The Power of POEM Susanne Glissman, September 18th 2007

Use Case: Immediate need to introduce new governmental school policies Initial situation Cathy Careful, dean of the School of Engineering, receives a letter from the governance. It includes 43 new school policies with which the school must be aligned immediately. The school will be audited in four weeks Objective: Use cases illustrate how this situation is managed: manually (without POEM), with support of existing systems (without POEM), and with support of POEM One of the 43 new governmental school policies: Policy 27: “Undergraduate Mathematic courses must have a final test”

Use Case 1: manually (without POEM) With the help of Excel Sheets, Cathy tries to analyze all possible inconsequences. After 5 hourse she gives up and decides that the professors probably know best how these new policies will affect them. scans & forwards letter to entire faculty (75 professors) 57 professors misunderstand the policies: 36 contact Cathy and/or 21 change courses incorrectly 1 professor, Tanja Terrible, does not read her email as she is in hospital Only 2 of the 5 professors who actual need to change their course according to policy 27, adjust them correctly Cathy doesn’t know if all courses have been adjusted correctly compare all 43 policies with their, in total 178, courses, adjust their courses audit if the new policies have been applied in the school system request from each professor a document that provides the course information It takes 7 days to evaluate the documents which were submitted on time It takes 6 more weeks to completely evaluate the 69 documents which were errorenuous or which were submitted late Auditors discover that the new governmental policies have not been fully applied

Use Case 2: support of existing systems (without POEM) instructs an IT admin to program the necessary code into the school’s information system (IS) Cathy thinks it would be best to directly adjust the school’s information system according to policy 27 As the IT admin, Jeff Joogle, is overloaded, it takes one week until they meet the first time Within the following 3 weeks they meet 5 more times because of misunderstandings on the requirements define requirements It takes Jeff two weeks to implement all requirements He misinterprets Cathy’s requirements and thus changes the code incorrectly updates course data incorrectly hardcodes the new requirements updates database, e.g. sets exam type on “final exam” scans the letter and forwards it to the entire faculty requests them to check if their exam type was changed to ”final exam” and if so to schedule a date for the new exam Some professors are confused, as they can’t enter the data how they used to do it In some cases, the system shows error messages caused by incomplete system tests due to time pressure. audit if the new policies are affective in the School system request from Cathy a document that provides the course information Jeff fails to implement everything on time. Thus, Cathy has to request a later audit date. The auditors evaluate within 5 days Cathy’s documents Auditors discover 21 inconsistencies with the new policies

Use Case 3: support of of POEM (this process is repeted for each of the 43 policies) enters new policy into POEM POEM shows her the affected policies by Policy 27 Cathy accepts these inconsistencies and saves the policy. POEM sends email to 4 professors to request course adjustments Tanja Terrible to inform her that her default substitute, Bill Boring, will adjust her course Bill to inform him that he must adjust Tanja’s course checks consistency: 5 professors are affected by policy 27 informs affected professors POEM shows them policy 27 with which their courses are inconsistent and, thus, explains which data (i.e. exam type) they need to change other policies which they could change in order to avoid changing data (e.g. exam type) request consistency check adjust correctly their courses audits if the new policies are implemented in the School system requests Cathy to proof this Based on POEM consistency checks, Cathy is able to proof that all governmental policies are implemented within 1 hour.

The Power of POEM: cause-and-effect chain declaration of system policies computational logic ↑ enablement of business people to adjust IS ↑ consistency checks ↑ tailored information provision ↑ management of inconsistency chains ↑ automatic task identification ↓need for data update by admin ↓need for coding by admin ↑policy transparency ↑ workflow automization ↓need for collaboration ↑ policy planning ↓policy mis-interpretation ↑ qualified decisions ↓manual analysis of policies & data ↑flexibility ↓error ↑quality ↓process time ↓ costs ↑firm’s competitive advantage (Note: For simplicity reasons the figure focuses on certain cause-effects of POEM)

E-Mail-Address: susanneg@stanford.edu Further Information E-Mail-Address: susanneg@stanford.edu