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Alejandro Arnes Poggi

TU811 - Activity P1.3 - Using metaphors in my situation of interest

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Take one or two of the metaphors that you identified in Activity P1.2 and make notes on 
how the metaphor might help people to think about the situation.

Situation of Interest (SoI) - How IT Consultants manage work-life balance when allocated to client sites

Metaphors

From the three metaphors identified in Activity P1.2, I will use "spin up a delivery cell" since this metaphor relates more widely to different types of commercial agreements and delivery engagements.

The metaphor of spinning up a delivery cell invokes thoughts of resources sitting on shelves waiting to be picked. Rather than building an argument here to destroy that metaphor, I will suggest ways in which this metaphor can be extended and expanded to implicitly include a wider number of variables.  The metaphor of spinning up still brings mechanical connotations to the mental imagery that it depicts thus failing to recognise the humans involved in the solution. The metaphor that I will use to start the research for my EMA will include the human element and have an implicit reference to people's willingness to participate in the delivery of the software project. Examples:

  1. Gather participation for delivery.
  2. Invoke a cell.
  3. Crowdsource a team.

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