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Knowledge Problems

Solving:

Do activity: (tasks)

get an overview of activities you need to solve the problem.

Support Tools:

  • Gantt charts: dependencies & parallel in time.
  • Kanban/Scrum: For agile projects. evaluate each iteration.

Discover activity: (knowledge)

find knowledge you require to solve the problem. search for relevant knowledge problems. results in a list of research questions.

Decide Activity: (scope)

select the key areas you will focus on. state the limits of your research. Make use of a theoretical framework.

Types of problem analysis activities:

  • Detailed problem analysis.
  • Search for causes.
  • Search for known solutions.

Causes:

  • evidence based causal relationship.
  • context related causes.

Explanatory analysis:

  • variables
  • relationships (+/- increase or decrease with variable)
  • research population
  • A conceptual model visualizes the relationship between variables.
  • Independent variables influence a dependent variable.

WARNING

A conceptual model is different from a problem cluster. the model has variables instead of problems example: (research model): delivery speed (problem cluster): slow delivery speed

Data Types:

TypeNamePropertiesExample
QualitativeNominaldata used for naming or labeling variables with no rankingtypes of cars on the road
QualitativeOrdinalcategorical data with an ordergrades (A, B, C, D, E, or F)
QuantitativeIntervaloperations(+,-), equal intervals between data points, 0 is arbitrarytemperature, with celsius 0 is arbitrary temperature can be negative
QuantitativeRatiooperations(+,-,*,/), equal intervals between data point, 0 is absolute, non negativeHeight, cannot be negative

Check if a relationship is causal:

  • Sequence of events.
  • Statistical relationship.