Supporting Administration in Asynchronous Team Environments

1
Supporting Administration in Asynchronous Team
Environments
Roger Tagg School of Computer and Information
Science University of South Australia
2
Agenda

• Introduction
• University Teaching Management case study
• Workflow approach
• Learning support approach
• Knowledge management approach
• Data based approach
• User interface approach
• Software Agent approach
• The future of groupware
• Concluding remarks

3
Introduction

• IT has yet to bring a major improvement in
  general administration (we are still all snowed
  under!)
• We do have many domain-specific applications and
  task-specific tools
• The limiting factor now is ability to integrate
  and cross-relate them all
• Group support is still weak

4
Case Study Academic Teaching Management
Also involved Administrative staff (School,
Division, Uni), Teaching Quality controllers,
Exam organisers etc.
5
Characteristics of our Case Study

• Meeting the calendar deadlines is first priority
• Following a fixed process is not always important
  (not written down anyway)
• Processes vary for each campus
• Campuses have varying degrees of autonomy
• Many staff come and go (and need help)

6
My own experience with our Case Study

• I joined and immediately had to take on 2 courses
  I hadnt seen before
• I had no knowledge of CIS procedures and no-one
  had anything I could read
• Emails hit me demanding this and that
• I had an Assistant Lecturer who had helped once
  previously
• Few colleagues had any time to answer my
  questions
• I wasted a lot of time

7
Some of the Procedure Manuals
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Workflow Approach

• I have been a workflow researcher, so maybe I
  should take a dose of my own medicine
• We started before we had any tools
• (now have Adonis (BOC, U Vienna) and
  FlowMake/Chameleon (DSTC, U Queensland))
• We charted the processes as we interpreted them
  from manuals and tacit knowledge

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Process Model Run an Exam
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Process Model Assignment
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Process Model Course Offering
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Process Model Run a Course
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Flexible Workflow

• A teams (or individuals) use of Workflow can be
  looked at in 3 quite different ways
• As a driver of a mission-critical business
  process that must be performed in correct
  sequence ? Big workflow
• As an integrator of software components in an
  customer-assembled mega-system ? Enabling
  workflow
• As a set of rules applied to defined events in a
  cooperative system ? Small workflow

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Problems with Workflow as a solution for our case
study

• Processes are often too volatile
• A team often starts without any!
• There are too many exceptions
• Most team members dont have skill in modelling
  processes, so cant apply dynamic changes
• It is difficult to enforce processes beyond one
  organizations boundaries (associated Unis run
  the overseas campuses)

15
Can workflow be optional?

• A possible spectrum is
• Fully prompted all work is done in response to
  a worklist item
• Opt out user decides not to follow the prompts
• Opt in user chooses to be prompted by the Wf
  engine
• Email prompted, but no compulsion
• Fully ad hoc user totally decides what work to
  do next
• Problem is, mix and match may not be an option
• Next performer cant rely on the process state
  having being updated
• Cant monitor, audit or analyse performance

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Comments on the Workflow Approach in our Case
Study

• The modelling conventions and tools do not easily
  support multiple parallel tasks of the same type
  (ref van der Aalst)
• Few sequence restrictions were really mandatory
• The process would always be overridden to meet
  deadlines
• No staff showed much enthusiasm in having their
  work allocated by a software system
• There are some team members who dont participate
  in any information sharing- especially if any
  software comes from Microsoft!

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Learning Support Approach

• The problem can be interpreted as providing
  learning support for inexperienced team members
• In our case, course coordinators may stay for
  years, but most others only do the job for 1 or 2
  years
• The process perspective cannot be ignored though

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What are the main problemsfor Inexperienced
Teams?

• Not knowing the procedure for doing something (or
  if one exists)
• Not knowing who to ask
• Cant find the relevant data
• Different tools and applications that dont
  integrate
• Team members who dont participate in the
  information sharing (again!)

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Some Paradigms for Supporting Inexperienced Teams

• Process Help
• Guided process execution (hand holding)
• Tacit knowledge exchange facilitation
• Knowledge Management
• Intelligent Agents

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Process Help Possibilities

• Answering the question how the XXXX do I do
  this?
• Hypertext-encoded procedure manuals (XML)
• Big backlog of existing manuals to re-encode
• Diagrams with you are here arrows
• E.g. searchable activity descriptions and
  superimposed arrows
• Reference to a file of who to ask experts (part
  of Tacit Knowledge)

XXXX
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Process Help
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Process Help Diagram Example
You are here
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Guided Process Execution

• Answering the request take me through this step
  by step
• Is less than general application of a workflow
  process template
• Single process instance only, from one
  performers viewpoint
• Needs comments in addition to the activity
  description
• Extracts from the full procedure manual
• Guidelines on how to do it, quality expected,
  related policies
• Needs to include the activities this performer
  ISNT doing as well as those he/she IS doing
• Ideal would be a variable Wizard, whose steps
  were generated from the process template
• Context (primary key) should ideally be deduced
  from the users previous actions

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Tacit Knowledge Exchange

• Essentially, a team bulletin board plus an
  inventory of who knows what
• FAQs
• Index and search facility for data in web pages
  and files
• Working documents building up process knowledge
  as it solidifies

25
LiveNet (U Tech Sydney)

• LiveNet has
• About this workspace (a user can join many)
• GoalsNewsSurprisesMilestonesTerminologyFAQ
• About your role
• Folders Chat Room(n) 
• Communication Send email
• Who to ask list

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LiveNet Screenshot of a Light Workflow Rule
Wizard
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LiveNet - Observations

• Specifically supports team working
• Aims to support Tacit Knowledge Exchange
• Includes some small workflow
• Includes some Process Knowledge Management
• Tested in a cooperative business proposal
  preparation and review example (Ingrid Slembek)
• Agents are subject of current research (Alan Lin)
• --------------------------------------------------
  ----------------------------
• Doesnt seamlessly integrate with ordinary email
• Doesnt have a component customization system for
  integrating with external applications
• Isnt dashboard-friendly or mobile-friendly

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The Prattle Syndrome

• To prepare for a planning retreat, I set up a
  shared workspace (bulletin board, discussion
  forum etc)
• Team members were too pressed for time to do more
  than answer their email, phone and F2F
  emergencies
• So they rarely or never got to log on to the
  discussion forum
• Pull was inappropriate for over-busy teams
• We needed a Push approach
• Alerters, Sticker
• Generate urgent email messages
• Post tasks to a unified Task List

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Knowledge ManagementApproach sub-project in
LiveNet

• A team may start with few, or only very broad,
  established processes
• If actual activities are recorded, then do
• Process Mining detecting possible patterns in
  events
• Learning interacting with team members to
  establish patterns as approved processes
• Ref Biuk-Aghai, Simoff Slembek,
  Knowledge-Assisted Reverse Engineering of
  Virtual Work Processes

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Data Based Approach

• If the administrative process is asynchronous
  enough, one can take the view that information is
  exchanged by simply storing it in a shared
  repository
• One may still need to add alerters
• Document other shared data management may be
  more important than processes
• In some cases, lack of established trust may
  enforce Send rather than Share

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The Data Perspective

• Data may exist in many topic types, e.g.
• Status of the entities being worked on
• Decision support data, statistics etc
• Metadata what types of data are stored?
• Negotiating positions
• Data exists in a lot of different software forms
• Application databases
• Office tool file types
• Web pages and XML
• A lot of the data is still unstructured and
  difficult to link to the more structured data
• Terminology is an issue ( hence Ontologies)

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Universal data filing

• All types of data should be filed by what they
  relate to, not by what software they were created
  in (current Groupware folders problem)
• All types of data should be relatable by their
  content (e.g. emails with database rows with word
  documents with web pages)
• If a piece of data is relevant to multiple
  categories, it should be accessible (either by
  replica or alias) in all those categories

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User Interface Approach

• However good the rest of a system is, if the user
  interface is no good no-one will use it
• Users may be working on many types of task
• No good having too many different interfaces
• The Outlook syndrome

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Integrated Computer Workspaces

• Dashboards
• UI containers that assemble a users total work
• Unified UI objects
• e.g. Single task list (inbox workflow tasks
  )
• Integration between standard team support
  components work management
• Mainstream groupware (email calendar tasks),
  workflow enabling, project management, contract
  management, time tracking, common office tools
• Integration with domain-specific applications
• e.g. accounts receivable, production planning, HR

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Dashboard Example
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Dashboard - Implications

• Need to provide a tailoring facility for creating
  and pasting in compact controls
• If a control gets added to - or removed - from a
  dashboard, the system should manage things
• Need to capture knowledge about the tool(s)
  underlying that control
• Need to distinguish shared and individual
  elements on the dashboard
• Screen space may be a limitation
• Multiple displays
• Mobile-friendly versions?

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Drop Boxes

• Are dashboard icons (or sub controls) that act
  as specialized administrative assistants
• Are supported by rule based components (agents?)
  that work out what to do when something is
  dropped
• Invoke a categorization agent to deduce, (e.g.
  the parameters than determine the rules governing
  action to be taken, including where to file
  things)
• Support many types of droppable things, e.g.
  whole messages, index lines, selected text /
  graphs, file icons (including attachments)

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Drop Box for Incoming Mail
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Software Agent Approach

• A degree of intelligence is often necessary to
  enable software to deal automatically with things
  dropped into Drop Boxes
• User Agent (one that learns about its master
  i.e. beyond the MS Office paperclip)
• Categorization Agent
• Puts any object into categories based on its
  content, and possibly the current context
• Filing Assistant or Agent
• Suggests a place to file everything based on
  content, team goals, individual goals
• Are these all genuinely intelligent Agents, or
  are they just Components or Services?

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User Interface Agents

• Learn user preferences
• Learn about the users categories, priorities,
  most likely actions
• for the individual
• for workgroups he/she belongs to
• Exchange knowledge with other agents / users
• Complete delegated tasks autonomously
• Automate tasks at a private level

41
Categorization Agents

• Have been used successfully to classify
  documents, including email and spam in
  particular
• Typically, mix some categories provided by the
  user with what the user interface agent learns
• There are a variety of categorization algorithms
  no universal best approach yet
• But
• no real plug and play tool to help file documents
  in the categories

42
Multiple Drop Boxes Supported by Common Agents
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The Future of Groupware
Current Groupware (e.g. Exchange/Outlook, Lotus
Notes), in spite of many research efforts, have
stagnated for a number of years

• E-mail messages are not effectively linked to
  calendar appointments tasks
• Outlook is not easily linked to application
  systems databases
• Outlook/Exchange folder storage system is quirky
  and may not fit the organizations backup policy
• Too much to learn users use only 10
• Too much work to configure rules
• Not everyone is willing to use what Microsoft (or
  Lotus) offers

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Groupware Market Mismatch (adapted from Sheth)
Process-free Groupware
BigWorkflow
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Why we ought to expect a New Generation of
Groupware

• A lot of administrative work falls into the
  middle of the last graph
• There has been no real dent so far in information
  overload
• Depth of use of Groupware tools is very low not
  much apart from email
• Virus and spam attacks have been a big problem
• Clients have inconsistent features (3 types of MS
  Outlook)
• Users arent managing to integrate Groupware data
  with application data
• Vendors (and others) have been researching into
  agents and categorization for some years

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Concluding Remarks Autonomy of Team members

• One organization can rarely control how team
  members in other organizations do things
• In some University CS departments, even internal
  control doesnt stand much chance!
• Some individuals may not participate, even in a
  prescribed common environment
• The dynamics of power in teams may be more
  important than the technology Riempp 1998

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Is Government Administration Something Special?

• Correctness and fairness may be more important
  than cost and speed
• The individual users performance assessment may
  loom very large
• Knowledge is power and sharing it dilutes a
  managers power base
• Is there a culture of knowledge sharing?