Devising a Method for Developing Knowledge-Intense, Person-Oriented Services--Results from Early Evaluation

In this paper, we present a method for engineering person-oriented services (EPOS) and discuss its suitability to the systematic development of IT-supported knowledge-intense person-oriented services (KIPOS). We provide (1) a criteria-based evaluation and (2) insights from an ongoing action research project. KIPOS, predominately existent in sectors as health care or education, are of high economic relevance regarding market size and growth, yet are laggards in realization of IT-potentials. Leveraging IT-potentials as automation, standardization, or intelligent customer integration could be used to increase quality and reduce cost. This is hard to achieve, as value-creating activities within KIPOS are bound to persons or personal knowledge, making their design complicated. We apply a criteria-based evaluation for the method developed. The results show that EPOS meets the requirements for engineering KIPOS. Additionally, we provide insights from an action research project providing evidence that the method is also applicable for engineering KIPOS in real-world settings.