PBL using real business cases

The essential theme of our PBL is to create business values utilizing IT. New business values come always from the change of current way of works. IT technology or IT solution alone does not bring business values. Changes of business processes, change of business model, or changes of the current way of works are necessary to bring new business values. Changes can be usually done because of advancement of IT. What used to be considered impossible before can be possible now due to new IT.

Business reengineering and IT strategy are two sides of the same coin. Reengineering is essential to advance business values (Hammer, 1993).

Business values depend on the business in which a company is working. In our PBL we need business cases. We ask cooperation companies to provide us the business cases. From viewpoint of a cooperation company our PBL activity looks like management consulting. We ask the company to cooperate with us about 5 months. We have about ten times of meetings during the period. We ask the management of the company to attend the meeting. The management hear our reports or proposal, reviews our activities, and makes any comment. The meeting time is about one hour and half in the evening of week days, since students have full-time jobs.

* Corresponding Author name. Tel.: +81-3-3472-7831 E-mail address: tozawa@aiit.ac.jp

Cooper ation companies were as follows in these two years.

 Metal plating company (upper half of 2011)

 Home health care massage (latter half of 2011)

 Sales division of life insurance (upper half of 2012)

 Cosmetic dermatology clinic (latter half of 2012) 2.1. Educational objectives

IT industry has been shifting from manufacturing to services business. In Japan highly IT skilled people are short, resulting in fails of many projects. Figure 1 shows where highly IT skilled people participate. There are two main areas, one is service user side and the other is service provider (vender) side. Services are used for service users’ business of the enterprise. People in service user and service provider share the same goal to run the business of the enterprise. It seems that the objective of service vender is to meet the requests of service users. However, service users have their own objectives, that is, to meet business requirements to their business of the enterprise.

Though highly IT skilled people have IT knowledge and skills, they are also required to understand business of service users as well. They need to understand what managements of the enterprise think. They should know management priority, business objectives and strategy, and so on. Talk to management is important to capture their thought. Since most students do not have chances to talk to management in their work environment, we provide students with opportunities to talk to management in PBL education.

The success of service business is to meet and exceed the expectation of service users. Understanding of the expectation is very important. Skills required to understand the expectation are sometimes called soft skills, such as, communication skill, leadership skill, and negotiation skill. These soft skills are not taught in most engineering departments of Japanese universities. It is difficult to teach such skills by lectures. Since PBL project is group activities as a team, soft skills can be trained in the activities.

Our PBL activities look like consulting from the management view point of a cooperation company. The management spends time with us in the meeting. In return he/she expects some valuable idea or hints from us. The management usually has some issues in mind, though such issues are not well expressed. Clarification of such issues is one of expectations. It is challenge to discover the hidden expectations. Though these activities are natural to a business consultant, many students may never acquire experience.

When we propose an idea or a recommendation to the management, it is important to judge whether it is accepted or not.

How it is accepted by the management can be read by responses, behaviors, or remarks. Accumulation of experience of management response is important when he/she is satisfied with the proposed idea. Our PBL education can provides chances for a student to acquire this kind of experience, which is hard to acquire otherwise.

Students do projects twice in a year using the same methodology. Mastering the methodology is one of the educational objectives. We expect students can apply the methodology when they face the similar situation in the future.

2.2. Methodology

Figure 2 shows our methodology of business reengineering used in the projects of PBL. The methodology is independent of industry. Industry knowledge is not prerequisite to reengineering. Logical thinking is much more important. The final goal of the

Step 2

Figure 2. Methodology of business reengineering used in our PBL

Figure 1. Highly IT skilled people are required both in user side and in provide side.

Both people share the same goal to run the business of the enterprise.

project is to come up with the state where the management of the company makes decision to change the current ways of work.

The project team makes a final presentation at the end of the project to persuade the management.

Step 0 is the initiation of the project. The cooperation company is determined. The team members understand each other well.

Team characteristics are identified, such as, what are strong, what background we have. Members agree the objective of the project. At this point they don’t know the concrete objective, since no meeting with the cooperation company is held yet. All the available information related to the company is collected in preparation. Meanings of the company specific terms are investigated to avoid misunderstanding. This kind of preparation is important to understand adequately what the management of the company says at the first meeting.

Step 1 is to understand the business of the company. The main source is the meeting with the management of the company. In the first meeting the management explains their business, that is, what is doing, who is the customer, history of the company, what they want to do, what are issues, and so on. A couple of meetings are held to confirm that the team understands the company business appropriately. The business strategy is identified. The business environment and industry trend are investigated.

In consultation of business reengineering, we seldom make a proposal to business strategy. Business strategy is usually given.

We create proposal for reengineering or IT strategy which is aligned with the business strategy. Alignment of business strategy and IT strategy is important. In this sense logical thinking is important while industry knowledge is not so important.

Step 2 is to identify issues. The management may make some comments on the issues which are in mind. Such comments are very important because they express how the management views the business. Some issues raised could be superficial. Our goal in the step 2 is to identify the root issues which cause the superficial issues.

Business processes are clarified and modeled. How business is done is analyzed. Since the way of business is a matter of course for the company, business processes are sometimes not well under conscious. Any business process has its objective. It is discussed whether the process meets the objective. Once the business processes are modeled, it is easy to communicate and to share what are wrong or what can be improved in the current way of work.

In order to approach the root cause from superficial issues we use the thinking process of hypothesis and verification. Most superficial issues usually have some measures to avoid troubles. Such temporary measures may hide the problem but do not solve the root problem. We need to identify the root cause of issues to solve. Analysis is useful to approach the root cause.

Though analysis is good, we suggest building up the hypothesis of the root cause. Some students are not familiar with the thinking process of hypothesis and verification. They are trained how to approach the root cause.

If IT systems does not support the business processes appropriately, IT system issues are listed. When the systems were built at first, the system could not have capability to support the business processes. Since IT is advancing, IT can support the business processes now. IT system issues are identified from the viewpoint of current IT capability.

Step 3 is to sketch the picture of ideal (To-Be) state of the business. This is a goal to attain which is shared by the management and employees of a company. The picture reflects the thought of the management. The picture should clarify the strategy. Step 3 is not a solution of issues. Step 3 does not directly connect to step 2. Rather it connect to step 1.

Step 2 clarifies the current status quo with issues (As-Is). Step 3 clarifies the ideal goal to attain (To-Be). Step 4 defines what to change so that the company can reach to the goal from the status quo. Step 4 is essential for the management to make decision of change.

Change principles are defined at first. There are usually many things to change. However, points to change should be easily memorized and shared by the management and employees as a strategy. Number of points to change should be limited to several.

Each point to change is an action to do for change. One chart is drawn for each point to change to clarify what to change. We use a template of the charts (Figure 7 is a sample). Left hand side of the chart shows As-Is while right hand side of the chart shows To-Be. The change is easily understandable from left (As-Is) to right (To-Be).

Step 5 is a final presentation. Consistent simple story is needed to persuade the management to make decision. A logical consistent story is made up as a strategy. All the elements of activities done in previous steps are summarized.

This presentation is a little bit different from that for general audience. In a presentation for general audience all the elements of logic must be clearly stated. However, in a final presentation to the management, some elements can be omitted, since the management knows his/her business well.

The message of the final presentation may not sound new. It looks trivial from general common sense. However, it is meaningful if it fit to the business of the company.

2.3. Project team operation

The project team consists of 4 to 5 students. One student is assigned as a project manager role. Meetings with the cooperation company are scheduled roughly once in two weeks. Just after each meeting, the students get together at near coffee shop to practice is very much like scrum software development process (Schwaber, 2010). Practice of management consulting is always

adjusting activities to client intention. There are common principles both in agile software development (Takeuchi, 1986) and consulting practice.

Several team meetings are held before visiting the cooperation company. 6 to 8 hour team meeting is held on Saturday. 3 hour meeting is held once a week in weekday evening. Each student is assigned homework to the next meeting. It takes about 3 hours to complete the homework. The subject of homework is decided by the supervisor (the author) or the project manager.

Since the project is to conduct consultation, team discussion is encouraged to reach better ideas. Outcome of the homework becomes a start line of the discussion. Subject of the discussion is given by the supervisor. The supervisor reviews the contents after team discussion of a couple of hours. Quality of discussion contents is critical in consultation. If the supervisor does not satisfied with the contents, he gives students hints to think. The team discussion is repeated. Time of discussion is not so important from educational point of view, rather contents of discussion are important. The supervisor must be patient to wait.

If some ideas come from the discussion, the supervisor let students to present them to the management of the company. The management makes judgment whether they are acceptable of not. Students learn the required quality level to get accepted from the response. The supervisor lets students to learn for themselves. The supervisor controls the quality so that the management may not feel waste of time.

Students always prepare charts for the meeting with the management to communicate their messages adequately. Skills to draw charts are well trained as well. Though chart creation is divided to each student, message creation is cooperative activity.

2.4. Evaluation of students

Evaluation of students in PBL is always difficult. Students mainly learn by doing activities in the project. Activities assigned to a student vary depending on a situation of the project. A teacher cannot control well the assignment. What a student learns may be different from what a teacher wants the student to learn.

In this particular PBL we evaluate a student from two aspects, one is the extent of any contribution to the project and the other is the extent of ideas which bring value to the cooperation company. Some students are not good at putting forward an idea.

Even if the extent of idea is short, the extent of contribution as a whole is evaluated. The supervisor is watching students’

activities so that he can evaluate appropriately. As two other sub-supervisors evaluate students as well so that the evaluation of the supervisor might not get out of common standard.