Cognitive ergonomic evaluation of project management methodologies in information technologies

With the spread of technology in every area, the need for digital products have increased. Every sector must to use digital products in order to maintain its presence in the competitive market. Digital products are of vital importance especially for banks where money flow is demanded and personal data are used intensively and a project management process is needed to the emergence of products. With digitalization ergonomic studies have become an important research field in the academic world by focusing on mental ergonomic studies as well as physical ergonomics. Although the subject of cognitive load has been studied in the literature since 1980, studies evaluating the effect of project management methods on cognitive load are very limited. In this thesis, the cognitive workload on the employees during the project was evaluated in the banking sector products that require the use of project management methods. The effect of the projects made with waterfall and agile methods, which are among the project management methods, on the cognitive workload on the employee was investigated, considering the employee's experience, gender and positions. For this reason, the product development processes of a bank working with the agile method and a different bank using the waterfall method were taken as basis. As the experimental group, the research was carried out with the employees who took part in the projects carried out in the same department of both banks and in similar business processes. NASA-TLX and Carmen-Q method were used in both groups. According to the results obtained from experimental studies, the project process advanced with agile methodology creates a lower cognitive workload on the employee. In addition, it was determined that there was a relationship between the role in the project and the cognitive load, while the gender factor was not an effective factor in terms of total cognitive load.