ITEI newsletter 2/2010Contents: Editorial • The rise of network-centric innovation • Ubiquitous innovation – from process to collaboration • Innovation at Steria Benelux – clear targets and online support • Innovation hub - overview • Owela – online tools for user-driven innovation • Competence centers – source of innovation and quality • A concept for NSN innovation management tool • ICM2.0 – not yet another maturity model • Innovation and collaboration maturity model (ICM2.0) – Case Keraben • Innovation project management with AuraPortal • The generation of ideas within the human resources – Case Answare • Open the doors of the company to innovative ideas – Case Sisteplant • Innovation Process for Ideas Management – Case DS2 • Driving and supporting distributed innovation – Case Keraben

ITEI Information Technologies supporting the Execution of Innovation projects

2

EDITORIALIn this ITEI newsletter a series of innovation tools and methods and on-

going experiments from more than a dozen of companies are presented.

These are examples of how the organizations learned to master their

innovation process and how to use IT solutions to improve its business

impact. Each one is following its own pace, and focusing in different

specifi c aspects of the innovation management. When considering all of

them together, they offer and interesting and complete view of the dif-

ferent practices in managing innovation.

During the ITEI project several tools and methods have been developed

to support the innovation process by Indie Group, Spikes, Sirris, Inno-W,

HiQ, VTT, Tecnalia-Software and Auraportal. Various experiments and pi-

lot cases were carried out in Steria, Movial, Answare, Keraben, DS2 and

Sisteplant to learn about the use of web 2.0 and process management

tools in harvesting ideas and optimizing the use of critical resources.

From the large software intensive companies, NSN, is developing an In-

novation Management tool aiming to support the transformation of in-

ternal and external ideas and needs into concrete char-

acteristics of a product.

These, and other cases included in the newsletter, show

the trend, common to the industry, towards open in-

novation, incorporating ideas from outside the frontiers

of the own organization, but also opening the product

development process by collaborating with other com-

panies and giving a centric role to the customer.

José Antonio Heredia AlvaroIndustrial Engineering ProfessorProject Manager Universitat Jaume I, Spainheredia@esid.uji.eswww.uji.es

New products and services don´t drop from the sky, they are results of trial and error, learning about what works and what does not work, prototyping, piloting, more learning, adjustments, and more learning. Experimentation is a process, one that the innovative com-pany needs to be capable of executing. At the same time, the organization has to be prepared to receive the learning that comes out from the experimenta-tion, in other words, experimentation should feed into the product develop-ment process.

3

The rise of network-centric innovation

Our new era’s fast-moving digital infrastructure is forcing companies to rethink the way they inno-vate. Due to increasingly swifter information fl ows companies have to stay ahead of competition with shorter and faster innovation cycles. Achieving the next level of innovation will highly depend on the ability to tap into more innovation resources and harness the creative potential of networked peo-ple. Hence, many companies are starting to adopt web 2.0 social software tools and technology as key enablers for community involvement.

To address the challenge of network-centric in-novation ITEI partner Indie Group developed CogniStreamer® - a collaborative innovation tool representing the best use of adaptive collabora-tive technology to harness human skill, creativity and intelligence. It provides a platform for scaling and amplifying connections and tapping into the knowledge fl ows within a company’s ecosystem.

Making innovation people driven, not process drivenThe fi rst step towards collaborative innovation is to turn away from process thinking. A sequen-tial stage gate process to manage a chaotic and

emergent environment like the fuzzy front end of innovation doesn’t make much sense. It will only lead to incremental ideation, and it will trigger a cascade of screening and assessment problems that will completely stall innovation activity in the front end.

To solve these issues CogniStreamer® redesigned the sequential and process-focused stage gate model into an emergent and people-centric col-laborative model. Its core architecture is built on creation spaces where communities can address innovation opportunities and challenges, gener-ate and share ideas and insights, and shape them into strong concepts with strategic value for the company.

One key concern is how to motivate, enable and trigger community members to engage in col-laborative innovation. In order to mobilize large and diverse groups of participants to innovate and create value, CogniStreamer® has integrated powerful persuasive design features such as user profi ling (activity stream analysis), guided persua-sion (tunneling and suggestion techniques) and social dynamics technology (conversation agents).

Achieving sustained innovation improvement through collaborationInnovation results from teams collaborating around challenging problems. CogniStreamer’s creation spaces and persuasive design features allow companies to reach out to a large number of people and bring them into a virtual discussion around specifi c innovation problems or challeng-es. The tacit knowledge which is shared and creat-ed in the course of these informal conversations is captured and made accessible to create new value. The potential result is sustained improvement of innovation performance and better meeting cus-tomer needs.

Wim SoensDirector of Innovation, Research & DevelopmentIndie Groupwim.soens@indiegroup.bewww.indiegroup.be

CogniStreamer® is used by industry leaders such as Bekaert, Belgacom, Case New Holland, Cytec, Imec, KBC, Picanol, Thomas Cook, ThyssenKrupp and many others.

More info atwww.cognistreamer.com

4

Ubiquitous innovation − from process to collaboration

Spikes NovaNet NG is an experiment in ubiquitous innovation. Rather than considering innovation support as a process serving dedicated innovation experts, we start from the premise that in a busi-ness environment dominated by knowledge work, the zone in between “execution”, the process of directed delivery of result through the repeated accomplishment of rote or template tasks, and

“innovation”, the value creation by new initiatives and practices, is the daily work environment for the knowledge worker. In industries such as e.g. software development, the breakthrough “inven-tions” that made the company are mostly only clear in hindsight, were often grass root originat-ing, serendipitous efforts, sometimes in defi ance of the offi cial corporate line.

Spikes Process Taxonomy

Peter StuerResearch DirectorSpikes n.v.peter.stuer@spikes.bewww.spikes.be

Spikes has signifi cant experience in helping com-panies automate their business processes and increase knowledge worker productivity by pro-viding the right software and tool support. Over the years we learned that business processes not only span the spectrum from highly prescriptive to deeply emergent, but that most processes cannot be fi t within any one of these boxes. They require divers types of support as they progress or as seen from different perspectives. Innovation processes are no exception. An “ideal” innovation support tools should be able to cover the full spectrum, but where to start?

Within ITEI we fi rst investigated how traditional Business Process Management architectures could be adapted to include support for supportive and even emergent processes. We evangelized and pioneered the supportive process approach even before the “BPM cataclysm” of 2009 that resulted from fi nally surfacing the differences in “business” BPM practitioners and their “IT” counterparts in the wake of the BPMN 2.0 standardization process.

As ITEI progressed we experienced that in gen-eral, and in innovation support in particular, the road to full spectrum process coverage will lead from collaboration to process, and not the other way around. This is a direct result of the adoption drivers being more aligned. As a result the stake-holders are more willing to expand from emer-gent towards supportive interaction. Our current experimental tool development, Spikes NovaNet NG therefore focuses on the support for open so-cial interaction and cooperation in and across the business environment

While the current experiment is dedicated, we expect innovation services will be woven into the knowledge worker’s standard business support environment.

Spikes’ NovaNet NG experiment

5

Innovation at Steria Benelux − clear targets and online support

As an IT services provider, ITEI partner Steria Ben-elux develops and integrates information systems and technology solutions for the public sector and for medium and large-sized private companies (banking, utilities, security …). Delivered solutions are often focused on business transformation sys-tems that help customers improve their produc-tivity, streamline their infrastructure and revisit their business processes. Achieving such goals on a large scale requires Steria to make innovation a self-sustaining enterprise capability and a tangible core value.

Involving distributed teamsMost of the solutions delivered by Steria be-ing developed in the frame of projects, many of the project teams are deployed at customers’ premises. This geographical dispersion of Steria’s project teams limits opportunities for interac-tions between them and therefore impedes profi t-able cross-fertilization of ideas. Emerging web 2.0 technology was proposed as a convenient way of aligning several local initiatives.

The myth of the idea boxIn a company as big and diverse as Steria (220+ employees for Steria Benelux), inviting all employ-ees to submit their ideas into an “idea box” kind of database would quickly become unmanage-

able: the sheer size of the company would make that quickly one would need 1-2 people fulltime screening ideas, just to handle the volume of ideas alone. Due to the big diversity in profi les, projects and interests at Steria, one would quickly see that many of the submitted ideas are not in line with the company’s vision. This big amount of all-over-the-place ideas would eventually kill the initiative: people submitting ideas expect feedback and are particularly interested in what happens to their idea, but in a pool of hundreds, if not thousands of ideas, their individual idea will not get much at-tention. People will soon loose interest and aban-don the idea box.

Ideathlon™: Targeted and online creativityIn order to avoid this scenario, Steria, in close collaboration with Sirris, opted for a different ap-proach. By fi rst carefully defi ning a target for the innovation, Steria aimed to focus and channel the creativity of its staff on a topic of high interest and value for the company. This innovation tar-get is expressed in such a way that it becomes a measurable and concreat goal to aim at, yet leav-ing enough room for creativity to fl ourish. One such innovation target Steria chose to address was “Defi ne 5 initiatives to increase our customer inti-micy”. Sirris then developed Ideathlon™ , a proof of

“Ideathlon™ was an excellent proof-of-concept tool to investigate to what extent Web 2.0 technology can both stimulate and help developing a structured and global approach to innovation in a company whose project teams are spread across numerous locations”

Pierre Paelinck – Operational Excellence Manager, SteriaScreen shot of an Ideathlon™ Innovation Space

concept online Innovation Space where staff were invited to post, like and discuss ideas. This online platform allowed the distributed staff of Steria, to participate in the ideation around the innovation targets. Integration with email and igoogle pro-vided more engagement. Through the use of ad-vanced semantic technology, delivered by Brussels text mining company Mentis, relevant information from the internet was brought into the innovation spaces, providing background information and in-spiration for the teams.

It worked, but not always as expectedVarious experiments and pilot cases were carried out in the past two years using Ideathlon™. Main observations and conclusions Steria found: Web 2.0 tools defi nitely demonstrated their

power to promote innovation by everyone from everywhere but it also turned out that these tools should be coupled to more traditional innovation techniques based on face-to-face interactions between people. Both approaches effectively complement each other.

Motivating every employee to collaborate to this effort of creativity and building innovation into company DNA is not a trivial thing. Managerial involvement is therefore a basic cornerstone to get everyone’s commitment.

Several practice areas of the SinnoBOK can

6

Innovation Hub − overviewInnovation Hub evolves into a database contain-ing all organization’s innovation master data. It provides a single navigation point to all data re-lated to innovation management. It also increases innovation potential by advancing collaboration, increasing transparency and breaking down silos. It consists of 4 strategic integrated processes: col-laborative innovation process management, idea and opportunity management, project manage-ment and portfolio management.

Main functionalityThe collaborative innovation process enables open or access-controlled web communities with prov-en innovation effi ciency. All corporate functions (marketing, sales, production etc.) can be involved in innovation process, as well as users, clients and external partners. This gives access to crowd wis-dom boosting revenue growth and profi tability through higher innovation potential.

The collaborative innovation process includes virtual workspaces where people work together and share ideas, concepts and solutions. They learn from each other in multidisciplinary teams and communities. Online community decision-making is more effi cient than traditional face to face meetings.

Idea and opportunity management transforms entire organization and partners towards a more open way of innovating. A systematic process for capturing, rating, comparing, and selecting ideas ensures that the most promising ideas come to the top. Idea and opportunity management support the strategy process by feeding new, fresh ideas and concepts into the road map processes.

Project management includes a ready stage-gate process for R&D, and an agile iterative proc-ess for developing software, services and radical innovations. Highly automated, ready process fl ows and ready templates make project manage-ment highly effi cient.

Portfolio management is an on-going decision-making process to update and revise projects

against strategic objectives. Projects are evaluated, selected and prioritized. Visual dashboard shows how well the launched and to-be-launched prod-ucts and services are aligned with the strategy. Are they reaching new markets, and meeting growth and feasibility targets in the strategic customer segments?

Main benefi ts Greater innovation power aligned to strategic

targets and objectives Effi cient and fl uid lifecycle innovation

management from ideas to launching Networked communities lead to a powerful

productive working culture Transparency creates a competitive edge Community members can contribute at any

time, from any location

User experiencesThe innovation hub is developed and used to-gether with Finnish Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation. They are established in Finland as new public-private partnerships for speeding up innovation processes. Their main goal is to thoroughly renew industry clusters and to cre-ate radical innovations. Innovation Hub is used by the all main enterprises, universities and research organizations in Finnish Forest Cluster, Metal- and Engineering Cluster (FIMECC Ltd), Energy- and Environment Cluster (CLEEN Ltd) and Health- and Well-being (SalWe Ltd) Cluster. Inno-W is a member and owner in Finnish Information and Communica-tion Industry and Services Cluster (TIVIT Ltd).

1http://www.sinnobok.org/innovation-solutions/ideathlon

2http://www.google.com/ig

be addressed using simple but user-friendly platforms like Ideathlon™. Through its collaboration with Sirris, Steria explored the Art of Idea Harvesting, the Art of Focusing and the Art of Optimising the impact of critical resources.

As with many social networking tools available on the Web, the number of actual contributors (people posting initial ideas) remains at a lower level than the proportion of followers (those commenting on/reacting to previously posted ideas).

Using well defi ned Innovation Targets prior to launching the ideation phase helped aligning creativity and innovation with the company strategy.

Opportunities for improvementSome opportunities for improvement of the tool have also been identifi ed through the various ex-periments: reporting of statistics through a unifi ed

dashboard proposing triggers to insights structured search capabilities built-in mechanism for clustering of ideas

Henry Palonen CEO Inno-W Oyhenry.palonen@inno-w.comwww.inno-w.com

Nick BoucartTechnology Advisor Software EngineeringSirrisnick.boucart@sirris.bewww.sirris.be

Pierre Paelinck Operational Excellence Manager Steria Benelux SA/NV pierre.paelinck@steria.be www.steria.be

7

Owela − Online tools for user-driven innovationOwela (Open Web Lab) is an online space for open innovation with users, customers, developers and other stake holders. It provides tools for under-standing users’ needs and experiences as well as designing new products and services together. With the help of online collaboration, users can be involved in the innovation process regardless of time and place.

Owela project spaces may be used as co-design platforms from fi rst ideas to fi nal testing or only in selected phases of the innovation process (from one week to a few months). The project spaces can be either open for everybody or limited to a certain user group.

The tools can be tailored for each project and con-sist e.g. of the following parts: Online focus group discussions Questionnaires User stories in a shared blog (web/mobile) IdeaTube: add ideas, comment, rate, vote Chat sessions Visual/video presentation of scenarios or

mockups Bug reports Developer blogs Community space during living lab studies Continuous communication channel during an

innovation project User participation in design tasks and decision

making

Benefi ts of Owela for companiesOwela innovation space offers an effi cient way to apply user involvement in innovation activities. Through Owela companies are able to get quick user feedback and be in a continuous contact with end users throughout the innovation process. The online tools can be easily combined and tailored for different purposes and both quantitative and qualitative user experience and feedback can be collected.

Benefi ts of participating in Owela:By participating in Owela, consumers have the op-portunity to co-create products that meet their needs. Through Owela, users can interact with

other innovative users and be in direct contact with companies and developers. For users, it is easy to participate, since there are no restrictions on time and place. An internet connection is all you need to be involved!

Pirjo NäkkiResearch ScientistVTT Technical Research Centre of Finlandpirjo.nakki@vtt.fi http://owela.vtt.fi

Kaisa Koskela Research Scientist VTT Technical Research Centre of Finlandkaisa.koskela@vtt.fi www.vtt.fi

“Owela functions the best when incubating novel ideas together with a user community. The community functions as an idea review board with whom a community member can interact and develop ideas. The interactive idea development is allowed via idea rating, idea reviewing and real-time chats. Also access to changing data is well arranged at Owela. User can easily receive up-to-date information about ideas via idea search and news section.”

Suvi Keinänen, Project Manager, Movial Creative Technologies Inc

8

Competence centers – source of innovation and qualityHiQ is a Nordic IT- and management consultancy company specialized in communication and soft-ware development. We strive for quality, expertise, and profi tability. Competence centers are one solution to achieve these goals and improve in-novation activities. At their very best competence centers may drive strategy, generate new lines of businesses, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop professional skills, and help a company recruit and retain talent. Furthermore, they are especially good in applying new technolo-gies and doing innovative tryouts with customers.

Competence center builds around a group of ex-perts with interest to a certain topic that is aligned with the company’s business strategy. The compa-ny must recognize and engage its internal and ex-ternal key players and champions in order to cre-ate a successful competence center. Competence center also needs support from management in form of diverse resources and mental coaching. Competence center is a dynamic community that has an empowering coordinator, inspiring leader and enthusiastic participants. Meetings, trainings, and documenting are essential parts of commu-nity’s practices to enhance the sharing of ideas, experiences and expertise. Competence centers provide the clientele usage of a whole pool of competence, not only individual expertise (see pic-ture “Competence center framework”).

Continuous collaborative development, learning, improvement, and ideation guarantee that the

results applied are more than the sum of their parts. Competence centers are high-spirited to try new and innovative pilots with advanced clients. They also enable continuously improved quality through controlled processes as well as a progres-sive approach by combining shared expert knowl-

Competence center framework

Kaarina KasteBusiness AnalystHiQ Finlandkaarina.kaste@hiq.fiwww.hiq.fi

edge and motivation to keep abreast of the latest development in the fi eld. All in all, competence centers are an effi cient and simple solution to provide HiQ and our clientele profi tability, quality and innovative edge.

9

NSN Innovation Management tool aims to be a centralized interface for managing the transfor-mation of internal and external ideas and needs into concrete characteristics of a product. The transformation must be done in a way that guar-antees successful business for the company. The purpose of the tool is to make sure that all main stakeholders are analyzed as well as the induced costs and benefi ts for them during development, and the value produced by the actual implemen-tation. The tool provides understanding of the in-teraction between workers and information in the work context.

The main challenge to be solvedIn routine situations decision-making is straight-forward and either skill- or rule-based. However, in novel situations, such as NPD, all means-ends re-lations must be considered in the given conditions and then select the most suitable option. Thus decision-making is challenging and characterized by knowledge-based reasoning. Providing proper data and structure for decision-making activities is the main challenge that the tool solves. The tool ensures rigorous and uniform treatment of innovations, ideas and needs. In addition the tool provides an interface to innovation lifecycle man-agement workfl ow. The interface is build on top of situation aware workfl ow model. The model sup-ports the workers in novel situations by building

A concept for NSN innovation management tool

on the constraints that shape the work patterns. Constraints shape the workers’ activities by set-ting limits that defi ne the boundaries of accept-able performance.

The main elements of the toolThe interface provides access to several tools and methods for analyzing different aspects of inno-vation and implementation for six conceptual lev-els from each relevant stakeholders point of view. First level describes high-level view of the idea, while each subsequent level shifts the focus closer to practical implementation. Each idea will get suggestions on treatment for each phase of the development process per stakeholder. The concep-tual levels, and information content is as follows: Purpose: Description of innovation, idea or

need; its purpose, constraints, functional capabilities and limits.

Values: The value for the stakeholder; acceptance criteria derived from the original idea and transformed into defi nition of done; status of the treatment.

Decision points: Relevant decision points to synchronize the work and process level coordination; decision criteria to drive the task contents and objectives.

Tasks: Localized tasks, supported with guides; tasks compose a common set of competences.

Processes: A map of tasks and activities

guiding the datafl ow; receiver for each task, activity or work object, based on stakeholder analysis.

Tools: A list of available tools; interface to tools; the data manipulated is transformed into a format that all other tools in the workfl ow can use it.

The main benefi tsThe main benefi ts of using the tool is the ability to align fi nancial, market, and technical data related to innovation, and other ideas and needs for de-cision-making purposes. Secondarily, communities associated with innovation, need or idea can be identifi ed via interrelated tasks providing the list of relevant stakeholders and the tasks that need to be done. The tool helps also to deliver the data and work objects from [one] stakeholder to another.

Jarkko HyysaloResearcherDepartment of Information Processing Science, University of Oulujarkko.hyysalo@oulu.fi

10

ICM2.0: Not Yet Another Maturity Model!

Project andProductManagement

BusinessProcessandStrategy

Customer Collaboration,Legalenvironmentand Trust

Organisation ICTinfrastructure

andInteroperability

Innovation

Level 2 Collaborative

Project

Management

Configuration

Management

Requirements

Management

Process and

Product

Assurance

Business

Management

Intellectual

Property Rights

Collaborationagreement

Trustmanagement

Measurementand Analysis

Resource

Management

Level 3 Risk

Management

Collaborative

Product

Solution

Business

Governance

Collaborative

Business

Process

Collaborative

Customer

Relationship

Management

Defect andProblem

Prevention

Interoperabilityand Collaborationtechnologies

Organisational

Innovation

Level 4 Quantitative

Project

Management

Customer

Evaluation

Training andCompetency

Development

Collaborative

Business

Process

Performance

OpenInnovation

Innovation and collaboration are pervasive sub-jects today as organizations strive to achieve com-petitive advantage. Present collaborative networks are based on complex collaboration forms and they involve distributed collaborations of individu-als and organizations. Co-creation, crowd sourc-ing and open innovation sources are one of these new collaboration forms where the value is not created within one single organization. Instead, that added value is commonly created within the participation of the organization and third parties (users/consumers, providers, competitors, etc.)

Innovation, be it open or closed, is a process, and therefore it has to be applied and incorporated to all the statements of an organization. As every process, innovation can be improved. Existing ap-proaches point out different defi nitions and anal-ysis for this innovative collaboration and innova-tion practices. However, organizations do not have the knowledge needed to identify best practices and improvements to start implementing those innovation and collaboration practices.

To bridge this gap, the Innovation and Collabora-tion Maturity Model (ICM2.0), developed in the context of the ITEI project, and extended from the Enterprise Collaboration Maturity Model (ECMM) [1], will provide organizations a method to know their maturity level in innovation and collaboration. Furthermore, ICM2.0 will also contribute to the or-ganization improvement by providing a roadmap for planning future ways of actions towards a cul-ture of process improvement excellence.

However, innovation cannot be treated in isolation as many other processes in the company affect or are affected by the innovation process itself. In-novation projects need to manage requirements, need a product solution, the team must have some competences, the business needs to be governed and managed in accordance to some processes, and there must be a risk analysis … All these ideas have been formalized in terms of maturity levels, process areas (a set of best practices) and domains (a domain joins up several Process Areas related to one topic). The next fi gure depicts these concepts:

A maturity model is a framework that describes, for a specifi c area of interest, a number of levels of sophistication at which activities in this area can be carried out.

Juncal AlonsoR&D EngineerTecnalia-Softwarejuncal.alonso@tecnalia.comwww.tecnalia.com Iker Martínez de SoriaR&D EngineerTecnalia-Softwareiker.martinezdesoria@tecnalia.comwww.tecnalia.com Leire Orue-EchevarriaR&D Project Leader Tecnalia-Softwareleire.orue-echevarria@tecnalia.comwww.tecnalia.com Miker VergaraR&D Project Leader Tecnalia-Softwaremikel.vergara@tecnalia.comwww.tecnalia.com

[1] “Enterprise Collaboration Maturity Model (ECMM): Preliminary Defi nition and Future Challenges”, Juncal Alonso, Iker Martínez de Soria, Leire Orue-Echevarria and Mikel Vergara, IESA – 2010 Proceedings

11

Innovation and collaboration maturity model (ICM 2.0) – Case Keraben

Tecnalia-Software institute has performed an as-sessment of three process areas of the Keraben’s business model used in its international produc-tive collaboration projects, comparing these to the best practices defi ned in the ICM 2.0 model devel-oped by Tecnalia-Software.

The Tecnalia-Software assessors have compared the current and actual practice in Business Gov-ernance (BG), Business Management (BM) and Risk Management (RSKM) areas to the ones sug-gested in the model at project level and organiza-tion level.

Business Governance ensures executive account-ability for the management and performance of the organizations’ work and results.

Business Management plans and manages the business and fi nancial aspects of the organization.

Risk Management identifi es potential threats be-fore they occur so that risk-handling activities can be planned up front and resorted to when needed across the life of the organization, prod-uct or project to mitigate adverse impacts on the achievement of innovation objectives.

The comparison results in the Tecnalia-Software assessment regarding the strengths and weak-nesses of Keraben’s business model and improve-ment recommendations have been presented to Keraben. The evaluation result was “Excellent” in all the three areas.

BG / Business Governance

Establish Governance Plan: Set Business Objectives, Implement Common Mechanism and Actively Design Governance.

Establish Governance Structure: Build Organizational Structure, Assign Ownership and accountability for Governance and Involve Senior Managers.

BM / Business Management

Defi ne Capabilities and Features: Assess the Market Situation and Trends, Establish Descriptions of Business Requirements and defi ne Business Goals.

Defi ne Collaborative Business Case: Develop Cost Structure, Generate Estimates of Financial Return and Establish Business Justifi cation.

Manage Collaborative Business Aspects: Devise Business Plans, Establish Business Risk Management Plans, Address Signifi cant Deviations and Communicate Business Results.

RSKM / Risk Management

Establish Collaborative Risk Management Strategy: Determine Risk Sources and Categories, Defi ne Risk Parameters and Elaborate Collaborative Risk Management Strategy.

Establish Collaborative Risk Mitigation Plan: Identify Risks, Assess Risks and Establish Collaborative Risk Plans.

Handle Collaborative Risks: Develop Collaborative Risk Mitigation Plans, Monitor Collaborative Risk Mitigation Plans and Communicate Risk Information.

The Specifi c Goals, and Practices by Goal, studied in each Process Area were:

Luís Guaita Project Manager KERABEN GROUP l.guaita@kerabengrupo.com www.keraben.com

12

The generation of ideas within the human resources – Case AnswareIdea Harvesting may take place in many fi elds. One of the most important is the company itself: people working together as a team seeking for common objectives may have a lot of unexploited ideas that can be of great interest to harvest, man-age and analyze them.

Traditional brainstorming methods have evolved and adapted to a more competitive and dynami-cal environment: New ideas should be recollected, discussed and applied in a standardized and well-

Innovation Project Management with AuraPortal

What is AuraPortal?AuraPortal is a software platform offering in one package Business Process Management, Intranet/Extranet Web Portals and Content Management among other enterprise essential applications, sharing the same environment in a seamless inte-gration and friendly way using web portals. Its ho-listic conception covers not only the process mod-eling, execution and monitoring, typical of BPMS tools but also a powerful communication and collaboration platform in Intranet and Extranet for employees and external agents (clients, suppliers, etc.), and a versatile Documents management sys-tem (based on MS SharePoint).

Using AuraPortal to manage Software Innovation ProjectsThe core of the ITEI Project Methodology is a body of knowledge called SInnoBoK, the Software In-novation Body of Knowledge. It consists of 9 fun-damental practice areas that a software intensive product builder needs to master in order to be successful with its software innovations. In order to put in practice the SInnoBoK practice areas recommended processes, AuraPortal offers a solid platform where these processes could not only be modeled using standards like BPMN process nota-tion to describe its activities, but also support its execution providing functionality to design and

These panels also show an inbox for each practice area where related activities sent messages to help to manage effi ciently this kind of projects providing to the user a general overview about what is happening.

use complex forms and the required underlying data repositories. By this way, each partner that selected AuraPortal for its Pilot implementation had benefi ted from it, focusing only on their Pilot case processes without worry too much about the required software infrastructure.

In addition to its current functionality, AuraPortal develops a more complete solution trying to cover all SInnoBoK practice areas applied to the man-agement of Software Innovation Projects. These projects are dynamic and the ideas to be managed, the tasks to be performed, the resources to be used and the decisions to be taken could change at any moment. Using the AuraPortal Innovation Panel concept each user will have access to his own In-novation Panel where he will be informed, for each Innovation Project where he is involved, about his tasks and the status of each SInnoBoK practice area.

managed manner. Everyone in the organization should feel free to expose her or his worries and possible solutions. A good process or set of proc-esses is needed to assure the accurate atmosphere and motivation to develop this framework.

Answare’s method on Idea Harvesting within its Human Resources has proved to be reliable and robust enough to assure this issue without losing a piece of fl exibility. Our framework consists of three phases: Detection, Management and Deci-

sion. The fi rst of them takes place when a problem is noticed and a solution is required. Then, during Management phase, a responsible takes charge of organizing the meeting by supplying the team with needed resources and support.

The main phase is Decision. Answare provides three different subprocesses to harvest ideas. The responsible of the Management phase takes charge of selecting one depending on the prob-lem context. L-M-N method obliges everyone to

Manel Orovio de UdaetaChief Technical OfficerAuraPortalmanel.orovio@auraportal.comwww.auraportal.com

Pepe Fuster AlandeteResponsible of communication and cooperative projectsAuraPortalpepe.fuster@auraportal.comwww.auraportal.com

13

Eduardo RiolSoftware EngineerAnsware Technologieseriol@answare-tech.comwww.answare-tech.com

participate in the brainstorming, providing new ideas and/or commenting other’s. Metaplan is a more fl exible frame, but cannot prevent one par-ticipant to refuse joining the discussion. 6 Hats method needs more training, and fi ts well when the team is experienced and motivated. Finally, re-gardless of the selected branch, a balloting process is launched to obtain a sorted out list that must be checked by an authorized committee.

Auraportal tool has helped Answare to model, clarify and distribute the whole process, adding the possibility of automating the decision meth-ods, driving the harvesting and balloting processes.

Open the doors of the company to innovative ideas – Case SisteplantSisteplant is Spanish maintenance manage-ment software vendor that offers two standard products: a maintenance management software, Prisma, and a manufacturing execution system, Captor. A new release of both products is delivered every year. Software development at Sisteplant is based on Scrum, an iterative, incremental frame-work for agile software development.

Improving the application life managementAs a proof-of-concept of the innovation approach developed at the ITEI project, an industrial case was defi ned to improve the Sisteplant process. In collaboration with Robotiker-Tecnalia, the soft-ware development workfl ow was analyzed, iden-tifying areas for improvement. The main challenge was to foster the generation and fl ow of new ideas among the internal and external stakeholders par-ticipating in the process, focusing in the product improvement.

To implement the new process, the online business process platform owned by ITEI partner Aurapor-tal, was selected. The tool, offering powerful com-munication and collaboration features, is designed to cover the whole Scrum process, beginning with the product backlog defi nition, and going through estimation meetings, development cycles and ending with the public demos. Moreover, it allows to have all the ideas and discussions centralized,

no matter if the origin is inside –developers, prod-uct managers, sellers- or outside of the company –clients-.

Impact and benefi tsAlthough the opinion of customers was previously taken into account in the product development process, the use of an online tool made the partici-pation easier and in several phases of the process. Hence, opening the innovation process to external environment.

Stakeholders (internal or external) will use a public portal where they can input new product require-ments and help the product owner to build the product backlog, voting among suggested ideas to select the preferred ones. This implements idea harvesting and valuation.

Stakeholders can complete the details of specifi ca-tions to make them more mature, well understood and with the possible ramifi cations more clear. This collaborative thinking contributes to polish the good ideas and, eventually, to discard the bad ones. The technological uncertainty is also reduced in this idea incubation process.

At each sprint review, sometimes long before the annual installation, stakeholders can see and ex-periment with the beta product. Their feedback can be taken into account in next cycles. For those

people not physically present in the review, a web cast mechanism has been be established, that per-mits a bi-directional fl ow of information. This way, the experimentation of ideas, that is a basic agile principle, is strengthen.

And what about motivation? The best way to mo-tivate a customer to generate and share his ideas is to let him opine about the defi nition and evolu-tion of the product he need, so he can shape the fi nal product. Inside the company, developers and, in general, the cross-functional project team, feels that his job is focused into real problem solving, and that their ideas are discussed and feedback provided, which is good for motivation. All this fosters innovation stimulation.

Iñaki EtxanizProject ManagerTecnalia-InfotechInaki.etxaniz@tecnalia.comwww.tecnalia.com

Ander GorostizaR+D+I ManagerSISTEPLANT Lean Managementagorostiza@sisteplant.comwww.sisteplant.com

14

Innovation Process for Ideas Management– Case DS2Main ChallengesAcknowledgment that ideas emerge continuously across and beyond the organization.

Lack of resources for innovation due to market time restrictions.

Time is a key issue when fast product development is required.

Ideas Management: proposing, discussing, fi lter-ing, formalizing, publishing, assessing and voting.

Tool/MethodBusiness Process Model (BPM) built from refi ned DS2 requirements and improved for the ideas management.

BPM deployment through the AuraPortal’s BPMS suite that offers the ability to deploy, needless of programming, business oriented portals.

Main benefi tsSuitable methodology for gather and choose of DS2 ideas.

Web portals provide innovation involvement eve-rywhere.

Customers, technology providers and contractors can be easily included within this process. Differ-ent roles can be defi ned to control the access and the allowed activities.

Urko RuedaPhD ResearcherResearch Center on Software Production Methods of the UPV university of Spainurueda@pros.upv.eswww.pros.upv.es

Juan SánchezAssociate ProfessorResearch Center on Software Production Methods of the UPV university of Spainjsanchez@dsic.upv.eswww.pros.upv.es

BPMN model for Ideas Management in DS2 company.

Auraportal’s BPMS built form for Ideas Harvesting.

15

Driving and supporting distributed innovation – Case Keraben

“The best way to ensure your speed to market with agile productdevelopment is provided with guarantee when all elements aredefi ned and assigned for actioning. Auraportal Innovation toolcovers these features; it’s easy to use and complex enough to dowhat we need.”

Miguel Angel Bengochea, R&D Director, Keraben

Luís Guaita Project Manager KERABEN GROUP l.guaita@kerabengrupo.com www.keraben.com

How has the innovation tool been utilized and customized in the company? AuraPortal BPMS solution has been Keraben’s choice to drive and support a pilot concerning the management process of new products remote de-velopment within an international manufacturing network context.

In order to develop this project, i.e. customize and implement the tool, we have worked in collabora-tion with University Jaume I researchers. The main activities we have conducted are: 1. To develop a model to assess the ‘Original Company State’ in order to compare it with the state of the art & to determine the necessary company requirements; 2. To design and develop the tool to frame “My Cyber Room” concept design and to perform its implementation; and 3. To validate the Results Analysis in relation to the Pilot execution and the consequent optimizating activities.

ChallengesOur primary goal was to set up a common frame which enabled teamwork and effective remote collaboration, as well as document management, workfl ow processes and project follow-up.

AuraPortal tool makes the defi nition of a project feasible and accurate in terms of innovative prod-uct development management. It offers total control over activities, responsible roles, budgets, estimated costs, etc. The tool has all the necessary features such as publication of announcements, several types of surveys, forums and on-line de-bates, shared agendas, etc.

How has the innovation tool made some impact on the innovation process/activities of the company?The immediate outcomes of using this tool are transparency, role clarity, effective communica-tion, progress tracking, easier risk identifi cation,

and performance indicators. However, the most important issue for our company is that now, by using this innovation tool, the organization can experience a continuous process improvement, and can learn and improve its innovation skills thanks to the feedback we obtain from each previ-ous project.

ITEI project is a part of ITEA 2 programme, which is a strategic pan-European programme for advanced pre-competitive R&D in software for Software-intensive Systems and Services (SiS).

ITEA 2 stimulates and supports projects that will give European industry a leading edge in the area of SiS (in which software represents a signifi cant segment in terms of system functionality, system development cost & risk and system development time).

As one of the main EUREKA cluster programmes ITEA 2 has close links with other EUREKA projects and the Framework Programmes of the European Commission. ITEA 2 projects are supported fi nancially by all members of the EUREKA framework.

ISBN 978-951-38-7429-2 PUBLISHER ITEI research project DESIGN Kaisa Kuisma, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

ITEI Project Consortium

BELGIUMIndie GroupMentisSirrisSpikesSteria

FINLANDInno-WMetsoMovial CTNokia SiemensHiQUniversity of OuluVTT

SPAINAnswareAuraportalCarsaDS2E&DKerabenRobotikerSisteplantTecnaliaTrimekUJIUPV