Week 6

After the second round of client interviews, the roster process has become more and more clear, I summarize the process as follow.

1.  Disability & accommodation services department has the information of all nurses, for rostering, mainly the name, type and the working hours.

2.  Every month, coordinator in every ward distributes the “Roster Request Form” to every nurse, and asks them to fill their intended working time foe next 4 weeks.

3.  According to the staffing configuration from every unit and the collected roster request forms from nurses, coordinators schedule the roster in Excel. Then they can get vacancy information.

4.  Wards except for Highgate send the excel-based schedule to BCU to input it in KRONOS system. The Highgate input their schedule by themselves. The KRONOS is responsible for recording the starting time and leaving time of each nurse.

5.  To fill the vacancy, the coordinators send their unsatisfied need to BCU staffs, BCU has a system(SharePoint, and will be salesforce) which stored the information of clients and information of nurses in back pool. They will match nurses with clients to fill the vacancy, and input the schedule into KRONOS at the same time. If nurses in the backup pool still cannot fill the vacancy, BCU staff will contact external agents for more nurses.

6.  All nurses will attend the clients as the monthly schedule and be recorded working period by KRONOS system.

7.  For managers of nurses, they will calculate the working time and salary every fortnight, and upload the generated payroll into a system named Chris. Chris has stored detailed personal and payment information of government staff. The nurses get paid according to their attendance from Chris. 

To make it more visually, here is a ER diagram:

Actually, I am thinking other than simply giving suggestions on whether the department should buy another schedule module of KRONOS or customize the current Salesforce system, or even try other new systems, maybe we should also help improve the rostering process itself. Now the rostering work is done by different wards, however the filling vacancy things are done by the Central Business Unit. Even when the KRONOS or Salesforce system has gained scheduling function, the two tasks are handled separately. So maybe we can suggest a way to integrate these two process and save the manual process between the two systems. 

Week 5

After our interview on Monday, the process of current manual rostering can be concluded into following steps:

1.   Rostering staffs such as Jacqui Delorenz and Matt Dawe maintain a Staffing Configuration for care units. Each of them are responsible for several (may be 3) wards, and has a list of need for nurse in AM, PM and Night shift. The need usually doesn’t change unless the number of patients has changed manifestly.

2.   Every month, rostering staffs distributed the roster request sheets to nurses to get their available time, and they collect this information back to input it in Excel.

3.   Then they use Excel formulas to calculate if there are nurses whose request cannot be met, and use KRONOS to record the shifts and change them when necessary.

I do some research in China's workforce optimization solution software market. A company named GaiaWorks caught my attention. it provides solution in management of time and attendance, schedule, labor hour, HR& payroll, and so on.  

It provides several kinds of system suits which concentrate separately on roster,payment, accounting. Organization can buy either several modules or certain suits to fulfill their need. Their clients come from fields of manufacturing, retail, hospitality, logistics, and healthcare. 

The GaiaWorks put much emphasis on setting the strategic plan for workforce management . Before they implement solution for clients, they do a lot of work in getting to know the whole process and build a overall architecture.Which can be shown in their service to Nike-China factory. They help Nike to shorten their time of ordering to shipping at a 15% reduction.

Week 4: EA Frameworks

An enterprise architecture framework (EA framework) is an architecture framework which defines how to organize the structure and views associated with enterprise architecture. An organization may wish to mandate that certain models be produced before a system design can be approved. Similarly, they may wish to specify certain views be used in the documentation of procured systems. EA frameworks are very popular now, among them the most famous are: 

1.         The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architectures—Since the 1990s the Zachman Framework has been widely used as a means of providing structure for Information Engineering-style enterprise modeling. The Zachman Framework can be applied both in commercial companies and in government agencies. Within a government organization the framework can be applied to an entire agency at an abstract level, or it can be applied to various departments, offices, programs, subunits and even to basic operational entities.

2.         The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF)—TOGAF has enjoyed considerable adoption in organizations of diverse character. Its use is seen as a potential systematization of efforts – in the wake of high-profile failures – by governments, businesses and others to apply structured enterprise architecture principles to the still somewhat ''black arts'' of software development and IT operations.

3.         The Federal Enterprise Architecture—The U.S. federal enterprise architecture (FEA) is an initiative of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget that aims to comply with the Clinger-Cohen Act and provide a common methodology for IT acquisition in the United States federal government. It is designed to ease sharing of information and resources across federal agencies, reduce costs, and improve citizen services.

4.         The Gartner Methodology—Gartner believes that enterprise architecture is about bringing together three constituents: business owners, information specialists, the technology implementer. Gartner’s reputation based on best practice and collaboration.

There are several reasons why management should consider the use of an EA framework:

1.         An enterprise is a very complex entity.  Good frameworks simplify the complexity of the entity they represent.

2.         EA needs to present a simplified version of that complexity for analysis, communication and deliverables.  Simplification of the enterprise into its elements will greatly help in breaking down areas of analysis, communicating with technical and non-technical audiences, and deciding which types of deliverables to create and how to categorize them.

3.         Frameworks help to organize the huge number of complex elements and relationships that make up an enterprise.  The complexity of an enterprise can not only be shown in size and sheer number of elements, but also the number of relationships that exist organizationally, between business processes and other processes, as well as the relationship among business processes and the supporting information, applications, and infrastructure, and finally the interrelationships among information, applications and infrastructure components.  Frameworks help in identifying and simplifying the relationships, allowing management to organize them into areas of interest for analysis, communication and deliverable access.

4.         Highlights all the areas to consider for the scope of the EA.  One of the biggest challenges for many enterprise architects is defining the scope of the EA.  Frameworks provide a way to define all of the elements to be considered "within the bounds" of the work to be done.

5.         Do not repeat work that has already been done. While a specific framework will likely not be a perfect fit for the enterprise and EA program, many of them are great references for creating your own or can be customized to fit the needs more closely.