Task: Create Asset Manufacturing Team
Create one or more asset production teams and train them on rules, policies, and other supporting material.
Disciplines: Asset Governance
Relationships
Main Description

Some enterprises may have formal asset creation and approval steps, with one or more asset manufacturing teams, governing the process closely. Other enterprises may be less formal, without asset manufacturing teams or governance around that team. Review the asset-based governance and development templates for variations on where the asset manufacturing team resides.

There are several considerations when creating an asset manufacturing team, including:

  • Scope
  • Manufacturing process
  • Training

Scope

The intended scope of the team should be defined. Will the team be responsible for creating assets for the declared reuse scope at the enterprise level or the divisional level? Will the team create the assets, or is the purpose of the team to clean up assets and prepare them for reuse?

If the asset manufacturing team is in an organization dedicated to asset creation and promotion, such as a center of excellence, then asset creation may happen just in that organization. However, asset identification and initial harvesting is best done from the points where the actual artifacts have been used and proven. The asset manufacturing team may then take on the responsibility of making the asset reusable, and packaging it for asset consumers.

Some enterprises may skip creating a formal manufacturing team, but rather create the governance policies, workflows, and other items which are then followed by teams as they take on manufacturing as a role for some period of time. This approach reduces the direct overhead of a full-time team, but may negatively impact quality and consistency.

The size and complexity of the assets, as well as the enterprise's business model for funding asset creation activities need to be considered when creating asset manufacturing teams.

Manufacturing Process

Directly associated with the scope of the asset manufacturing teams mentioned previously is the manufacturing process. There are several models to consider, and two are presented here. These models use the basic producer and consumer model for assets. The premise is that an organization is focused on the creation of assets and another organization is focused on the usage of assets.

In the first model, there is a formal, full-time asset manufacturing team. This team is dedicated to the specification, creation, and publishing of assets. The team may specify their own assets or may take specifications and candidate assets from asset consumers.

In this model the asset manufacturing team participates in the governance and review activities of the asset. One or more governance boards may be involved. As shown in the image below there is a governance board focused on asset specification, and another one on asset implementation. One or more of these governance boards are optional. As the asset is approved and published in the asset repository one or more projects may use the assets. In this model, as the asset is used, defects may be discovered and reported. The defect (or change management) tool is accessed by the asset manufacturing team, and asset revisions are planned. The asset consumers may discover new assets, and specify them, or they may optionally create candidate assets and hand them over to the manufacturing team for further refinement and asset hardening.

Some of the variation points in this model include the use of asset governance boards, what asset consumers submit to the manufacturing team (asset specifications, candidate assets, etc.), and the number and nature of the review processes.

The constant element to this particular model is the existence of an asset manufacturing team which owns the assets, publishes them, responds to defects, and submits updates.

In this model the asset manufacturing team participates in the governance and review activities of the asset.

In the second model, the main asset production responsibilities shift to the asset consumer projects. The asset manufacturing team is an informal team, where participants play temporarily a role to review, approve, and publish assets, but then return to their normal roles on projects.

This model has appeal if there is not the business model or support for the overhead of a full-time asset manufacturing team. The defects are tracked by the original owners. Some challenges with this model can be lower quality, low asset support, and slower turn-around time on defects.

Although this model has the potential benefit of rolling out faster initially, as there is typically less overall coordination, it is critical that the stakeholders create the governance teams and establish the policies to minimize any negative side affects of this model.

Some enterprises may consider beginning with this model, and then when the value of the assets for the business grow, migrating to the first model presented. In the diagram below, consumer projects perform asset production. The asset manufacturing team is an informal team, where participants temporarily take on review and publishing responsibilities.

In the second model here the main asset production responsibilities shift to the asset consumer projects.

Training

The teams producing assets, whether that is a formal asset manufacturing team or asset consumption projects need formal training. A set of key artifacts is required as input to the task of setting up the asset manufacturing process, these include:

  • Reuse Adoption and Incentive Plan
  • Resources and Training Plan
  • Asset Rules and Policies
  • Asset Type Specification
  • Community Map
  • Asset Workflow Specification
  • Classification Schema

The architects, developers, and others creating assets need to understand the policies and rules described in these artifacts. The respective teams need to be trained on this material.

Steps
Understand the Asset-Based Governance and Development Organization
The organization structure for asset-based governance and development needs to be selected and understood first. Review the Asset Workflow Specifications to understand the model.
Select Members based on the Organization Model

In the Ad-Hoc and Self-Governed Organizational Templates there is no formal asset manufacturing team, and so this step is not relevant.

In the Governed Communities Organizational Template the Asset Manufacturing Team has both asset production and asset management responsibilities for their respective community. The team members need expertise in the domain for the community and need skills to work with members of the community to use the assets. The team needs repository administration skills as each community manages their own repository.

In the Enterprise Partial Organizational Template the Asset Manufacturing Team has asset production responsibilities but does not have asset management responsibilities. The team members need expertise in the domain for the community and need skills to work with members of the community to use the assets. An enterprise-level team has responsibilities for managing the repository.

In the Enterprise Full Organizational Template the Asset Manufacturing Team has both asset production and asset management responsibilities for the enterprise. The team members need cross-domain skills to develop assets. The challenge in this template is to bring domain expertise onto the asset manufacturing team from the respective communities and to deliver assets that are relevant across multiple communities.

Enable Training Plan for the Manufacturing Team

In all organizational templates a major challenge for the asset manufacturing team is to develop assets only with major involvement of the stakeholders and asset consumers. The challenge here is to avoid speculative asset development and for the asset manufacturing teams to be deeply involved with their customers, the asset consumers, to verify recurring problems and solutions and then to verify the usefulness of assets produced.

The process by which assets are produced has a direct impact on whether the assets are reusable, or if they are, whether any of the consuming teams use them. The asset manufacturing team needs to work under the direction of management, and management needs to enforce follow-through and measurements for potential asset consumers to verify assets are being used.

Both management and the asset manufacturing team must be trained on monitoring the assets which are being used, and why and why not.

Key Considerations