Ruoyi Zhou

A New Way to Plan for the Future

Building on state-of-the-art techniques for forecasting future developments in technology, business, economics, and other areas of human endeavor, we describe a novel methodology for adaptive contingency planning at the strategic initiative level. Complementing normal business planning that uses a schedule based on predictions tied to dates in the future, we use a new kind of early warning signal called a signpost to trigger the execution of corresponding new recommended actions

Complex Service Management in a Hybrid Cloud

This architectural feasibility study focuses on transforming a complex service management application to take advantage of the economies of scale and convenience afforded by cloud computing. We study a financial analytics application and system and enumerate the following characteristics: (a) highly compute intensive, (b) memory intensive, (c) storage i/o intensive, (d) collaborative, (e) interactive with low latency (propagation of changes must take place at speeds comparable to those of the spreadsheets that the application replaces in order to satisfy user responsiveness requirements) and (f) involves sensitive data for which it must maintain a high level of data security. We see two major challenges to operating such an application from the cloud: (1) achieving low latency interaction and (2) protecting sensitive data. In this paper we will explore alternative potential solutions to each of these challenges. To have any significant economic advantage, we must transform the architecture from heavy client and light server to light client and heavy server, running directly into challenge (1). It appears likely that any solution will involve a hybrid cloud, at least part of which provides high levels of data security (with consequent lowering of the economic advantage) in order to meet challenge (2). In our industrial research context, we are inclined to tackle one challenge at a time and to develop our new system in two phases, the first phase producing a new client server architecture that allows for multiple types of light clients, the second phase moving the server side into a hybrid cloud, from which multiple applications of the same type could be offered as web services to multiple clients.

Forecasting Service Profitability

This paper describes ways to connect ledger cost behavior of a service delivery project with cost estimations derived at the time of contractual agreement. The purpose of this connection is to improve the management of the service life cycle, providing long range forecasting of the profitability of various service offerings. We emphasize cost, but our methods apply also to revenue, and consequently to profit. In a perfect financial world the connection between the cost estimate and the actual costs would be maintained in a tight feedback loop. The complex real world of multi-year and multi-country service delivery projects requires accommodation of (1) historical changes in accounting practices and (2) missing data. We describe the content of a cost case, the content of the ledger, and methods for forecasting profitability of parts of delivery projects using both the cost case and historical ledger experience of other similar projects. This paper reports a work in progress. We limit discussion of accuracy measurements to one benchmark, and we discuss potential improvements we have not yet implemented.

An analysis of a service system supporting IBM's global service delivery

The world economy continues to evolve away from the traditional producer-consumer roles prevalent in the industrial era, towards more dynamical, collaborative business relationships characteristic of the emerging global services economy. New challenges are emerging for businesses engaged in service delivery, particularly concerning process normalization and cost estimation. Service standardization is being addressed at IBM through careful analysis of historical service deals and the development of “best practice” standards for service solutions. The Solution Definition Manager (SDM) is a platform developed at IBM through a close collaboration among research and business representatives, designed to support the flexible creation of global service solutions within standards, as well as subsequent cost estimation and pricing of those solutions at fine level of granularity. In this paper, the SDM is discussed in terms of how and why it is being developed as well as the business transformation it represents. An analysis is presented of how research and business groups within IBM have co-created value by transforming internal processes, and how the SDM in turn allows IBM to be a better partner for value co-production while delivering services to external clients.

Measuring Service Solution Quality in Services Outsourcing Projects Using Value Driver Tree Approach

In this paper, we present a framework to model and measure the quality of an information technology (IT) service solution in services outsourcing domain. Our three main contributions in this paper are as follows. First, we present a systematic method to identify the drivers of Information Technology (IT) service solution quality based on the lifecycle phases of IT services projects; Second, we present ten service quality measurement dimensions and the associated metrics for measuring these dimensions organized as Value Driver Trees (VDTs); Third, we present a qualitative and quantitative analytical approach for modeling IT service quality metrics and for predicting the quality of service solutions using Value Driver Trees (VDTs). To the best of our knowledge our work is the first of its kind for measuring IT service solution quality in services outsourcing projects from IT service provider point-of-view. We are currently implementing these metrics at a large IT services outsourcing services provider.

Systematic Risk Management for the Innovative Enterprise

We present systematic decision support for innovation management. At the core of our system is a dynamically evolving risk taxonomy that we map to either qualitative or quantitative decision processes. We describe several experiments that could advance the science behind innovation management. In the context of a portfolio of potential and actual service offerings, we discuss how to spread, hedge, or mitigate risk, and how these activities constitute enterprise innovation management.

Enhancing Collaboration with IBM's Rational Jazz tm .

This paper describes our experience with IBM’s Rational Jazz tm platform for collaboration and for coordinating software development in the context of a medium sized service research and development project. We discuss the observed advantages of Jazz in systematizing the development process, especially when we are operating with extreme agility and the team is widely distributed around the world. We cover both narrative observations and quantitative measurements of Jazz usage. We demonstrate an objective measure of the value of such a software development management system. And we study the extent to which Jazz interfaces can replace ad hoc communication. While Jazz provides sufficient structure to replace all other communication within a geographically distributed research and development team, we conclude that redundant team communication in the forms of email and telephone meetings is necessary to maintain team motivation.