Operational Level Involvement in the
Collaborative Business Engineering Approach
Floor van WervenDelft University of Technology
Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
This article discusses an adapted application of the Collaborative Business Engineering that allows the involvement of a large group of stakeholders. Two levels of involvement are introduced into the currently known CBE approach. A high level of involvement is requested of the project owners for gathering of data, co-development of models and selection of alternatives. A large group of stakeholders who are crucial to the success of the project are involved at a lower level. They are given the opportunity to provide conceptual data, ideas for solutions, criteria for solutions and reactions to detailed solutions. This adapted approach has been implemented in a security related project at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and has been reviewed positively. Further research is necessary to provide a more specific project approach for future use.
Keywords
Collaborative Business Engineering, stakeholder involvement, operational level, Group Support Systems, systems engineering
1. Introduction
Organisations can be seen as a collection of systems, and these organisational systems consist of human elements, such as the employees, technical elements, such as hardware and software, and informational elements, such as data [14]. Collaborative
approaches for the (re)design of
organisational systems have been gaining importance, and the Collaborative Business Engineering (CBE) approach has been applied to several projects in the last two decades [13, 5, 7]. The focus of the CBE approach is on facilitating a diagnosis and design process that will result in a satisfying and acceptable solution [5]. The CBE approach combines the hard systems approach and the soft systems approach [6]. Models of the current state and future states are used to describe the system quantitatively, which is represented in the hard systems approach [9]. Relations between stakeholders, the political setting in an organisation and other qualitative factors are also taken into account in the CBE approach, reflecting the soft systems approach [1]. CBE
is often used in projects where strategic decision making has a large impact on the operations. Participants are confronted with design choices on the operational level, and this detailed insight in possible designs will result in a better evaluation of alternative designs [7].
The (re)design of an organisational system, following the CBE approach, consists of five activities. The first activity is developing conceptual models of the situation. The second activity is the creation and validation of the empirical model and the diagnosis of the current situation. The third activity is collecting alternative solutions or designs and creating models of these alternatives. After comparison and evaluation of the alternatives a most preferred solution can be chosen. The final activity of this process is implementation of the chosen solution [11]. Involvement of stakeholders is essential to the CBE approach, and often they are actively involved in the modelling activities. Group meetings, interviews and other methods can be used to enable stakeholder involvement. Group Support Systems (GSS) are regularly used to improve the quality of group meetings [6]. The
added value of GSS meetings compared to traditional group meetings can be explained with the four main attributes of Group Support Systems: anonymity of participant’s ideas, parallelism of entering ideas, group memory due to the use of laptops and keeping meetings effective in spite of the relatively large size of groups [3 and 10]. Participation in these projects leads to commitment from the stakeholders, shared understanding between stakeholders and better insight in tasks, views and goals of stakeholders [12].
This paper is based on an application of the CBE approach in the explorative phase of a project. In the projects discussed in related work the number of involved stakeholders is relatively small and usually from within the company. In the case discussed here, a larger group of participants is involved in the project, which changes the way of working considerably. The organisational system that
needs redesigning concerns many
stakeholders inside and outside Schiphol Group, the company under discussion. The interests and goals of these stakeholders differ, even within defined groups. All parties are interdependent, so substantial changes to the current situation can not be made without consulting these parties.
In the subsequent section the setting of this project at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol will be discussed briefly. In the following section the adjusted application of the CBE approach to this project will be presented. In the fourth part of this paper a discussion will follow, which mainly consists of an evaluation of the adapted way of working. In the conclusions recommendations for using this approach and recommendations for further research will be presented.
2. Setting of Study
An amendment of the European aviation security legislation prescribes 100% screening of airport and in-flight supplies going into the critical parts of security restricted areas (SRA-CP) of airports from April 29th 2012 [4]. Currently, a small sample of these supplies is subjected to scrutiny at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The supplies are delivered to
destinations in the SRA-CP by many different suppliers. These suppliers can be shop or restaurant employees and suppliers, construction and maintenance companies and catering companies, among many others. The security screening of people and supplies entering SRA-CP through the access points is performed by different security companies. Increasing the screening level of supplies has a substantial impact on the screening time at access points, which will immediately negative affect the operations of the access points, processes of suppliers and recipients and costs. Concepts that will prevent the access points from turning into major bottlenecks need to be developed, and an evaluation of these concepts is required, on costs, logistical impact, level of security and effects for stakeholders.
The group of departments of Schiphol Group and the organisations outside the company that will be affected by the changes in the screening process is large. As mentioned earlier, these stakeholders have a large variety of processes, interests and goals. These stakeholders also have varying relations with Schiphol Group and with each other. For instance the cleaning companies work under contract of Schiphol Group, but the concessionaires, shop and restaurant owners at Schiphol, contribute to the turnover of Schiphol Group with their rents and fees. Moreover, within the group of concessionaires there are differences concerning the supply processes.
From this analysis it is clear that a large collection of processes and interests needs to be taken into account when changing the screening procedure at the access points.
3. Application of CBE
From the situation sketch it can be concluded that a CBE approach fits this project; decisions are required which affect the operational processes of many stakeholders. No single person possesses a complete overview of all these processes and the interests that must be taken into account. Hence, collaborative design was the proposed approach. However, related work on the CBE
approach indicates that the group of participants should not be too large. Involvement of clients or suppliers that will be affected by the changes has been avoided in related work; top or middle managers of relevant departments were involved in all cases [5]. In larger groups, model building efficiency will be lower, participation will decrease, it is more difficult to create shared understanding and it is expected to be more time-consuming [5, 8]. The advice is to invite
one representative per stakeholder group [5]. In this project setting that will not suffice, due to the large differences within stakeholder groups, and the interdependent relation between the stakeholders.
In Figure 1a and 1b the changes in the CBE process are depicted. The steps will be equal to the steps that are commonly used, but the number of involved parties in each step is increased.
Figure 1a Common CBE approach [5] Figure 1b Adapted CBE approach
If all stakeholders will be involved in the activities, as is usual in the CBE approach, this involvement will result in very inefficient and long meetings. Therefore the CBE approach has to be considered by sub-activity and involvement should not be equal in each sub-activity. Different levels of involvement per stakeholder group will be the outcome.
A high level of involvement in the project is requested from the problem owners at the Security Policy department of Schiphol Group. This group is considered equal to the top and middle management usually involved in CBE projects; they are experts on the regulative and financial constraints for the project, and they possess knowledge on the processes at the access points and processes of users. The large group of stakeholders consists of representatives from several departments from Schiphol Group and representatives from the suppliers, recipients, security companies, airlines and ground handlers. Their processes and interests need to be taken into account, and their commitment to the final solution is important.
The roles of the two groups are different. In Figure 2 the involvement of the different groups is depicted in the different sub-activities. The small group of problem owners is considered first. This group defines the project goal and constraints on a tactical level. Their knowledge of the current situation and current processes is used for the first analysis on the context of the project. They also provide input on the list of stakeholders to involve. Further in the process they help build the conceptual models and empirical model. This group helps to determine the final set of concepts that will be detailed, and they validate the final evaluation. The large group of operational stakeholders is consulted in the beginning of the project; during this interview round they are informed of the planned changes, and their main interests, operational processes and expected problems are retrieved. This falls within the scope of conceptual data. After this round of interviews the group of participants is re-assessed; some additional people are invited to the group, others do not need to be included any longer.
Two workshops are organised for this group, for which the group of problem owners is invited, as well. The first workshop informs the group on the current situation and the planned changes; a shared understanding is created. The conceptual models are validated, and the empirical model is explained and validated. After this the group enters a brainstorm setting, supported by a Group Support System, in which ideas for concepts
are generated that will enable 100% supply screening. They are later asked to enter their main criteria for these solutions and a voting round to select the most popular ideas concludes the first workshop. During the second workshop a selection of detailed concepts are presented to the group, which can differ from the group in the first workshop due to new information. The concepts are evaluated individually by the participants.
Figure 2 Involvement of different groups of stakeholders in project activities
An overview of the feasible concepts with their effects on different criteria is the final product of this project. Decisions on a tactical and even strategic level will be made by a smaller group based on all operational information. In this project that will be done by the project board. The overview of concepts and their effects is presented to the project board that will further execute the
project on supply screening. Two
representatives of the Security Policy department are part of this project board, as well as a project manager, project assistant, several department representatives and an airport architect.
4. Discussion
It can be established that this adapted CBE approach results in more detailed and operational information about the current situation and the evaluation of the concepts is also performed at an operational level. It is very important that problem owners and the analyst are aware of this. Tactical and strategic effects of concepts, such as high level costs and benefits and level of security, also need to be taken into account. The analyses on a tactical and strategic level can be performed by the problem owners and analysts and need to be added to the evaluation results from the
group of stakeholders. Based on this collection of operational and tactical information, a decision can be made on the tactical level.
An evaluation of the approach followed would be most interesting if it could be assessed to what extent the goals of applying a CBE approach were reached. Not all goals can be assessed, because at the time of writing the subsequent project has not finished and the date of implementation is at least a year away. For instance, results on the commitment of the participants to the implemented solution are not available.
A disadvantage from involving a large group of stakeholders, mentioned in literature, is the extra time necessary for a project [5]. The duration of the development and evaluation of feasible concepts has taken approximately three months. Considering the complexity of the project, the level of knowledge of the project executor on the project and its context, and the level of detail of the final result, this is a relatively short period. The workshops were hard deadlines, which increased the speed of working and the commitment of Security Policy to the project. The workshops were considered an efficient and effective way of gathering information and input data, according to the project analyst and group of problem owners. From these observations it can be concluded that the duration of the project was not negatively impacted by the participation of a large group of stakeholders.
A short evaluation was performed at the end of every workshop with the participants. The main reaction on the first workshop was that the group enjoyed working with the Group Support System, and that they felt well informed about the issue due to this workshop. A convergence exercise, such as described by Davis et al. [2] would have improved the usability of the voting exercise. The main comment after the second workshop was a lack of time to fill in the evaluation forms. Participants were forced to write down their main concerns and strengths of concepts, only.
Overall, the project approach was positively experienced by participants and the security department. The stakeholders found it pleasant to be involved in the early stages of
the project. At the time of writing all participants are still involved with the project and communicating well with the project team. Because of the opportunity to provide input to the project they are more interested in the final outcome and they are less concerned that their view is not taken into account. The security department has indicated that this type of workshop and early notice to the stakeholders will be used again in future projects.
Another project approach could have been used for this assignment. If the large group of stakeholders would not have been involved, or only during interviews at the beginning of the projects, the process and results would have been different. The problem owners would have been the only ones contributing to the project. This would have resulted in fewer ideas and a less comprehensive evaluation. Stakeholders would be less informed and not involved with the project progress.
5. Conclusions and Further
Research
The process depicted in Figure 2 describes an adapted CBE approach with two different levels of involvement, which can be used in subsequent projects. The specific activities and division of involvement should not be seen as a strict prescription, but must be dependent on the specific project.
The project has not come to a conclusion and a decision and implementation phase are lacking in this description. During the decision phase the large group of stakeholders should not be involved, this is handled by the project board and relevant management members. However, the stakeholders should be informed of the process and the results of this phase. For the implementation phase it is valuable to involve the stakeholders that will be affected most, for a smooth introduction of the chosen concept.
This project approach can be used for (re)engineering projects of organisational systems if this influences the operational processes of many stakeholders. These stakeholders have different interests and
goals, and their affected processes deviate from each other. The relations between the problem owner or decision maker and these stakeholders should be non-hierarchical but bi-directional; their success and survival depends on each other.
For research purposes, it would be interesting to evaluate this project when it is finished. A survey to the stakeholders and an assessment of the project board can provide insight into the success of the use of the Collaborative Business Engineering approach, and add to the list of recommendations for re-use.
In order to validate this adapted way of working of the Collaborative Business Engineering approach, this approach should be used on other projects. This can also help to further detail the characteristics of projects for which this approach works best.
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