LSS, a problem solving skill for graduates and SMEs: Case Study of investigation in a UK Business School curriculum

Purpose - This research aims to investigate the feasibility of a systematic Lean Six Sigma (LSS) education through the curriculum of business schools to respond to the existing gap between the graduate’s expectation of employability and skill requirements by the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Design/approach/methodology - One UK business school has been used as a case study to conduct an extensive module and programme review followed by a semi-structured interview with the potentially suitable core and programme-specific module leaders and also the comparative Analysis between content of these modules and the existing LSS high-street training themes. Findings – The result revealed a high potential of the existing modules in the business schools equivalent to the private sector training providers to increase the level of LSS problem solving knowledge and skill for all graduates and improve their employability and productivity for the SMEs. Practical implications/limitations – This research has been carried out in a single UK–based Business School through a qualitative approach. A further in-depth analysis in a broader scale is required to investigate the practical implications in a better way. Originality/Value – The result of this study highlights the role of LSS to reduce the knowledge and skill gap between the business schools as the source of the explicit knowledge, graduates as the knowledge and skill bearer, and SMEs as the knowledge and skill users

Implementing an agile start-up culture into a process oriented company

The purpose of the present study was to find out and implement more agile ways of working into a process oriented telecommunications company TeliaSonera Finland Oyj. TeliaSonera Finland is one of the largest telecommunication companies in Finland and the largest in the Nordics. In Finland it operates under the name of Sonera Oyj. Part of TeliaSonera’s strategy is to become a new generation telecommunications company through transforming the company towards more application and integrator type of service provider and finding new business opportunities close to the core business. During the study, a current state analysis was made from Sonera’s current development methodology and decision-making processes. Three different disciplines were selected to be studied that were lean start-up and lean service creation, scaled agile framework and bimodal enterprise. A lean service creation program was launched in order to validate these methodologies with a case study with one of the new business initiatives close to the core – eHealth. The results revealed many different angles for the company to further develop: customer centricity, agility in development governance and culture. The scope of the development projects were not usually based on engaging the customer into the design process and projects tended to grow very large with big scopes and long lead times in the current state analysis. The minimum viable product thinking was something that the company was not used to do. The entrepreneurship culture was after all discovered to be one of the largest challenge for the company. There is no “one size fits all” type of approach. Instead, the conceptual framework should be adjustable and different methodologies suit better in different type of development items based on size, complexity, business area and so on. The author recommends that the leaders in Sonera make sure that the lean service creation and agile methodologies are taken more widely into use throughout the organization, but also clarify the guidelines of different disciplines. The change from a tightly-governed company to an agile start-up-like company with entrepreneurship as its core value does not happen overnight, it requires a lot of change management and continuous learning – especially from the management

IT Service Management Knowledge Ecosystem – Literature Review and a Conceptual Model

Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) is a customer-centric approach to manage IT Services in order to provide value to the business. The ITSM Knowledge ecosystem comprises multiple knowledge areas including process frameworks, technology tools and skills. Organisations struggle to comprehend the ecosystem due to the sheer volume and dynamic nature of the business technology environment. A Systematic Literature Review was conducted to understand the state of the current research in ITSM knowledge ecosystem. The review indicated that the focus of the existing research is skewed towards process frameworks knowledge area neglecting tools and training. The approach proposed in the extant research fails to provide a holistic view of the ecosystem. To overcome the limitations a conceptual model is proposed based on Knowledge Commons theory

Business Process Management Education in Academia: Status, challenges, and Recommendations

In response to the growing proliferation of Business Process Management (BPM) in industry and the demand this creates for BPM expertise, universities across the globe are at various stages of incorporating knowledge and skills in their teaching offerings. However, there are still only a handful of institutions that offer specialized education in BPM in a systematic and in-depth manner. This article is based on a global educators’ panel discussion held at the 2009 European Conference on Information Systems in Verona, Italy. The article presents the BPM programs of five universities from Australia, Europe, Africa, and North America, describing the BPM content covered, program and course structures, and challenges and lessons learned. The article also provides a comparative content analysis of BPM education programs illustrating a heterogeneous view of BPM. The examples presented demonstrate how different courses and programs can be developed to meet the educational goals of a university department, program, or school. This article contributes insights on how best to continuously sustain and reshape BPM education to ensure it remains dynamic, responsive, and sustainable in light of the evolving and ever-changing marketplace demands for BPM expertise

Characterization of an Agile Coordination Office for IST companies

Typically the Project Management Office activity is linked to the management and coordination of plan-driven projects, also known as waterfall or traditional projects. However, with the advent of agile methodologies in organizations of software development (the case of many information systems and technologies (IST)) no longer value the traditional PMO. It needs to be changed according to the agile values, so the organizations can extract benefits from such structure. These need to be fundamental changes in the responsibilities, practices and roles that a PMO should have. Also, it seems appropriate to rename it to something more descriptive and we chose to name it Agile Coordination Office (ACO). This paper presents the initial proposal of the ACO based on the existing literature. We propose the ACO to assume a behavior mainly supportive, due to the empowerment that every agile development team must have by definition. In addition, the architecture of this ACO aims to cover the various levels of management, from project and program up to the portfolio management. This division also reduces the complexity of ACO's implementation process and gives flexibility to rearrange the ACO over time.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01- 0145- FEDER007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/201

Collaborative Method to Develop an Enterprise Architecture in a Public Institution

The growth of organizational complexity degrades business processes efficiency. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an instrument to manage organizational complexity, through the improvement of organizational self-awareness. EA improves alignment between business and IT to ensure the business value of IT, and enables rationalization of organizational resources. However, depending of organizational culture and characteristics, there are several issues hindering the EA development within an organization. Actual frameworks, like TOGAF, require a significant number of skilled human resources (HR), which some organizations, like public institutions, cannot assign to EA activities. Our research goal is to provide an EA capability to public institutions, enabling these institutions to take advantage of EA benefits. Public institution contexts and stakeholder concerns were explored as well as issues acting as enablers or as inhibitors for an EA development. We propose a collaborative method to develop an EA, applying lean and agile principles, focusing on public institution specificities. Our collaborative method tries to capture organizational knowledge, spread among employees, into an EA model, to map the enterprise cartography of the institution. Our method has been demonstrated and evaluated in the IT sector of the Portuguese Navy.info:eu-repo/semantics/draf