Workflow agent determination
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This document discusses roles, responsibilities, and an approach for automated agent determination in workflows. It describes how roles relate to other organizational structures and objects. Responsibilities define the domain or scope of a role. An approach is described where responsibilities are coded to define a functional organization overlaying reporting lines. This allows determining appropriate agents for tasks in workflows by tracing responsibilities through multiple dimensions like products, geographies, etc. Escalation paths can also be determined by tracing responsibilities through increasing layers of a functional management hierarchy.
Workflow agent determination
- 1. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities Agent Determination using multi-dimensional Roles & Responsibilities Introduction Responsibilities define the domain of Roles. Coded responsibilities are key to automated agent determination in work flow process. This document describes the relationships of job-roles to business objects associated to organization structure (functional and administrative), it then focuses on an approach to code responsibilities and thereby define a functional organization which overlays the reporting lines defined in HR. Some software implementation aspects are defined and the need for an agent determination service is described. Roles and Responsibilities Below is what could be called the “role model”; a model that describes how a role relates to other terms and objects of administrative and functional universe to describe how a person is deployed in an organization and work process. Competency/ Qualification Task Role Assignbment Position (Job Assignment) Person Job Description Job (Position type) Role Work Process (Work Flow) Organizational Unit Responsibility Delegations Cost Center Delegation of Authority Security Role Physical Access Responsibility Criteria Reporting Dimensions Expense Reporting Citeria An organization is a “union” of positions, which are slots for people, each of those who perform a predefined set of tasks. A person, who holds a position, is expected to perform a series of tasks, which are grouped into just a few job roles. Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 1 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 2. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities We typically equate a role with the responsibility to execute that role and security assignments are done accordingly. To perform the duties of any role, authorities need to be delegated to the person in necessary domains, associated to the role, from the supervisor. Various types of delegations are listed in the model. Example roles for a typical position could be: 1. Operate Plant Engineer for the reactor section of the Methocel plant 2. Safety Focal Point for Methocel plant 3. Supervisor for production operators in the Methocel plant These roles and tasks under any position can be looked-at as in terms of operator and operant. The Operant (Safety Focal Point) describes the nature of the role, the operation that is to be performed. The Operator (Methocel plant) describes the domain that the operation is performed on. The responsibility defines the boundaries of the domain that a role is to be applied to: reactor section, Methocel plant or production operators. So the responsibilities can be defined by data- sets which defines the domain (example for plant – geography Continent, Country, Region, State, City may be such a domain hierarchy) Problem Statement The whole process of task assignment in work-flow software consists of being able to find “an agent” – who holds a position and is authorized to do a task. The problem does not end there. If there is nobody assigned to a responsibility of a task then we need to find the next broader level which encompasses that responsibility. We would also like to find an escalation path. So we are typically looking for 3 or more sets of agents for each task which are as following. 1. One or more agents responsible for the task 2. One or more agents responsible at a higher level for approval 3. Escalation Agent Responsibilities and reporting Responsibilities define the boundaries of domains pertaining to a role in terms of dimensions of accountability. An established method of defining accountability in Dow is to use Global Reporting Dimensions (which can also be called as Global Responsibility Dimensions). Accountability can thus be defined in terms of business structure, functional structure, geographic structure etc. GRD’s will need to be extended with other classifications such as MRO classes, company structures and groupings (tenants) and other dimensions. Extending Global Responsibility Dimensions will provide the vocabulary to describe responsibilities in terms of global codes. Defining responsibilities for a role in GRD terms allows for personalization of the data in the business object warehouse. Example: Defining the responsibility of a marketing manager in terms of country and product groupings, now allows for reporting on the sales volume that the manager is responsible for. Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 2 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 3. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities Responsibilities and workflow: Agent Determination Workflows are reflections of work processes at executable level. Work flows contain a series of tasks (human centric or system based) strung together by some logic and some rules. Each human centric task is executed by a responsible agent. During execution time, an agent needs to be determined for the task. This can be done manually by having a user select the next agent to route the work item to, or the routing can be automated. Automated agent determination can be done in three ways: • Leveraging existing information in the systems. Example would be a cost center owner that is stored in the cost center record, or an MRP controller that is stored in the material master, or a CSR desk that is stored in the customer order. In some cases SAP code is delivered, otherwise custom code is written to follow the links to a specific user. • Using a custom Table with some hierarchical structure which contains agent names and based on the work-process rule the appropriate agent is chosen. • Using responsibility rules. Rather than specifying in each material, who the responsible administrator is, a responsibility of “Material Data Steward” can be defined for a group of materials in a geographic area and that responsibility is then assigned to a person as shown in the model above. Example: From a Styrofoam customer order for a German customer, the responsible material data steward can be determined by following the ordered material (GMID) up the product hierarchy to a value center and by following the place code up the Geographic hierarchy to a Management Area until a responsibility is found that is defined in both dimensions. Responsibilities can be defined at any level in the hierarchy. One business may have MDS’s (Material Data Stewards) defined at the level of performance center, other businesses may choose to do assignments at value center level (performance center and value centers are 2 levels of hierarchies in the business structure). The direction should be to either use existing information or use responsibility rules. Issue Escalation A typical problem in agent determination is that of escalating an issue to the next layer of management with larger authority. The escalation can be along reporting lines as implemented in the HR system (administrative organization structure): escalating to a person’s supervisor. In more general terms, the HR reporting structure is just one of several possible directions of escalation. Example: a project organization may consist of nested projects, managed under a program office. Escalation may need to be from sub-project to project to program. As in escalation along the HR reporting structure, this would be a case of escalating along a single dimension. 1 2 3 (X1,Y1) (X2,Y2) (X3,Y3) Functional Hierarchy or Administrative Hierarchy for Escalation. Example: A purchasing organization may be organized by the classes of material types and services that are being procured in conjunction with a geographic dimension. In such a 2 dimensional scenario, increasing spans of responsibility can reflect the management layer. Escalation can be to a person with the next larger span of control. Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 3 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 4. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities In the diagram above, 3 responsibilities have been defined as 3 sets of XYZ coordinates. They are drawn above each other to show the increasing layers of functional management. The Z co-ordinate is the line of delegation or authority and that defines the functional structure. Each responsibility can be represented by a combination of dimensions (which are initially defined in the responsibility container as “object tables” for validation purposes. We can use “n” number of dimensions (with Y1, Y2 to Yn values for each dimensions) which transpires into Y1 x Y2 x……..x Yn combination of responsibilities which provides enormous amount of flexibility. Delegation of tasks In the data model, a role is defined as a grouping of authorized tasks. The group is assigned to a position and coded through responsibilities at the role level to support agent determination. However, there are several scenarios where individual tasks/responsibilities instead of the whole role are being delegated: • Delegation of routine tasks to administrative personnel • Temporary delegation of tasks during absence of the role performer. Example: A supervisor will delegate signing of requests for Leave of Absence, but will likely not delegate key tasks such as promoting or firing people. These tasks will be suspended during his/her absence or be escalated. In general, an agent determination solution needs to support partial delegations of roles. When delegating a single task within a role, the dimensions of responsibility may not have to be redefined. In other words: responsibilities can be defined at the role level and delegations can be at the task level. SAP knows several methods of task delegation. The most common one is “substitution” of the agent in the portal. Sharing of tasks The agent, that is selected to perform a task, may in certain cases be a team of agents. This happens in call centers, support desks etc. Users can share a work-list (inbox) and select work items from the shared list or work items may be distributed to a group of users. An agent determination service needs to support the assignment of tasks to a team. Functional organization 1 2 3 b c a In the organization pictured to the left, a two dimensional responsibility plane has been divided amongst 3 top level managers, a, b and c. Manager “a” has sub divided her space into 3 responsibilities, assigned to 3 further leaders underneath her (green). Manager c divided his space into 2 responsibilities (blue) By assigning such responsibilities to positions held by persons, functional hierarchies are defined that overlay the HR reporting structure. The functional organization hierarchy acts as the third “dimension” in this drawing. Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 4 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 5. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities These functional hierarchies extend the solid HR reporting lines with the dotted lines of functional accountability. Example: A transactional document such as a purchase requisition possesses attributes in multiple dimensions (functional org, material and geography) and thus transactional accountability can be allocated, and also a functional escalation path is defined. Ideally, at each level, the responsibilities cover the complete domain in both dimensions. and ideally, Responsibilities are subdivided at lower levels in the functional hierarchy. A subordinate should not have responsibilities that are not covered by a functional superior of that person or in other words the subordinate should not cover an area in the responsibility domain which is not covered by the functional superior. Administrative Organization The above diagram shows an administrative hierarchy – we have a scalar view which has been mapped to a vector view. As it is seen that this model can support only one dimension. The flexibility is also very limited since in the hierarchy we can move from one node to the next higher node. So if we need more flexibility for purchasing purposes then we have to build and maintain an equivalent structure in purchasing. So we have n number of structures to define the various functional Organization which makes maintenance difficult and even then flexibility is limited. Implementation considerations Most work flow software engines supports the definition of rules. The SAP ECC classification system supports the definition of dimensions of responsibility. A combination of the two can be used to implement the concepts describe in this document. A single rule that uses classes of geographic locations (plants) and the classes of procured items (MRO classes) can describe the purchasing functional organization. Pre-requisite is that these classes are available in SAP. (SAP Classification System) Workflows, tasks, rules and responsibilities are core ECC SAP entities that will be shared amongst all SAP modules. Shared use requires governance of the process (definitions of ownership, naming conventions etc). Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 5 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 6. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities Check if FLOC data is available . (If not then we have to create it in the system) Create a rule container with FLOC Class, Characteristic elements Create a rule container with Maintenance Plant and planning plant element. The screen below has a plant element and since the maintenance and planning plants are in the same table I added one plant element. If the design requires two individual plant elements just let me know and one more may be added. Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 6 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 7. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities Create a rule container with FLOC Class, Characteristic elements, Maintenance Plant and planning plant element. Ensure that some Generic job positions are available in SQ1. If not then we have to create about 5 job positions. Tie the Job positions to Employee ID Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 7 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh
- 8. Multi-Dimensional Roles and Responsibilities Saved: 23 Mar 2015 - 03:56 a3/p3 Page 8 of 8 Printed: 30 Oct 2008 - 15:34 a10/p10 Pinaki Ghosh