Aesop project: a

new architectural approach to

change management

What is Aesop?

• a research and development action partially financed by the European Commission within IST 2001 work programme (KAII.2.2, Smart organisations, n. 33314)

The Aesop’s targets

• more than 1,500 Chambers of Commerce in 36 European countries

• representing about 15,000,000 enterprises

• Many are small private, other big public• a common orientation in providing

information and/or information-based services (advice, promotion, training, internationalisation, arbitration and conciliation).

Problems to solve

• Give a personalised assistance to SMEs on-line (a 3rd generation portal)

• An always changing environment, where political and economical rules change everyday;

• So that on-the-fly re-configurability is crucial…

The usual approach to Chamber’s problems:

• Users are often considered absolute beginners, or ignorant to catechize

• Consultants and technicians seem to ignore calendars, we are not in 1995, but in 2002;

• Let see a daily scene in the Chamber’s world…

…and finally you need a workgroup application!

… Just another one!

Tell me it’s not true…

God, save me from testing it…

What’s industry pretending?

• Full solutions are available• Document management, workgroup are

there, customer relationships as well!• Knowledge management tools can be

used• Workflow is so easy to implement!• Every solution pretends to do

everithing!

The solution suppliers’ trap

• IT industry still needs to understand time to time changing environments need on-the-fly reconfigurations due to:– Politics constraints– Market challenges

• IT industry tends to build traps, but users do not want to be trapped by It-does-everithing solutions…

How do we overcome the trap…

• Ethnography to understand better…

• Deconstructuring already existing solutions;

• Getting elements and functions as components

• Make it configurable from the user• Adopt open source frameworks

Regional associations of chambers in Italy

• Activity: distributing and selling economic information

• Goal: give more personalised information to clients (Smes, consultants, agencies)

• Elements: private space, catalogue of offers, decision support, document management.

Regional Chamber in Lyon

• Activity: technology exchange and partnership promotion

• Goal: provide an “on-line-closed” space to match-making activities

• Elements: database of clients, private space, decision support

Chamber of commerce in Stuttgart

• Activity: manage apprenticeship education

• Goal: create a safe environment to distribute and collect examinations papers;

• Elements: document management, private spaces, database of clients.

The common elements

FR

IT DE

privatespace

Offers’ catalogu

e

decision support

documentmanageme

nt

Clients’ database

privatespace

S4

• Secure Shared Server Space• Letting users acquire, configure

and share private spaces

S4

The technical solution

• Development based on Open Source frameworks

• Jetspeed and Tomcat from Apache.• Elements developed as portlets,

using Java. • Easily configurable from the user.

What does this achieve ?

• An infrastructural service rather than an application level function.

• The ability to separate workflow and “business logic” from secure space capabilities.

• Why?– Because all CCIs are different.– They want to configure and control their

own environments.

Developed up to now

• User authentication module with Smart cards, to build “private spaces”

• Hierarchical document management portlet inside Jetspeed

Next to come portlets

Decision support, CRM and “catalog”

Building blocks for the 3rd generation portals.

offer access to distributed resources…in a form where they can be appropriated, configured and exploited in ways that are defined by the users, through their use.

Thanks

More: www.aesop-ist.com