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GROUP ASSIGNMENT DUE: May 2nd 2007 (REPORT IS DUE BEFORE CLASS: SUBMIT PRINTOUT)

Case Presentation by Groups VII, VIII, IX and X

The questions for this assignment pertain to the case: Anthony Ng Architects Limited (Included in Course Pack)

Some Preamble before Question 1

Services organizations, especially design-oriented services organizations, can create and follow three distinct types of processes: delivery, service and ideas (Coxe, et al., Success Strategies for design professionals, 1987, McGraw Hill).

Delivery firms focus on the process of producing and “delivering” the drawings and specifications that describes the building (or artifact) to be constructed. Delivery firms are focused on the delivery of the product with minimum delay. These firms focus on similar typed projects and try to build deep specialization in those types of projects. Such firms hire para-professionals and segment the work into departments specializing in a stage of the design process. In architecture the stages could include schematic design department, contract documents department, etc. The firm is therefore segmented and linear structured in nature.

A “Service” firm focuses on the service process, that is, the contacts and relations with the stakeholders in the project (such as clients, regulatory authority, key users, contractors, etc.). A service firm takes on projects that are more complex and that require the close attention of licensed professionals. Such projects include hotels, hospitals, shopping centers and railway stations. Projects are handled by staff in teams that are more collegiate and collaborative than a departmentalized structure allows. Clients see the firm as a collection of teams (Figure 2) each headed by specialist in their field, supported by staff training to become specialists in the particular project type.

An “idea” firm is one in which the intellectual opportunities and challenges of the project drive the firm over and above any other considerations. Idea firms are attracted to particularly difficult or unusual opportunities. They may take on a very wide range of project types, not specializing in any particular kind. The firm is typically led by a visionary who attracts dedicated professionals to help bring this vision to reality. These idea firms are often known as “star” firms since the visionary leaders are considered stars in their profession and their supporting staff gathers around them.

In addition, “Practice-based organizations” focus on practice related aspects, and “business-based practices” focus on operational issues of running a business. Obviously, one can construct SIX categories of design service firms based on this typology.

QUESTION 1: a. Can Anthony’s vision of a “paperless office” support his ultimate goal of “producing better architecture?” Please discuss. b. Where does Anthony Ng’s firm position itself currently in terms of the design service models described above? Where will it possibly fit after the implementation of the new system? Pay careful attention to discussion of CAD system implementation in Page 20 of the case and the rationale for implementing the document management system; this gives you an idea of the challenges to implementing a paperless office(Pages 19-20).

Keep your answer to 1 or 1.5 page only. Be brief and concise in presenting your arguments.

Some background on design processes (especially in the architectural context, but this is very similar to other project based design processes). Much of this is drawn from literature on Information Technology use in Construction (http://www.itcon.org).

The design process usually starts with a request for proposal (RFP), which sets off the process. A design team is formed by the architecture firm to respond to the RFP. The designated team contact (DTC) for the project is announced to all the departments within the firm, so that communications related to the project reach the team in a timely fashion through the DTC. The design team goes through a set of pre-design activities. These activities are primarily oriented towards information gathering and analysis. During this time, detailed needs and objectives of the development project are assessed through multiple interviews with concerned stakeholders (stakeholders are drawn from the information contained in the RFP documents and experience from prior projects). Multiple site visits and interviews are an essential part of the process in this phase. The team documents the needs and objectives, as well as details about the sites for use in the design phase. During this stage preliminary plans of the project such as construction scope, budget and schedule are also developed and documented. During the design phase the needs are transformed into a brief, which functions as a starting point for the building design. The brief is then elaborated into a plan, or model, of the building to be built. The model typically consists of drawings, schedules and specifications. The model or excerpts of it, serves several purposes: • To illustrate the design to the client/owner/user and enable a compliance check with the brief, and for evaluation in general. • To build a model of explicit, exact data, quite the contrary to implicit data in vague artistic drawings, or even tacit knowledge. • To function as data input and data output repository throughout the whole project life cycle. • To use particular sets of drawings for communicating with the authorities to check compliance with the laws and regulations, and for the approval of permits. • To enable the actual construction of the building.

Now…to the learning part  .

In a design process the iterations across teams of designers should be carefully studied. The argument against workflow models in this context is that the sequence of tasks can run into hundreds of pages (keep in mind that design process cycle can be up to three years!) and a chart full of arrows and boxes becomes quickly overwhelming. The cognitive nature of design and development processes creates many interwoven tasks. An alternative is to use a tool called Design Structure Matrix (DSM). DSM focuses on information flows and not the workflow.

Please go through this tutorial (http://www.dsmweb.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=30) please restrict yourself to the materials under the bulleted items 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the tutorial.

DSM has been used in many engineering companies. Boeing was a pioneer in this approach, GM has used this approach to reorganize its product development processes (Optional Read: “Innovation at the Speed of Information” by Steven Eppinger, Harvard Business Review, January 2001). See some examples below. 1. Intel Corporation – Semiconductor Design Process. A better version of this diagram can be seen in the HBR article. 2. General Motors – Engine Development Process.

QUESTION 2 a. Given the orientation of the design process, do you really think the information flow can be better represented by DSM than a workflow model? How different or similar are the steps involved in creating/building DSM versus the steps involved in building a workflow model? If they are not very different…what really drives the usefulness of the DSM approach in design process modeling?

b. Just so that I know you have understood DSM basics, use the following DSM to construct graph representation of the task relationships as described in the introduction to the Tutorial.

Which of the tasks can be performed first without waiting for input from other steps? Show how tasks 3, 4 and 5 are related to each other. Show the relationship between tasks 7 and 8. Create the complete information flow graph for the process represented by this matrix. Does the graph contribute to (or reinforce) your arguments in part (a) above?

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

TASK 1 TASK 2 TASK 3 X TASK 4 X X X TASK 5 X X TASK 6 X X TASK 7 X X X TASK 8 X X TASK 9 X

Refer to http://www.dsmweb.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=26 for information on how to read this matrix.

WIKIFLOW

A new company called Itensil (http://www.itensil.com) claims that it has created a product that delivers breakthrough knowledge worker productivity –

“Itensil Team Activity Manager is a web 2.0 process management and modeling platform that enables business managers and team leaders to author, deploy and manage recurring team-based activities without programmers or special knowledge.”

ZDNet writer Dion Hinchcliffe predicts 2007 will be the year in which these types of tools may make inroads into collaborative work processes -

 “It will be a make or break year for the first round of Enterprise 2.0 tools that add a process aspect.  While SOAs and even Web 2.0 apps tend to be more about services and capabilities, the world of business is much more about processes.  This has triggered some discussion that the best way to add enterprise context to consumer tools may be to make them more process-oriented.  Thus, a number of upcoming Enterprise 2.0 tools have a process bent to them including the above mentioned Itensil, but also the nascent BPM 2.0 movement which can be enabled with these same tools.  By the end of next year, we should have a good feeling if this is a good bet or not. My guess: A new market leader in this space will begin to emerge.”

Go through the short video demo of the product to get a better idea of the product capability.

It is still uncertain if these types of tools can really help business processes improve, especially the kinds where high-value professional workers (such as architects, accountants, consultants, engineers, project managers) collaborate.

To help you think through this more carefully, I have given a brief narrative of the kind of work processes that may be created in Anthony Ng’s office when it goes paperless. But, you can also consider other kinds of knowledge work where collaboration happens (including the kinds of processes in the itensil product demo video).

QUESTION 3 Critically review and analyze if “WIKIFLOW” is a viable approach to bring structure into collaborative workflows. Present your arguments in concise fashion in 1 to 1.5 pages.