Tracker:

Reducing rework through decision management

The generic problem
Research objectives and results
Project publications
Project personnel
Funding
Contact us
Project internal pages

The generic problem:

The fundamental industrial problem that we will tackle is the need to reduce rework in systems engineering projects. Rework through changing requirements is inevitable in large projects but we believe that a significant amount of rework arises as a result of communication failures between decision makers and, hence, inappropriate or incorrect decisions. By reducing rework, we reduce the risk of cost and schedule overruns and allow better use to be made of skilled and experienced staff.

Research hypothesis:
The amount of rework in a systems engineering project can be reduced by providing managers with information about their own decisions and decisions made by other project managers. This information will make decisions visible and will simplify decision impact and risk assessment. By helping managers understand the wider implications of their decisions and by avoiding premature or delayed decisions we will reduce the number of decisions that necessitate subsequent rework.

Research objectives and results:

Objective	Expected results
To extend current decision theory to include the concepts of decision architecture and decision management.	We will deliver semantic models of a framework to describe decisions and their relationships with other decisions, risks and business goals and an instantiation of this framework to support systems engineering decision making.
To investigate how the decision making process in systems engineering can be supported so that the number of decisions that require rework is reduced.	We will deliver demonstration software that supports decision management and allows the impact of decisions on other decisions and business and project goals to be assessed.
To investigate how decisions can be automatically captured and translated into our decision model.	We will deliver demonstration software that correctly captures decisions and associated information directly from minutes of meetings and from electronic whiteboards.

Publications:

Ramduny-Ellis, D., Dix, A., Rayson, P., Onditi, V., Sommerville, I., Ransom, J. (in press) Artefacts as designed, Artefacts as used: resources for uncovering activity dynamics. In Special Issue on Collaboration in Context: Cognitive and Organizational Artefacts, P. Jones, C. Chisalita, and G. van der Veer (eds.), Cognition Technology and Work, Springer. (to be published 2005)
Onditi V. O., Rayson P., Ransom B., Ramduny D., Sommerville I., Dix A. (2004). Language Resources and Tools for Supporting The System Engineering Process. In Farid Meziane and Elisabeth Métais (eds.) Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB 2004), Salford, UK, June 2004. LNCS 3136. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 147 - 158. ISBN 3-540-22564-1.
C. Chibelushi, B. Sharp, A. Salter (2004) A Text Mining Approach to Tracking Elements of Decision Making: a pilot study. In Sharp, B. (ed.) Proceedings of 1st International Workshop on Natural Language Understanding and Cognitive Science (NLUCS2004) collocated with ICEIS 2004. Porto, Portugal, 13 April 2004, pp. 51-63. ISBN: 972-8865-05-8
Clarke, R. J., Windridge, P. and Dong, D. (2004) Effective XML Representation for Spoken Language in Organisations. In Isabel Seruca, Joaquim Filipe, Slimane Hammoudi and Jose Cordeiro (Eds.) Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2004) Porto, Portugal, 14-17 April 2004, Volume 3, pp. 486-491. ISBN: 972-8865-00-7 http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0310014
Andy Salter, Hanifa Shah, Bernadette Sharp (2004) Reducing rework in the development of information systems through the components of decisions. In Isabel Seruca, Joaquim Filipe, Slimane Hammoudi and Jose Cordeiro (Eds.) Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2004), Porto, Portugal, 14-17 April 2004, Volume 2, pp. 430-435. ISBN: 972-8865-00-7
Quek, A. and Shah, H. (2004) A Comparative Survey of Activity-based Methods for Information Systems Development. In Isabel Seruca, Joaquim Filipe, Slimane Hammoudi and Jose Cordeiro (Eds.) Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2004), Porto, Portugal, 14-17 April 2004, Volume 5, pp. 221-229. ISBN: 972-8865-00-7
Clarke, R. J., Dong, D. and Windridge, P. (2003) Application Architecture for Spoken Language Resources in Organisational Settings. International Business Information Management Conference (IBIMC 2003) Cairo, Egypt, 14th-18th December 2003. (http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0310058)
Dix A., Ramduny D., Rayson P., Onditi V., Sommerville I. and Mackenzie A. (2003). Finding Decisions Through Artefacts. In Julie Jacko and Constantine Stephanidis (eds.) Human-Computer Interaction, Theory and practice (Part I). Volume 1 of the Proceedings of Human Computer Interaction International 2003. Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2003. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey, pp. 78-82. ISBN 0-8058-4930-0 (abstract )
Quek, A. (2003) Towards an Activity Theoretical Evaluation Method for Web-based Systems. In Proceedings of IFIP Interact 2003 - Workshop on Methods for applying Activity Theory to HCI Design, Zurich, Switzerland.
Paul Rayson, Bernadette Sharp, Albert Alderson, John Cartmell, Caroline Chibelushi, Rodney Clarke, Alan Dix, Victor Onditi, Amanda Quek, Devina Ramduny, Andy Salter, Hanifa Shah, Ian Sommerville, Phil Windridge (2003). Tracker: a framework to support reducing rework through decision management. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems ICEIS2003. Angers - France, April 23-26, 2003. Volume 2, pp. 344 - 351. ISBN 972-98816-1-8. ()
Albert Alderson, Andy Salter, Hanifa Shah, Bernadette Sharp (2003). Defending Essential Processes. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems ICEIS2003. Angers - France, April 23-26, 2003. Volume 3, pp. 197 - 200. ISBN 972-98816-1-8. ()
Dix A., Ramduny D., Rayson P., Onditi V., Sommerville I. and Mackenzie A. (2002). Artefacts speak and artefacts to speak. Position paper for "Analyzing Collaborative Activity: Representing Field Research for Understanding Collaboration" - CSCW 2002 workshop (html )

Project personnel:

School of Computing, Staffordshire University
- Caroline Chibelushi
- Dr Rodney Clarke
- Amanda Quek
- Dr Andy Salter
- Professor Hanifa Shah
- Professor Bernadette Sharp
- Phil Windridge
Computing Department, Lancaster University
Previous members of the team: Professor Albert Alderson, Dr John Cartmell, Samuel Chong, Professor Kecheng Liu, Dr Lily Sun

Funding:
Funded by the EPSRC Systems Integration programme for 36 months beginning in May 2001. Grant number GR/R12183/01 for £771349.

Contacts:
This page maintained by Paul Rayson.

CSEG projects
CSEG research group
Computing Department, Lancaster University
School of Computing, Staffordshire University