involved. Information used in the vacation exchange process should be gathered and easily accessible in the future system. Further, the future system should support communication between the roles involved in the vacation exchange process, as well as include functions for back-up, digital sending of documents, and facilitate rarely performed tasks. Lastly, the future system should define the responsibilities for each role to balance the tasks each role performs in the process.