FUTURE INTERNET PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

Transcription

1 FUTURE INTERNET PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP CONCORD DELIVERABLE D4.5 FI PPP PROGRAMME SUPPORT Author(s): Petra Turkama, Mikko Riepula Date of Delivery: March 31 st, 2011 Version: See revision history on p. 2 Contract nro.:

2 2 DOCUMENT REFERENCE Project Acronym CONCORD ICT Project Number Project URL EU Project Officer Mr. Georgios Tselentis Coordinator Petra Turkama, Aalto University tel Deliverable Name Programme Support Deliverable No. 4.5 Nature Other Author(s) Petra Turkama, Mikko Riepula Abstract CONCORD Support for the FI PPP Projects and individual partners is a continuous, daily activity. The main new support activities during the reporting period were: - FI PPP Satisfaction Survey - FI PPP wiki at Wikispaces - Facilitation and driving of the vision, objectives and KPI discussion - Facilitation of FI PPP Programme Review report response and of implementation of the changes This deliverable summarises the main new support elements that CONCORD provided for the FI PPP Programme in the reporting period M12 of the Programme. This document includes also the CONCORD Project Quality Plan. Keywords CONCORD, FI PPP, Programme facilitation Date of Delivery March 31, 2012 Proof Reader for Quality Assurance Mikko Riepula, Jukka Mattila REVISION HISTORY Version No: Date: Description of Changes: Author(s): First Version Petra Turkama Minor changes Petra Turkama Added Section 7 Project Quality Plan Jukka Mattila Worked the plan to make it more practicable. Made the document less verbose overall. Revised grammar. Mikko Riepula

3 3 CONCORD DELIVERABLE ABOUT DELIVERABLE D4.5 As a complex and multi-faceted Programme FI PPP requires active coordination and supporting tools and processes for the Programme beneficiaries and other stakeholders to effectively share knowledge and co-innovate. Supporting tools include ICT tools, conceptual frameworks and facilitated events. The tools are chosen and/or developed in a demand-driven process in collaboration with other FI PPP partners. The present version now also incorporates the Project Quality Plan. 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE DELIVERABLE 4.5 The CONCORD support for the FI PPP Projects and individual partners is a continuous, daily activity. Support that initiated in the early stages of the Programme still continues through various channels: - Personal exchange - FI PPP mailing lists (SB@fi-ppp.eu; ab@fi-ppp.eu; dwg@fi-ppp.eu; standards@fi-ppp.eu, exploit-business@fi-ppp.eu, concord@fi-ppp.eu; all@fippp.eu) - Project portal member area: - FI PPP wiki at wikispaces - ARKADIN teleconference system - Facilitation of joint events The main new support activities introduced during the reporting period were: - FI PPP Satisfaction Survey - FI PPP wiki at Wikispaces ( - Facilitation and driving of the vision, objectives and KPI discussion

4 4 - Facilitation of FI PPP Programme Review report response and of implementation of the changes This deliverable summarises the main support elements that CONCORD implemented and provided for the FI PPP Programme in the reporting period. The present version now also incorporates the Project Quality Plan. 3. FI PPP SUPPORT AND FACILITATION PROCESSES SERVICE QUALITY SURVEY In line with the aim for continuous improvement and in order to be able to improve upon its facilitation processes aimed at other FI PPP projects, CONCORD conducted a survey of its service quality. The data was collected as an internet survey between December 12, 2011 and January 3, The respondents were divided into two groups: Active partners and Non-active partners. The Active partners consisted of those, who were active in co-working organs, such as Boards and Working Groups. The Non-active partners consisted of those, who were members of participants of the FI PPP Programme, but not actively involved in the management, administration or coordination duties. The results showed that the Programme has succeeded in creating the right atmosphere for mutual cooperation and has boosted the knowledge of the possibilities within the Programme. It also showed that co-working organs (like Architecture and Steering Boards, Working Groups etc.) were perceived essential for the success of the projects. On the development side the following were mentioned: focus of the internal communication; the need for more information about the supporting tools and coordination provided for the use of the Programme. As a result of the survey and the preceding M6 review, CONCORD has taken numerous actions to improve the coordination and support mechanisms for the Programme. CONCORD coordinator, Aalto University, has recently assigned an additional full-time project manager for the project in order to ensure strong project management and improved reporting. Cross-project collaboration has been improved through online

5 5 platforms for interaction as well as through facilitated face-to-face Use Case workshops gathering business development and project managers from all Use Case projects. Supporting evidence includes more details on this survey. It should be interpreted against its setting: the respondents were other programme participants. WORKING GROUPS Furthermore, three more Working Groups have been proposed by CONCORD in detailed proposals to the Steering Board, by now approved by the Steering Board, and they are gradually starting their operations. At the end of M12 the overall situation with the Working Groups is as follows. Dissemination Working Group (was running already before the current reporting period). Refer to the respective deliverable for the progress. (Work led by ENoLL.) Standardisation Working Group has had its first meeting in March 2012 and will continue with a second meeting in April Refer to the respective deliverable. (Work led by Aalto.) Exploitation and Business Modelling Working Group has been formally approved and will in part carry on the work started in the so-called Use Case Meetings. The March 26 th -27 th, 2012, Use Case Meeting gathered many of its initial members and introduced the scope and focus of the Working Group. First official meeting under that working group name will be in FIA Aalborg in May (Respective deliverables D3.3 and D3.5 were not due in M12. Work led by IBBT.) Policy and Regulatory Working Group has been formally approved in the March 27 th, 2012, Steering Board. Refer to the respective deliverable D3.6. (Work led by EIIR.) Security and Privacy Working Group is still in the preparatory phase. (Work led by TiViT.) In terms of external dissemination, CONCORD has made a prioritisation for the coming year in order to increase focus and impact. The Dissemination Working Group has made proposals for the main events and activities in an effort to better support the Programmelevel dissemination objectives. CONCORD has also improved its use of social media.

6 6 4. TOOLS TO FACILITATE ONLINE DISCUSSIONS AND MEETINGS CONCORD set up a wiki for FI PPP at to facilitate online discussions and work in between the meetings. The decision to use Wikispaces as the platform for collaborations was made in the Dec 15, 2011, Steering Board meeting (Meeting Minutes refer). Wikispaces is used for cross-project sharing in general and for preparations of the Steering Board meetings in particular. It has also been leveraged for the Use Case Meetings and Working Groups. The materials are stored in Wikispaces, where they are accessible for all members to edit, comment and discuss. In addition to being ed two weeks prior to each meeting, The Steering Board meeting invitation, agenda, and related materials are made available to Steering Board members in Wikispaces and can be updated when needed and commented by any Steering Board member. After each Steering Board meeting Aalto makes the draft meeting minutes available for any possible comments or remarks in the same place, again in addition to ing them to Steering Board members. (The Architecture Board facilitated by TiViT has chosen a different approach and is currently recording their minutes collaboratively in Google documents, which is mainly managed by the Chairman of the Architecture Board and thus not CONCORD. For better transparency, access to the above Wikispaces has been granted to all willing Architecture Board members.) Wikispaces has also been used in facilitating sharing between the Use Cases, as well as facilitating discussion on topical items, such as e.g. the FI PPP Programme-level KPIs and objectives; and the Collaboration Agreement and copies of the accession forms. Any account holder can add new pages or discussion topics. Currently restricting the access rights has not been deemed necessary any interested FI PPP participant has been able to register since the challenge is rather in the activation of Steering Board members and members of other working organs to prepare materials before the meetings and to share those with others. If and when the online discussion starts in earnest, it may become necessary to limit the write access so that the forums serve their original purposes.

7 7 In line with Programme review recommendation #9, TiViT has been tasked with a document collecting a short list of recommended tools for different purposes, along with the necessary justification that one can expect in such a document. As a concrete example of CONCORD s aim at reducing the number of different tools in use and at consolidating the numerous different functionalities, TiViT is investigating the possibility of moving the Wikis and related discussions on Wikispaces onto the web site, which runs on the Wordpress platform and is as such capable of hosting wikis also with appropriate access rights. CONCORD further continues to facilitate virtual meetings through the ARKADIN teleconference system. The system includes both the audio conferencing facility and a web portal, through which documents and comments can be shared during the meeting, and which keeps track of those who have dialled in. 5. FACILITATION OF FI PPP S PLAN OF ACTION AND RESPONSE TO THE M6 PROGRAMME REVIEW CONCORD facilitated the creation of an action plan to address the FI PPP Programmelevel evaluation at M6. The review report was received on January 26, 2012 and immediately shared with all FI PPP Partners, and discussed in the Steering Board the same day. CONCORD/Aalto facilitated and documented the discussion that took place after the January 26, 2012, Use Case Meeting and compiled a report of action points and clarifying commentaries that was submitted to the Commission as requested by the Steering Board in the end of February 2012 (Meeting Minutes refer). The said review report as well as FI PPP s Response to the review report can be found as separate documents among the review materials. The review report included numerous action points for the FI PPP Community. CONCORD has taken the first steps to implement the recommended changes, and will oversee that the recommended improvements will be implemented where feasible according to the plan. Furthermore, the Commission had invited a group of external reviewers to assess the progress and implementation of the Programme on March 19, Aalto as the Coordinator in CONCORD participated in this review meeting in a capacity of an informant and elaborated on the status of the Programme beyond the view that the evaluators obtained from the supplied documents. CONCORD further provided

8 8 recommendations for the upcoming Programme Phases based on their experience as facilitators. 6. FACILITATION OF CROSS-PROJECT KNOWLEDGE SHARING CONCORD strengthened Cross-Project Knowledge Sharing in October 2011 and followed up with physical Use Case meetings in January and March The main motivation for the cross-project sharing was better understanding of the shared assets for the preparations for Phase 2, as well as identification and sharing of benchmark practices among the projects. In these meetings the objectives and working methods were established among the group. The work on exploring commonalities and opportunities for cross-case work will continue online as well as bilaterally between the Use Case projects. After these first meetings the work will be institutionalised under the Exploitation and Business Model Working Group that was accepted by the Steering Board on February 21, 2012 (Meeting Minutes refer). The transition to a formal Exploitation and Business Model Working Group started in the second Use Case meeting in Brussels on March 26-27, This activity is documented in more detail in Deliverable D2.2 Methodologies and Tools for Use Case validation. 7. CONCORD QUALITY PLAN The Quality Plan presented herein has been prepared towards the end of the first year of the project but not yet fully implemented in all its details by M12. It may still undergo changes in the process of implementation, until a practicable way of balancing the quality objectives with the scarce resources and everyday project realities is found. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT CONCORD is committed to working according to the rules laid out by the European Commission and in the Collaboration Agreement. The CONCORD Quality Plan will be implemented to improve upon the quality of its project management, activities and outcomes (including deliverables). In this context, quality refers to proper processes, accuracy, timeliness and content of the work and the deliverables. The Quality Plan identifies the preventive activities that promote the development of quality components

9 9 and the appraisal activities that ensure the components produced meet the explicit CONCORD quality requirements and general quality standards. Achieving high quality in the CONCORD project rests on the Project meeting (CONCORD meetings usually held once every two weeks by teleconference, with all active collaborators of all CONCORD partner organizations), the Project Manager, and the Work Package Leaders. Each work package (WP) is led by a Work Package Leader (WPL), who as an organisation is responsible for the work carried out within the work package. It is up to the said organization to appoint and empower its employee to take on this WPL responsibility on behalf of its organization. Such a person needs not only be formally qualified, but also interested in the results and available to commit a sufficient share of his/her time to taking care of the task. (Part-time arrangements are not necessarily sufficient.) The WPL provides reports to the CONCORD meeting detailing the evolution of the work and the achieved results, as well as any problems or risks identified. The coordination between work packages is handled by the Project Manager. Ultimately the quality of the work and resulting deliverables rests with all Parties to the CONCORD Consortium Agreement and assumes every Party not only to lead their designated tasks and to contribute to others by default as stipulated in the Description of Work, save for any other agreement but also to be proactive and come up with results. Therefore managing the evolution of the consortium is a key quality control measure available to the Coordinator and the General Assembly. The responses and recommendations from the yearly Project Review by the European Commission will serve in part for this purpose. Since the project is contractually and money-wise first and foremost made up of different organizations as legal entities (the Parties), the quality control measures must fairly soon act upon these, if quality is not resulting from the more immediate and day-to-day measures. The Project Handbook details quality control measures for both work processes and the deliverables. It describes the initial creation and evaluation of efficient work processes for the work packages as well as a general work process for the project that ensures the synchronized work package processes. The handling of project reports related to project deliverables and/or milestones is also be described. The Project Handbook includes a general description of the procedure for the acceptance of reports as well as for technical implementations. That also includes a description of how work results, deliverables and review reports are managed and stored. For all this to have the

10 1 0 expected value, the Project Handbook should be frequently updated and disseminated by the Coordinator and its contents discussed by and between the project members. SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT For keeping the time schedules CONCORD applies coordinated planning and follow-up in CONCORD project meetings. The overall project, tasks and subtasks schedule is presented in the work plan and will be monitored by the Project Manager on a bi-weekly (once in two weeks) basis by assessing the project deliverables, goals and the progress towards agreed targets. CONCORD meeting holds bi-weekly schedule updates/reviews, and determines impacts of schedule variances; submits schedule change requests; and reports schedule status in accordance with the Programme s internal and external communications plan. The CONCORD project will deliver periodic reports to the Commission as described in the review schedule. CONTRACT MANAGEMENT The activities performed in connection with the project are evaluated in weekly meetings of the CONCORD coordination team at Aalto University CKIR. Plans and schedules are updated and evaluated with all consortium members in the bi-weekly CONCORD meetings, described above. CONCORD reports of the advancement of the coordination and support activities to the FI PPP Steering Board on a monthly basis not as a separate agenda point but usually embedded and linked to several agenda points. In addition to the commitments towards the European Commission, CONCORD has obligations also towards the other FI PPP Projects, as stated in the FI PPP Collaboration Agreement. The agreement details the responsibilities and liabilities of each complementary beneficiary in the FI PPP Programme stipulated in the EC-developed Special Clause No. 41 to the Grant Agreement. This Special Clause aims at cooperation between FI PPP projects and provides for a minimum of access rights to all parties. All CONCORD deliverables are Public to all FI PPP Beneficiaries. DELIVERABLE REVIEW PROCESS The Work Package Leader (WPL) is responsible for the timely completion of deliverables and for its own resource usage therein. Details of the planning and progress within the work package shall be passed on to the Project Steering Group by the WPL manager for consideration and support as needed. The Work Package Leader shall assign work

11 1 1 groups for different tasks, plan and control activities within their work package, prepare deliverables; collect contribution from partners participating in the work package, check results of different partners working on their tasks, identifying any possible problems or deviations from plans, and control its own costs in the scope of the work package budget. The WPL is also responsible for quality control of deliverables within the work package, following this Quality Plan. The main instrument of ensuring the quality of the deliverables is the Deliverable Review Process, described below. From M18 on, all deliverables produced as part of the project shall undergo the below quality management and review process every 6 months, even if no yearly project review was due for that half-year cycle. 1. The author responsible for drafting the documents (WPL if not otherwise specified), is also responsible for having them proof-read for the English language by a capable individual not involved in the drafting. If necessary (if e.g. language skills in the organisation are scarce or deficient), the responsible organisation shall use the services of a professional proofreader or language editor. 2. The author of the deliverable submits the final drafts of deliverable documents to the WPL at least 14 working days prior to the deadline indicated in the Work Plan. The Work Package Leader assigns a person involved in CONCORD to review the document for the subject matter. 3. The reviewer shall review the draft deliverable within 7 working days after receiving the draft deliverable and send an notification to the author of the deliverable and the WPL recommending the WPL to either a) approve the deliverable (possibly with minor corrections as the reviewer may suggest) or to b) require major changes. The WPL shall then take this recommendation into account and with the other information on the deliverable as may be available to the WPL, the WPL shall then either a) approve a specified version of the deliverable or b) specify changes the author should perform, and in both cases notify the author of the same. The WPL shall leave no less than 7 calendar days for the author to complete those corrections before final submission within the original deadline. The corrections made shall be clearly and explicitly made visible by such revision marks that the WPL and the reviewer can verify they are carried out accordingly. 4. The WPL will record the approval of the specific document version, and the assigned reviewers, as well as the change history will be recorded in the

12 1 2 deliverables tracking sheet visible to all Parties concerned and editable by the WPL and Project Manager. NB: the act of approving a specific version thus does not change that deliverable document or file itself, as the status information is recorded in the deliverables tracking sheet and not the document itself. All written documents (interim reports, progress reports, etc.) as well as data generated during the Project will be stored electronically in the Project Knowledge Centre. Paper copies of all official documents are filed in the Aalto University archives. A part of the deliverable quality is the maintenance of a project library containing all project documents, deliverables, and background material. OVERALL QUALITY ASSURANCE IN THE PROGRAMME Between M12 and M24 CONCORD will further align this Quality Plan with the objectives and mechanisms of the yearly project review by the EC-appointed independent reviewers as well as the FI PPP programme evaluations.