Reports and Studies

Reports and Studies --------------------

These case studies are extracted from the winning ranks of the highly prestigious annual Excellence in Workflow Awards.

What is the purpose of the ASTD competency model? In simple terms, it defines what people need to know and do to be successful in the learning and performance field.

What are the three basic levels in the ASTD competency model?

Roles are defined as areas of responsibility or hats people wear. The specific combination of competencies needed to perform each role may vary.

Areas of expertise comprise profession-specific competencies. There are nine areas of expertise for the learning and performance field.

Foundational competencies consist of groupings of business/management, personal, and interpersonal competencies. These are also important to success and are applicable across a wider range of occupations than the areas of expertise.

Assumptions Management in Software Development

Abstract: Software developers constantly make assumptions about the interpretation of requirements, design decisions, operational domain, environment, characteristics of input data, and other factors during system implementation. These assumptions are seldom documented and less frequently validated by the people who have the knowledge to verify their appropriateness. Additionally, the business, legal, and operating environments are always changing, as well as the software itself, rendering previously valid assumptions invalid. This technical note explores assumptions management as a method for improving software quality. This exploration covers assumptions management concepts, results of work on a prototype Assumptions Management System, conclusions, lessons learned, and potential work in this area.

Workflow Patterns

The workflow patterns initiative started at the Fourth IFCIS International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS) in Edinburgh in 1999 when Wil van der Aalst and Arthur ter Hofstede started working on workflow patterns. This site triggered both researchers and practitioners to apply workflow patterns in product development and product evaluations. Moreover, several reports on the patterns appeared in Dutch IT journals around the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002. As a result, many Dutch organizations started to use the workflow patterns in selection processes. This triggered the interest of workflow vendors. The success of the site becomes clear when looking at the number of visitors. Over the last two years, the site was visited more than 35000 times and today about 100 people visit the workflow patterns site on a typical working day.