Procedimiento para la planeación de la capacitación

1. Pilot Study Introduction

Before launching the full-scale survey study, a pilot study was conducted. Van Teijlingen, Rennie, Hundley and Graham (2001) stress the importance of pilot studies. According to them, the term pilot study refers to “mini versions of a full-scale study (also called “feasibility studies”), as well as the specific pre-testing of a particular research instrument such as a questionnaire or interview schedule.” Pilot studies are an important part of a good study design. Sometimes pilot studies are omitted due to various reasons. They are costly, time-consuming, and they consume resources otherwise reserved for the full-scale study. However, they increase the likelihood of survey study success, and pilot studies help to avoid a disaster such as wasting all the critical resources due to various design errors.

The reasons for completing the pilot study in this research are: • Guiding the development of the research design. • Testing the research design and the instrument.

• Testing of the surveying technique (whether web-based and paper based surveys are adequate, or if structured or semi-structured interviews will be needed).

• Understanding and forecasting of difficulties for the full-scale study. • Testing whether the population sampling method is viable.

• Testing the understandability of the wording. • Understanding the limitations of the survey study.

• Guiding the assessment of the construct, internal and external validity. The pilot study was extremely useful in this case. The results of the pilot study led to modifications and enhancements in the full-scale study. It helped uncover some problems regarding the surveying protocol.

Some of the characteristics of the pilot study for this research are listed as follows:

• The pilot survey instrument and research design followed the same principles as the full-scale study.

• The participants of the pilot study were randomly drawn from the pool of the sampling population of the full-scale study. The pilot survey participants were not used again in the study.

• The data collection methodology of the pilot study is identical with the full-scale study. Both the pilot study and the study used a self- administered questionnaire. The questionnaires had two versions. One is web-based and the other is paper-based.

2. Pilot Study Instrument

The pilot study instrument is a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of an administrative introductory section and four research related sections. The

paper-based version of the survey instrument includes six questions. A copy of the pilot survey questionnaire is provided in Appendix B. The web-based survey instrument has eight questions. It was developed using a commercial surveying tool (SurveyMonkey, 2007). The tool utilizes various web technologies to develop quick web surveys. Both versions are essentially the same. The only difference is that the web-based version has the administrative sections presented as questions. The first two questions in the web- based survey instrument are used for the administrative section.

In the pilot study, there was an open-ended question, which was left out in the full-scale study. The goal of the question was to gather the participant’s opinion on how to improve the survey instrument. Valuable insights were collected from the feedback provided via this question.

3. Pilot Study Results

The pilot study results led to some improvements in the study. The results and some of the improvements for the full-scale study are listed as follows:

• Forty-four survey invitations were sent out. This population was randomly selected from the pool of the total sample population. There were twelve responses, yielding a response rate of 27.7%. This rate is almost the same as the response rate in the full-scale study. The responses showed that the selected population is the right population for the study.

• One of the feedbacks indicated the necessity of a glossary section for the survey to eliminate possible misunderstandings. Therefore, a glossary section was added to the study.

• Two of the participants indicated the need for an explicit scale for the second question in the paper version of the survey. Even though an explicit scale was not provided for this question, the participants were able to answer the question without difficulty. A scale was added with the question.

• Most respondents indicated that the framework proposed was sufficient. No significant improvement was suggested for the framework.

• Two of the responses specifically indicated that all areas regarding the software project management were covered in the research.

• The survey length was found to be reasonable. • The participants found the questions understandable.

• The last question of the survey, inquiring about possible suggestions to improve the survey, was deleted in the full-scale study, since this question was specifically amended for the pilot study.

• The analysis of the responses to the third question were as follows: o People = 39.16 %

o Product = 18.33 % o Process = 25.00 % o Risk = 17.50 %

o The same ordering with similar ratings was found in the full-scale study.

• The responses to the second question of the pilot study were analyzed and the ratings were ordered. The ordering of the ratings was significantly similar to the one gathered from full-scale study.

• Even though the sample size was quite limited for the pilot study, the analysis of the responses showed that the responses are significantly close to the responses gathered from the study. This may be the result of a good random sampling in the pilot study.

• As a result, the survey instrument and the data collection procedures were found to be sufficient with the necessity of a few modifications and improvements.