Distributed Work Allocation
Summary Description:
Description
Optimize project performance by using complementary distributed work partitioning and system architecture partitioning. Projects are increasingly partitioned into sub-projects for allocation among distributed teams. Precisely where the boundaries between sub-projects are placed can affect project outcome and the efficiency of team performance due to associated changes in the problem-solving interdependence among sub teams.Geographic considerations are often severe (e.g. significant reduction in communication and trust) and should be factored into the system architecture process in an iterative way.Project organization, system architecture, and distributed team structure must be co-designed to enable aligned adjustment with evolution of the product or service, and/or reduction of the barriers to decision making interactions across sub-project boundaries.
Background
Technique to optimize performance for distributed sub-project work allocation. How geographically distributed sub-projects are defined can have a large impact on project outcome and work efficiency.
Supporting Documentation
The Misalignment of Product Architecture and Organizational Structure in Complex Product Development
Primary Benefit Improved Quality
Net Impact Cost Reduced Cost
Net Impact Quality Increased Quality
Net Impact Schedule Reduced Schedule
Quality Comments Page1688: “As a result of the study, managers established dedicated design teams or extended existing responsibilities to handle critical cross boundary design interfaces.” Page 1688: We present evidence that until made aware by the analysis, teams may fail to perceive the actual criticality of their cross boundary design interfaces.”
Cost Comments Page 1688: “Measuring misalignment between organizational design and product architecture identified 25 unmatched critical design interfaces (out of 688), however further research is needed to understand their performance implications.”
Schedule Comments Page 1688: “Measuring misalignment between organizational design and product architecture identified 25 unmatched critical design interfaces (out of 688), however further research is needed to understand their performance implications.”
Enablers The technique of analyzing the alignment between architectural interfaces and human interaction can be successfully used as an intervention even after product design has started. P1688 “The technique gave quantifiable results that easily convince management of the needed changes. Management held the teams responsible for managing the initially unmatched design interfaces that resulted in a problem.” The techniques used to analyze an organization's communication effectiveness and its alignment to product architecture is robust and well tested in domains other than engine development.
Barriers Page 1687: Usually product architecture decisions and technical communication patterns among distributed organizations are considered from separate viewpoints. Management will have to take ownership for the quality and completeness of communication between sites and detect conflict between communication and system architecture.” It will require a change in the systems architect role away from the purely technical role to understand the social system that will deliver the product. The work covered a single point in the evolution of the product design. While this was a successful intervention, turning it into a proactive tool to manage evolving alignment with product evolution was not considered.
Ease of Implementation The technique as described was minimally invasive into the product development activity; therefore little resistance would be created.
Additional Comments The paper answers the question of “how can a manager of complex design efforts discover 1) the unknown interactions with the architecture and 2) the known interactions that are failing to be worked.”The paper quantifies the perception that collocated teams do not suffer the same problems as distributed teams. Source of this information: The Misalignment of Product Architecture and Organizational Structure in Complex Product Development; Manuel E. Sosa, INSEAD; Steven D. Eppinger, MIT-Sloan School of Management; Craig M. Rowles Advance Engine Program, Pratt Whitney Aircraft; Management Science Vol. 50, No 12 December 2004 page 1674-1689ISSN 0025-1909 Page 1688: Our results indicate that indirect interactions act as an important co-ordinations mechanism within team boundaries.” The paper answers the question that alignment of the distributed organization management structure and the system architecture (alignment of the human interfaces with the technical product interfaces) improved the probability of success of this specific project.
The Coupling of Product Architecture and Organizational Structure Decisions Primary Benefit Improved Quality
Net Impact Cost Reduced Cost
Net Impact Quality Increased Quality
Net Impact Schedule Reduced Schedule
Cost Comments Page 14: “In one instance, serious system problems had not been discovered until the system had been integrated into the vehicle, which could not be sold and a major delay in manufacturing can be extremely costly.”
Schedule Comments Page 14: “The layout of the product architecture’s fundamental and incidental interactions implies a specific pattern of organizational communications. If there exists barriers to the execution of this pattern, these barriers can catalyze delays in the product development cycle.”
Enablers Page 26: We observed in our study that organizations do simultaneously exhibit mechanisms of product architecture affecting organizational structure as well as patterns of organizational structure affecting product architecture. Hence we assert the feasibility of technical architecture co-evolution with organizational design.”
Barriers Page 17: “The established organizational capabilities and structures dictate architectural choices. If the organization structure is static then, the architecture is likely to be the same over many product generations. Integrating and changing the architecture ( for specific product characteristics) becomes difficult.” Page 15: Architecture determines required communication, but designing an organization with respect to the architecture only increases the potential availability of the information (e.g. co-locating teams to develop ill-defined interfaces). To realize the benefit firms might consider methods to insure actual transfer of the correct information and effective utilization. Page 27: “Over time the product architecture will change and at a different rate than the design of the organization. It is essential to acknowledge the coupling at the decision level in order to achieve the benefits of recognizing their interdependence.
Ease of Implementation Page 24: “ Organizations as a whole show patterns of basic assumptions, developed by given groups as they learn to cope with their specific problems. We observed that the shared experiences, knowledge, and understanding of the organization caused each group to bring different assumptions with it to the larger product development team and as a result affected the architectural decisions. These differences may affect the firm’s ability to manage the discontinuity between present products and unknown future products without the necessity for significant organizational change.
Additional Comments Page 8: “ We draw the conclusion that the relationship between product architecture and organizational design merits special distinction in managerial decision making. A thorough understanding of the reliance that product architecture has upon organizational design and vice versa can aid managers in creating a beneficial environment in which product architecture can exploit the advantages of the current organization design and in which the organization design can enhance the efficiency of the personnel interactions required to implement a product's architecture. Additionally, organizational design can assist the execution of a product’s technology by facilitating the integration of various disciplines, technologies, components and systems into a product.” Abstract: “A thorough understanding of the reliance that product architecture has upon organizational design and visa versa can aid managers in creating an environment in which product architecture can exploit the advantages of the current organizational design and the organizational design can enhance the efficiency of the personnel interactions required to effectively implement a products architecture.” Soure of the information: The Coupling of Product Architecture and Organizational Structure Decisions; Rosaline K. Gulati, Steven D. Eppinger; MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper #3906; May 26, 1996
Sourcing By Design: Product Complexity and the Supply Chain
Primary Benefit Improved Quality
Net Impact Cost Reduced Cost
Net Impact Quality Increased Quality
Net Impact Schedule Reduced Schedule
Quality Comments Page 201: “Using Consumer reports reliability data. The top performer with a reliability of 5, featured a simple outsourced design. The worst performer with a score of 1, featured a complex outsourced design, representing a finding that complex products requiring significant team interaction cannot easily be decomposed and outsourced while simpler products can in fact be more effectively outsourced, because that filters the amount of communication exchange.”
Cost Comments Page 202: “Given our observation that they are benefits to concentrating production of complex systems in-house and to outsourcing simpler systems, efficiency arguments suggest that profit-maximizing firms should operate according to these approaches.”
Enablers Page 200: The trend towards platforms in auto companies. “This indicates that constraining components to serve a platform of vehicles also affected sourcing positively. It may be the case that the platform requirements require more modular designs (less undefined interdependency) will effect sourcing by reducing the coordination costs associated with outsourcing.
Barriers Page 202: “This raises the question of why we ever see firms behaving otherwise (i.e. outsourcing complex components and designing simple components in-house). We believe this is a result of the separation of these decisions, product design engineers typically determine product architecture and complexity, whereas purchasing agents typically make sourcing decisions. While these groups typically interact they do not currently make these decisions jointly.” Page 200: This is consistent with our interview data in the US auto industry, where union agreements cover all components. To change the sourcing of a component as required to match its complexity, it is necessary to renegotiate the union agreement, a prospect that is costly.”
Ease of Implementation Page 202: “actual sourcing relationships are more complex than simple make or buy decisions. We observed other types of contracting arrangements. These practices can create very different information structures, with potential differences in the coordination costs faced by the firm in the contracting relation. Our results also raise issues with regard to the information structure of firms and between firms in achieving quality benefits and minimizing the quality penalties for outsourcing complex systems.”
Additional Comments Page 202: “our evidence regarding quality suggests that there is not an optimal way to configure the firm (organizational design) or the product (system architecture), but that multiple optima exist. Our research suggests that a company that optimizes over both the requirements of its product and the capability of its supply chain (and their level of integration/communication) will outperform one that focuses only on organizational structure or product structure.” Source of this information: Sourcing By Design: Product Complexity and the Supply Chain; Sharon Novak, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University; Steven D. Eppinger, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Management Science. Vol 47 No.1 January 2001, PP.189-204
Factors that Influence Technical Communication in Distributed Product Development: An Empirical Study in the Telecommunication Industry
Primary Benefit Improved Quality
Net Impact Cost Reduced Cost
Net Impact Quality Increased Quality
Net Impact Schedule Reduced Schedule
Enablers p.45: “The use of electronic-based communication media is increasing the number of options distributed development teams have available to coordinate activities, to keep knowledge up to date and to spark creativity with non collocated team members. Enabling more distribution of activities even if highly interrelated decisions are required.” p.55: “Since the effect of importance of the task related relationships on communication frequency is fairly consistent across all media used, we can track electronic based communication transactions to easily identify team dependencies. Tracking electronic based communication frequencies can provide an easy and non-disruptive way to obtain the relation to the dependency structure (system design) of the development project.”
Barriers p.45: “The dynamics of current businesses have challenged the execution of product development projects by increasingly requiring more geographically distributed teams to work together. Current practices in product development involve the execution of various stages of the process in various locations around the globe when serving diverse markets, irrespective of the technical and management problems faced within these types of dispersed design organizations, because of the highly interdependent nature of the necessary communication exchanges.” Additional Comments Source: IEEE Transactions on engineering Management Vol 49 No1 Feb 2002. p.55: ”People involved in critically interdependent tasks or who share strong organizational bonds (part of the same team) engage in a broad spectrum of communication means. Even when team members are not co-located, higher communication frequencies were observed for highly interdependent tasks. These results reinforce the importance for managers to identify critical task dependencies in their organization design in order to facilitate intense communication among team members involved in such interdependent tasks.”
WBS Task Teams and Functional Hierarchy for Distributed Work Allocation - B-2 Systems (Engineering Case Study)
Primary Benefit Don't know
Net Impact Cost Don't know
Net Impact Quality Don't know
Net Impact Schedule Reduced Schedule
Schedule Comments It was an indirect effect of the work done during the entire process.
Enablers WBS Task Teams “The contract WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) stipulated the entire program content and tasking and the company organized the design/development effort into multiple teams, responsible to implement the WBS for sections of the air vehicle and for each subsystem. These WBS Task Teams were assigned complete work packages, for example, the forward center wing. The systems engineering WBS Task Team efforts were organized similarly, but with the separate systems organizations each reporting to the Northrop chief engineer. The functional organizations assigned members to the task teams to assure accommodation of their needs. A vital distinction from many of today’s Integrated Product Teams (IPT) was retaining the WBS Task Team membership throughout the functional organizations’ various management levels. This facilitated communication, integration, interfaces, and integrated the functional leadership of each technical and management discipline into the decision process. The program management top-level structure was organized into a strong project office with centralized decision authority at the top”.(Page 48) Centralized program management/leadership “A strong centralized program management/leadership role was crucial to provide the guidance and focus for each company and for the integrated program. The process could quickly surface the problem to the appropriate decision level and the program would efficiently reach a consensus and resolve the issue. Awareness, knowledge, experience, consistency in the work force, and the authority to act were ingrained in the participants.”(Page 49)
Additional Comments Cross Reference: WBS Task Teams and Functional Hierarchy - B-2 Systems (Engineering Case Study)
Distributed Work Allocation