Martin Ollus

Methods and Tools for Collaborative Networked Organizations

Collaborative Networked Organizations represent one of the most relevant organizational paradigms in industry and services. A large number of developments in recent years have turned Collaborative Networks into a pervasive phenomenon in all socio-economic sectors. The main aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive set of reference materials derived from the results of the ECOLEAD project in one organized volume. The ECOLEAD project, a large 4-year European initiative, involved 28 organizations (from academia, research and industry), from 14 countries (in Europe and Latin America). Three main types of results from ECOLEAD are presented: (i) Conceptual frameworks and models, (ii) Methods and processes, and (iii) Software tools and systems. Furthermore, the experience and lessons learned with a number of large pilot implementations in real-world running networks of enterprises are also included as an indication of the assessment/validation of the project results. Methods and Tools for Collaborative Networked Organizations provides valuable elements for researchers and practitioners involved in the design, implementation, and management of collaborative forms in industry and services.

Ecolead: A Holistic Approach to Creation and Management of Dynamic Virtual Organizations

The wide dissemination and effective materialization of the foreseen benefits of dynamic virtual organizations require a holistic approach to understand, model, and develop the needed infrastructures and tools to support the full life cycle of this organizational paradigm. Under this scope, the ECOLEAD integrated project was launched with the aim of creating the necessary foundations and mechanisms for establishing an advanced network-based industry society. The main underlying concepts, approach and preliminary results of this ongoing initiative are briefly summarized.

ECOLEAD and CNO base concepts

Collaborative networked organizations represent an important paradigm to help organizations cope with the challenges of market turbulence. Under this scope, the ECOLEAD integrated project was launched with the aim of creating the necessary foundations and mechanisms for establishing an advanced network-based industry society. The main underlying concepts, research roadmap and achieved results of this initiative are briefly summarized.

Characterizing Virtual Organizations and Their Management

Virtual Organization (VO) Management aims to the achievement of the objectives of the VO. It can be seen as a set of mechanisms and activities directing and controlling VO operation. As different VOs have different objectives and environment, different approaches for VO management are needed. The paper discusses the concept of VO management and presents an outline for building VO management approaches based on VO characteristics or descriptive parameters. First analysis of practical cases against the characteristics has been performed. Further development is needed to specify the management methods and mechanisms for different approaches.

Vo Management Solutions VO Management e-Services

A virtual organization is usually considered to be a set of cooperating independent entities, which to the outside world provides a set of services and functionality as if they were one organization. Virtual organization management denotes the organisation, allocation and co-ordination of resources and their activities as well as their inter-organisational dependencies to achieve the objectives within the required time, cost and quality frame. Collaboration and management therefore have to be tackled by provision of adequate methods and services for the single users involved, in dependence of their roles and profiles within the network. Based on the outlined results described in the previous 2 Chapters the following chapter concentrates on the description of e-Services as Solutions for Virtual Organization management.

Supporting collaborative project management

This article presents an approach for collaborative project management in which not only the project but also the management is collaborative. The focus is on the support of collaboration and communication in globally distributed projects. Several project management tools exist for planning and monitoring of project tasks. Other tools exist to support information exchange and technical interoperability. However, few solutions are available for the strengthening of intangible assets and supporting the common understanding of the project objectives, requirements and practices. For this objective, ‘Collaborative project alignment’ is defined in this article, together with a model and services to support the identification of the alignment aims and bridging possible gaps. The project alignment model and the related services, a project alignment booster, have been developed in the context of COIN-project (FP7 EU 216256), and relying on results from this project. The first evaluation of the tools has been made in relation to large engineering projects.

Governance And Management Of Virtual Organizations

A Virtual Organization (VO) consists of independent organizations collaborating for a common goal. Towards the customers and the outer world, they are assumed to look and behave as they were a single organization. Proper governance principles and operative management are needed in order to achieve the objectives. The focus is on the enforcement of the collaboration between independent partners with their own internal aims and own internal processes and management means. The paper presents results and solutions to support the management of virtual organizations in a dynamic environment.

Challenges in the Management of Virtual Organizations

Virtual organizations (VOs) are considered to be an answer to tightening requirements of cost-effectiveness, time and quality, especially in a global environment. In addition, it is expected that collaboration within VOs contributes to flexibility, agility, customer orientation and decrease of risks. However, these objectives are not achieved automatically. The management of independent entities with individual, sometimes even contradictory, aims is a difficult task containing uncertainty. The Inter-organizational distribution of processes and activities may lead to high coordination costs, delays in deliveries, quality problems, information leaks and loss of knowledge. To prevent the problems, proactive VO management is needed. The paper discusses the challenges for the development of proactive management. The main experience behind the paper comes from the one-of-a-kind manufacturing.

Identification of Forms and Components of VO Inheritance

Virtual Organizations (VO) are created from a VO Breeding Environment (VBE) or a network, to serve a specific task. In addition to the task-based value the VO and its participants gain valuable experience and create other types of assets. Most often this achieved value is not saved. It is distributed, not managed and sometimes not even identified. The practise of presenting and reusing the common experience and other non-proprietary assets created in the VO is called here “VO inheritance”. VO inheritance aims to enrich the VBE “bag of assets”, thus improving the preparedness of the VBE for business opportunities. The added value, or the contents of the VO inheritance, is called here “VO heritage”. The paper identifies different forms and components of VO heritage. The identification uses previous development of “lessons learnt” in project management field, and a collection of views of SMEs operating in collaborative networks.

A Strategic Roadmap for Advanced Virtual Organizations

A roadmap for the necessary integrated research and technological developments towards a new generation of virtual organizations is presented. This roadmap was developed in the context of the 1ST VOmap project and it covers five specific focus areas of: Socio-economic, VO management, ICT infrastructure, Support Services, and Formal models and theories. The vision designed for the roadmap, the proposed actions to reach the vision, as well as the schedule and suggested efforts for each action are presented in detail.