Continuing from an earlier post we now look at how you set the objectives for the initial adoption phase.

We need the champions

Before we proceed in setting objectives we need to talk about resources.  There are 3 resources that are required for an adoption process to succeed; they are

1. Champions:  Technical and managerial support for the adoption process.  Without active advocates change will not happen.
2. Time:  The champions need to have time allocated to working on the process change.  Ideally the technical champions will have 100% of their effort allocated to the adoption of the new process.  When the resources are allocated at less then 80% the change is likely to fail.
3. Experience:  The people working on the project need to understand the current workflow so they can address its short comings and speak to the people outside of the adoption group.

An earlier blog post from LinkedIn provides additional details.

Setting goals

Based on the information collected from the process adoption team the objectives for the initial adoption phase should be set.  While the specifics for any given organization will be different the following outline is a fairly standard point

1. Prior to start of initial adoption phase
   1. Allocate resources to the process adoption team in support of project
   2. Process adoption team completes identified required training
   3. Review reference materials to understand current industry best practices
2. By completion  of initial adoption phase (1)
   1. Technical 
      1. Understand how artifacts from models integrate with existing artifacts
      2. Establish baseline testing activities
      3. Implement version control for new modeling artifacts
      4. Identify initial model and data architecture
   2. Managerial
      1. Review methods for measuring model key performance indicators (KPIs)
      2. Review resources required during initial adoption phase (2)

Bounding the problem

A word of caution; model-based design offers multiple tools and methods as part of the development workflow.  A common pitfall when establishing any new process is to “overreach” utilizing multiple new tools all at once, the resulting diluting of attention introduces errors of misunderstanding and results in a slower adoption of the process.  In the initial adoption phase posts, I will discuss the normal building blocks for Model-Based Design.

Next post

The next series of posts will cover model architecture and data management.  These topics will help in understanding the next phases of the adoption and establishment processes.

Footnotes

(1) The term “adoption” reflects the fact that there are existing resources to guide companies in adopting workflows.  I always encourage people to leverage existing information rather than creating new workflows from whole cloth.  This is critically important when working in a safety critical environment.
(2) Identifying the resources required for future phases should be based on the KPI information gathered from the initial adoption phase.  It should also take into account the “cost of learning” associated with starting a new process.