Lee, J. et al. Paper: Integrating Process and Work Breakdown Structure with Design Structure Matrix Jonathan Lee∗, Whan-Yo Deng∗,Wen-TinLee∗, Shin-Jie Lee∗ Kuo-Hsun Hsu∗∗, and Shang-Pin Ma∗∗∗ ∗Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Jhongli, Taiwan E-mail: {yjlee, jass, wtlee, jielee}@selab.csie.ncu.edu.tw ∗∗Department of Computer and Information Science, National Taichung University, Taichung, Taiwan E-mail: [email protected] ∗∗∗Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan E-mail: [email protected] [Received November 3, 2009; accepted May 20, 2010] In software development, project plans document provides project managers with knowledge sharing and scope, cost, effort, and schedule, guide project man- lessons learned. Developing a project plan without incor- agers, and control project execution. Developing a porating how an organization does things, namely, orga- project plan without incorporating how an organiza- nizational culture, may cause a project to fail. To ensure tion doing things – i.e., organizational culture – may stable process performance and to benefit from organiza- lead to project failure. To ensure stable process per- tional culture, it is crucial that organizational processes formance and to benefit from organizational culture, be taken into account in project planning. Organizational it is crucial that organizational processes be taken processes enable stable process performance across the into account in project planning. Organizational pro- organization and provide a basis for cumulative project cesses enable stable process performance across an or- development experience. Continuous improvement of or- ganization and provide a basis for cumulative, long- ganizational processes also provides long-term benefits to term benefits to the organization. In proposing a sys- the organization. tematic approach that supports bi-directional trans- A process is a set of activities connected to control formation between processes and the Work Break- nodes providing decision support and flow logic. De- down Structure (WBS), we propose Process2WBS and pendence among activities is complex in a project pro- WBS2Process to assist project managers in project cess. Managing complex dependence among activities planning with an organization’s set of standard pro- is thus a competency required for successful process ex- cesses. Process2WBS consumes processes and trans- ecution. Conventional process management tools pro- forms them into a WBS with Design Structure Ma- vide process representation graphically, however, not al- trix (DSM) analysis, and WBS2Process transforms the lowing for common feedback and cyclic activity depen- WBS with project-specific information into executable dence. The Design Structure Matrix (DSM) devised by processes expressed in XPDL. D.V. Steward [5] serves as system analysis for represent- ing processes and their relationships in a square matrix and for analyzing feedback and cyclic process interaction. Keywords: process management, project management, The DSM is a square matrix with identical row and project planning, design structure matrix column labels to identify dependence between tasks and to sequence the engineering design process. This com- plexity management tool designs and optimizes a com- 1. Introduction plex system, project tasks, and organization structure. T. R. Browning [6] reviewed four DSM applications to The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a hierarchi- demonstrate their usefulness in product and process de- cal list of project tasks that defines the scope of a project, velopment, project planning and management, system en- which translates into effort, timeline, and budget. Tak- gineering and organization design. The four DSM ap- ing the time to map out the WBS saves significant effort plications, which include component-based, team-based, in project execution by helping avoid rework and false activity-based, and parameter-based DSM, are catego- starts [1–3]. An important WBS planning objective is rized into Static DSM and Time-based DSM. The DSM project scheduling. Although considerable research [4] uses several types of analysis to optimize a complex sys- has been focused on project scheduling, little work has ac- tem and project tasks, such as partitioning, clustering, and counted for organizational processes in the project plan- simulation [7, 8]. ning phase. An organization’s set of standard processes Improving process execution efficiency and process 512 Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence Vol.14 No.5, 2010 and Intelligent Informatics Integrating Process and WBS with Design Structure Matrix Organizational Process 1. Process2WBS tailor Evaluate Cluster the Project Defined Represent Process the Strength Activities Based on Organize WBS Process using DSM between Activities Work Product Process Model in DSMs (logic included) 2. WBS2Process Manually Tailor Transform WBS Verify and Merge Generate Project WBS WBS and Planning to a DSM The New DSM Executable Process Legend: Executable Entity ReferenceLink Project Process (XPDL) Activity ActivityFlow Fig. 1. Overview of our approach. control requires a workflow engine to execute the project are merged by synchronizing activities, input logic, process automatically. A project process is further en- and output logic. WBS2Process then translates the hanced using a process definition language such as XML merged DSM into an XPDL file by mapping from Process Definition Language (XPDL), a de facto stan- the DSM to XPDL format. An XPDL file also docu- dard promoted by the Workflow Management Coalition ments project-specific information in corresponding (WfMC) [9]. XPDL is an open flexible process definition tags. standard enabling process designers to define project pro- cesses and extension attributes, and a process definition This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discuss in language managed by a workflow engine. depth how to integrate processes and WBS with the DSM. As a continuation of previous work on requirements en- Section 3 shows an example demonstrating our proposed gineering [10–15], we propose a systematic approach sup- approach. Section 4 reviews related work, and Section 5 porting bi-directional transformation between processes presents conclusions. and a work breakdown structure – Process2WBS and WBS2Process – to assist project managers in project plan- ning with an organization’s set of standard processes. 2. Integrating Process and WBS • Process2WBS consumes processes and transforms Discussing how to incorporate an organization’s set of them into a WBS. A WBS template derived from standard processes with the WBS and how to transform a project-defined process, increases WBS confor- the WBS into an executable process involve the two main mity with the project-defined process. The domain- features shown in Fig. 1. mapping table, mapped from a process to the DSM • and from the DSM to the WBS, helps calibrate map- Transform Process to the WBS (Process2WBS): ping relationships between a process and a WBS. A When a project is initiated, project managers may clustering algorithm is developed to analyze the de- set up project-defined processes by processes tai- gree of strength among activities to group activities lored from organizational processes based on tailor- based on deliverables. ing criteria and guidelines. A project-defined pro- cess provides a basis for planning and conducting • WBS2Process transforms a WBS with project- the project’s tasks and activities. The WBS defines specific information into executable processes ex- and groups a project’s tasks or work elements to help pressed in XPDL format. The DSM maintains project managers organize and define the project’s processes, subflows, and activities or tasks in a total work scope, so the project-defined process must WBS based on WBS editing constraints. The DSM be transformed into a WBS in the initial phase of and the original DSM produced by Process2WBS project planning. Fig. 1 “Process2WBS” consumes Vol.14 No.5, 2010 Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence 513 and Intelligent Informatics Lee, J. et al. the project-defined process and generates the corre- Process Concept cardinality DSM Concept sponding WBS. Here we use Microsoft Project as Package 1:1 DSM our WBS tool to show the transformation between Process n:1 DSM processes and the WBS. During Process2WBS trans- Activity 1:1 Activity and it’s Extension Attribute: formation, processes are represented in the DSM, (SubFlow/ Task/ BlockActivity/ Activity Type and dependence is analyzed by a clustering algo- Route/ Event) Participant/ Application 1:1 Extension Attribute: rithm in the DSM. It is crucial that the DSM describe Performer feedback and cyclic task dependence since most en- Artifact 1:1 Extension Attribute: gineering applications exhibit such cyclic behavior. Input Artifact/ Output Artifact Transition 1:1 Information Flow Swimlane (Pool/ Lane) None • Transform the WBS to Process (WBS2Process): Af- Message Flow None ter transforming the WBS from the project-defined process, project managers may edit the WBS for task Fig. 2. Domain concept mapping between process and DSM. assignment, cost estimation, predecessor constraints, and scheduling. Improving process execution effi- ciency and better process control requires a workflow RouteActivity engine to execute the project process automatically. The WBS is useful for project cost estimation and ABCG project control, but clumsy in supporting automatic