Information Knowledge Systems Management

The focus of this paper is to depict the role of measurement systems in driving enterprise behavior and guiding enterprise transformation. Although enterprise transformation and performance measurement are separate areas of study, few have made the connection to determine the role of measurement systems in transformation. To provide insight into this role, a brief review of performance measurement literature is considered followed by two detailed case studies that illustrate their connection. Both case studies come from ACME Aerospace, a large contractor engaged primarily with the United States Department of Defense, but provide differing perspectives. In particular, one portrays one business units’ reactive transformation effort that relied on a bottom-up measurement system, whereas the second portrays how corporate leadership sets measurement strategy to drive behavior in a more proactive sense. In these case studies, three common themes are evident regarding the role of metrics and measurement systems in transformation: (1) the need for using metrics and measurement systems for driving the right behavior; (2) the need for the presence of formal and informal infrastructure for adoption and sustainment; and (3) the need for support from top management. After reviewing these two case studies, enterprise analysis techniques are employed in a discussion aimed at understanding the relationship between measurement systems and enterprises with the ultimate goal of changing behavior to enable transformation.

Service quality on computer and network systems has become increasingly important as many conventional service transactions are moved online. Service quality of computer and network services can be measured by the performance of the service process in throughput, delay, and so on. On a computer and network system, competing service requests of users and associated service activities change the state of limited system resources which in turn affects the achieved service quality. Modeling dynamic relations of service activities, system state and service quality is required to determine if users’ service requests and requirements of service quality can be satisfied by the system with limited resources and how the system and service configuration can be adapted to meet service quality requirements. This paper presents our empirical study to establish activity-state-quality models for a voice communication service. We run experiments to collect system dynamics data under various service conditions and use statistical techniques to analyze experimental data and build activity-state-quality models. The results reveal four major types of dynamic relations among service activity parameters, system resource state, and the network throughput – a measure of achieved service quality for the voice communication service. Although delay-related measures are also important for voice data communication, they are not collected in this study. Five system state variables concerning the memory, CPU, process and IP resources are uncovered to be affected by service activity parameters significantly and be associated with the achieved service quality closely. We also obtain an insight about increasing the size of the buffer which holds voice data before transmission over the network to alleviate the workload on system resources and maintain the network throughout when the number of client requests and the client requirement in voice quality increase.

Governmental agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, are required to distribute resources to different governmental units and locations in response to risk associated with various natural and man-made threats. There are always significant political arguments about how to distribute, and who should receive, significant resources in reaction to threat. This paper describes a general framework methodology for consistently allocating resources. The end result is a model that is concerned with risk perception and technical risk evaluation and not political obfuscation.