1. The Power of POEM Susanne Glissman, September 18th 2007

2. 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”

3. 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 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

4. 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

5. 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 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.

6. 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)

7. E-Mail-Address: susanneg@stanford.edu
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