Plan phase

The Plan phase comprises the set of tasks that must be performed to prepare the proposal for benchmarking, find other organizations willing to participate in the benchmarking, and plan the benchmarking. These tasks and its interde-pendencies, shown in figure 4.3, are the following:

P1. Goal identification.

P2. Subject and metrics identification.

P3. Participant identification.

P4. Proposal writing.

P5. Management involvement.

P6. Partner selection.

P7. Planning and resource allocation.

Figure 4.3: Plan phase of the benchmarking process.

P1. Goal identification Actors

Benchmarking initiator

Inputs Outputs

Need for benchmarking Benchmarking goals Organization goals and strategies Benchmarking benefits

Benchmarking costs

The benchmarking process always starts in an organization in which one of its members is aware of the need for benchmarking. This need varies across organizations and is highly related to the desired goals of the benchmarking process.

When benchmarking is carried out in an organization, the main goals are the following [Sole and Bist, 1995, Wireman, 2003, Kraft, 1997]:

To assess the performance of the organization’s products and processes over the time.

To improve the quality of the organization’s products and processes.

To compare the organization’s products and processes with those of the best organizations and to close the performance gap.

To obtain a deep understanding of the practices that create superior prod-ucts and processes.

To establish standards set by the industry or the best organizations, or to create standards after analysing the best organizations.

To increase the customer’s satisfaction with the organization’s products.

Those members of the organization who are aware of the need for bench-marking take the role of benchbench-marking initiators. The benchbench-marking initiator will be the one who carries out the first tasks of the process.

During this task, the benchmarking initiator must identify the benchmark-ing goals, which are usually in concordance with the organization goals and strategies. He must also identify the benefits that the benchmarking process will bring to the organization, and the costs of performing benchmarking.

P2. Subject and metrics identification Actors

Benchmarking initiator

Inputs Outputs

Benchmarking goals Benchmarking subject Benchmarking benefits Tool’s relevant functionalities Benchmarking costs Evaluation metrics

Organization’s tools Evaluation criteria

The goal of this task is to identify which of the tools developed in the or-ganization will be benchmarked. This includes identifying the tool functionali-ties relevant for the study and the evaluation metrics and criteria that will be adopted to assess these functionalities. The benchmarking subject, functionali-ties, metrics, and criteria should be those whose improvement would significantly benefit the organization.

On the other hand, the benchmarking initiator must perform an analysis of the tools developed in the organization in order to understand them. This analysis must be documented by providing a description of the tools and their weaknesses and functionalities that need improvement.

Then, the benchmarking initiator must select which of these tools will be the benchmarking subject and which functionalities and criteria will be considered according to

The analysis of the tools developed in the organization.

The benchmarking goals, benefits, and costs identified in the previous task.

Other factors viewed as critical in the organization, such as quality re-quirements, end user needs, etc.

P3. Participant identification Actors

Benchmarking initiator

Inputs Outputs

Benchmarking subject List of involved members Tool’s relevant functionalities Benchmarking team Evaluation metrics

Evaluation criteria

Additionally, the benchmarking initiator must identify and contact the mem-bers of the organization that are involved with the tool and functionalities se-lected. This group of people can be made up of managers, developers, ontology engineers, end users, etc. Other relevant participants from outside the organi-zation, such as customers or consultants, can also form part of this group.

The benchmarking initiator must also select the members of the benchmark-ing team that will be in charge of performbenchmark-ing most of the remainbenchmark-ing bench-marking tasks. Quite frequently, the benchbench-marking initiator is a member of the benchmarking team.

The benchmarking team must be composed of the organization members whose work and interest are related to the type of tools that will be bench-marked. These members should have a thorough understanding of these tools and experience of working with them.

The benchmarking team should be small, and its members must be aware that benchmarking is time consuming, so they must dedicate much of their time to it.

Finally, the benchmarking team must have their responsibilities clearly de-fined and should also be trained in the different tasks to be performed in the remaining of the benchmarking process.

P4. Proposal writing

In this task, the benchmarking team (and the benchmarking initiator if he does not belong to the team) must write a document with the benchmarking proposal. The proposal will be used as a reference along the benchmarking process and should include all the relevant information.

It must also include all the information identified in the previous benchmark-ing tasks with an approximate description of the benchmarkbenchmark-ing process, and a very detailed description of the benchmarking costs with an estimation of the resources needed in the benchmarking process: people, equipment, travel, etc.

Additionally, the benchmarking team must take into consideration when writing the benchmarking proposal that such proposal has different intended readers: organization management, organization developers, members of part-ner organizations, and the benchmarking team themselves. Therefore, the pro-posal must be clear and understandable to all readers. It must include

The description of the benchmarking process.

The benchmarking goals.

The benchmarking benefits.

The benchmarking costs.

The benchmarking subject.

The tool’s relevant functionalities.

The evaluation metrics and criteria for these functionalities.

The list of members involved.

The members of the benchmarking team.

The resources needed in the benchmarking process.

P5. Management involvement Actors

Benchmarking initiator Organization management

Inputs Outputs

Benchmarking proposal Management support

In this task, the benchmarking initiator must present the benchmarking proposal to the organization management. He must inform the organization management of the benchmarking process, its goals, its benefits, and its costs.

He must also inform of which components of the organization are, and will be, involved in the process, i.e., which tool will be benchmarked, who are the mem-bers involved in the benchmarking process, who will be part of the benchmarking team, etc.

This task is of great importance because it requires that the management gives its approval to continue with the benchmarking process. On the other hand, the organization management must commit enough resources for carrying out the benchmarking and support the changes that, in a near future, will be implemented, either in the tool or in the organization processes that affect the tool.

Management support Updated benchmarking proposal Tools developed outside the

organi-zation

Once benchmarking has the organization management support, the bench-marking team must select the different tools to be dealt with in the benchmark-ing activity.

To do this, the benchmarking team must investigate and identify the tools that are comparable to the tool selected as the benchmarking subject. The team must also collect and analyse information of these tools and of the organizations that develop them.

Then, the team must establish the criteria that identify which of the tools are suitable for benchmarking. According to these criteria, the team must select from the comparable tools those that will be analysed in the benchmarking study.

These criteria are varied and they can be, for example, the relevance of a tool in a community or in the industry, how this tool utilizes the latest technological tendencies, how many people use such a tool, the public availability of the tool, etc. Furthermore, in order to obtain better results with benchmarking, the chosen tools should be those considered the best.

When the benchmarking team has selected the tools, they must contact any member of the organizations that develop each of these tools to learn whether these organizations are interested in benchmarking.

If an organization that develops a tool is not interested in benchmarking, the team can make contact with others to see if they want to participate by assessing that tool, even if they are not the developers. For instance, tool users could participate and align the benchmarking goals and scope with their own interests.

The organizations willing to participate become benchmarking partners.

Then, they will also have to form a benchmarking team and take the bench-marking proposal to their own organization management for approval.

During the course of this task, the proposal will be modified to include the partners’ opinions and needs. The modifications introduced will result in an updated proposal, which should be used in the rest of the benchmarking. If the modifications are significant, the proposal will be presented again to each partner organization management for approval.

P7. Planning and resource allocation Actors

Benchmarking teams

Management of the organizations

Inputs Outputs

Benchmarking partners Benchmarking planning Updated benchmarking proposal

Organization planning

In this task, the benchmarking teams and the managers from each partner organization must do some detailed planning for the rest of the benchmarking process and reach a consensus on it. This planning must then be considered and integrated into each organization’s planning.

The benchmarking planning must take into account the considerable effort that will be devoted and the organization resources to be allocated, such as people, computers, travel, etc.