=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-336/paper-2
|storemode=property
|title=A Methodology for Discovering Goals at Different Organizational Levels
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-336/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-336
|authors=Sase Singh and Carson Woo
}}
==A Methodology for Discovering Goals at Different Organizational Levels==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-336/paper2.pdf
A Methodology for Discovering Goals at Different
Organizational Levels
Sase N. Singh and Carson Woo
Sauder School of Business
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada, V6T 1Z2
sase.singh@sauder.ubc.ca, carson.woo@ubc.ca
Abstract. Goals discovering approaches suggested in the requirements
engineering (RE) discipline debatably assume that organizational goals are
homogeneous in nature and complexities. However, this assumption is
contradicted by some streams of research in organizational literature.
Additionally, several of the goal discovery approaches arguably adopt a single,
abstract, and unidirectional perspective. The consequences of this perspective
include a discovery of goals that may be incomplete, non-representational,
inconsistent and weak in context. While there may be no ‘silver bullet’ in
resolving these issues, we attempt in this paper to address some of the
challenges by proffering an approach for eliciting organizational goals from the
operational, tactical, and strategic levels. Drawing on the richness of multi-
disciplinary research (Strategy, MIS, and RE) we developed three approaches
for discovering goals at different organizational levels. We integrated the three
approaches into a single approach, which spans the entire organization. The
usefulness and usability of this approach was tested in an organization with a
newly developed information system and the lessons learned were reported.
1. Introduction
The importance of goals in requirements engineering (RE) saw the emergence of
over a dozen goal-based frameworks (e.g., GBRAM, KAOS, EDK, CREWS-
L’Écritoire, i*, NFR). These frameworks serve different purposes within the RE
domain (e.g., elicitation, specification, negotiation, validation, and alignment with
business strategies [17]). Often, goals in these frameworks are identified through
scenarios, use cases, interview transcripts, mission statements, policy statements,
corporate goals, workflow diagrams, and through asking ‘how’, ‘why’, and ‘how else’
questions [2, 24]. The ‘how’ questions are used to identify lower-level goals; the
‘why’ questions to discover objectives, rationales and ascertain higher-level goals; and
the ‘how else’ questions to find the alternates for satisfying higher-level goals.
While conducting an earlier study [21], we found that the current methods for
discovering goals are inadequate in addressing the multitude of complexities in the
organization. We suspected that the different levels (strategic, tactical, and
operational) within the organization, and the distinctive context and purpose that
goals serve at these levels are reasons attributing to this inadequacy. Building on this
Proceedings of BUSITAL’08 17
premise, we proposed in this paper a systematic approach for discovering goals at
different organizational levels. In developing the approach, we drew on the affluence
of goal representations in multi-disciplinary research. The literature in these
disciplines revealed that goals are diverse in its context and purpose both within and
across the different organizational levels.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 examines the
challenges of the current methods in discovering goals. Section 3 provides the
theoretical foundation for developing a solution. Section 4 discusses a methodological
approach for discovering goals. Sections 5 and 6 present a case study and discuss the
lessons learned. Section 7 concludes with directions for future research.
2. Challenges for discovering goals using current methods in RE
The complexities of goals at sthe different organizational levels include (i)
stakeholders having varying degrees of interpretation and understanding of
organizational goals [26], (ii) stakeholders not knowing how organizational goals may
contribute to realizing the organization’s vision, (iii) stakeholders not knowing how to
set tactical and operational goals that accurately reflect the strategic goals [7], and (iv)
stakeholders not knowing how to define goal attributes (for example specificity,
difficulty, acceptance, and commitment). An analysis of the challenges and
complexities of understanding, interpreting and discovering goals result in the
following questions:
1. How do we know that the stakeholder’s interpretation of goals, which he/she
provide to a system analyst, are similar to the goals assigned explicitly or implicitly
to him/her?
2. How do we know that the goals that system analysts elicit from managers are
indeed a ‘true’ operationalization of the strategic goals?
3. How do we know that the stakeholder has an accurate and deep understanding of
the goals assigned to him/her?
4. How do we know that the set of goals elicited goals by analysts are a complete set
that if achieved will guarantee the realization of the organization’s vision?
Arguably, the current methods for discovering goals lack the capabilities of answering
the aforementioned questions. The consequences to a lack of answers for these
questions include system analysts eliciting inaccurate, inconsistent, and incomplete
goals, which may potentially result in the implementation of a failed IT system.
Adopting Regev and Wegman goal elicitation summary [19], we classified the
current goal discovery methods under the categories of interviewing, searching for
keywords, and asking how, why, and how-else questions. Under these categories, we
argue that the existing methods are restrictive in nature for the following four reasons.
First, systems analysts normally are not experts in the business domain [22], and
for a variety of cognitive, communicative, and motivational reasons, the information
received and understood by analysts is generally incomplete [9]. These findings
allowed us to conclude that the methods of interviewing and searching for keywords
would not necessarily help in finding answers to the questions mentioned above.
18 Proceedings of BUSITAL’08
Second, the approach of asking how, why, and how-else questions assumes namely
an operational level perspective. Dardenne and colleagues [11] stated that asking
‘why’ questions drive composition of system goals. This mechanism, according to
Anwer and Ikram [3], provides a solid rationale for each elicited requirement, and it
allows to identify requirements that fail to contribute to higher level goals. Asking
‘how’ questions drive the identification of sub-goals, which is a non-trivial task under
the control of the system analysts [11]. In general, these methods are useful for IS
development and have been used for nearly two decades in the RE discipline.
However, we found that the approaches of asking how, why, and how-else questions
for eliciting strategic level goals are restrictive due to it’s high level context and the
abstractness of business strategies.
Third, we contend that validating goals through the process of asking how, why,
and how-else questions are unidirectional in nature. Analysts adopting the ‘why’ and
how-else approach are likely to start at the lowest level (operational level) and
progress until they reach the highest level (strategic level) of the organization (i.e., a
bottom-up approach). Likewise, if analysts adopt a ‘how’ and how-else approach,
they are likely to start at the top level (strategic level) and move downwards to the
bottom level (operational level) of the organization (i.e., a top-down approach).
Discovering goals through either of these approaches are posited to inherit the
limitations and disadvantages of unidirectional mapping. For example, in the top-
down approach, executives of upper-level management are far removed from the day-
to-day activities. Scholars stated that goals defined and decomposed from this level
are sometimes overly ambitious and unrealistic. Conversely, goals discovered through
the bottom-up approach are not always in line with the organization's vision.
Organizations that adopt a bottom-up approach often lack clear directions and focus
[4] during goal propagation. Applying any of the approaches independently and cross
validating with the reverse approach will result in possible tautologies. Asking a
‘why’ question to an already discovered goal from a ‘how’ question will more likely
result in conforming to the discovery the same goal.
Fourth, van Lamsweerde [25] in evaluating the current goal discovery approaches
raised questions for example: What is a high-level goal? Who says it is high-level?
One person's high-level goal is another's implementation detail. How do we know that
the identified goals are really the right goals to be designing the system for? In the
ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) example, the high-level goal of the ATM is
considered as the cash delivery. This goal is a high-level goal for the ATM but not
necessarily for the user. Though the answers are imperative for implementing aligned
IT system, many of these questions with similar types of issues are still unresolved.
An analysis of the four issues mentioned above, allowed us to conclude that while
the current RE approaches are adequate for IT system development they are limited in
heuristics and lack pragmatism in broader context such as business-IT alignment.
Recognizing the importance of developing aligned IT system, we attempt to address
some of these issues by presenting a systematic approach that anchors in multiple
disciples. We are also hypothesizing that the approach will aid in addressing and
resolving issues relating to goal complexities, abstractness of business strategies, and
inefficiencies of unidirectional goal discoveries. We relied on two theoretical
foundations presented in the following section as a way to resolve the above-
mentioned challenges and formulating a solution.
Proceedings of BUSITAL’08 19
3. Theoretical Foundations
3.1 Three different organizational levels
According to Hoffer and colleagues [14] organizational goals are categorized into
three distinct levels namely, the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Strategic
level goals are broadly defined to support the mission statement and are set by and for
top management of the organization. Tactical level goals support the strategic level
goals and are set by and for middle managers. Goals at this level focus on how to
operationalize the strategic goals and, indicate the levels of achievement necessary in
the departments. Operational goals are determined at the lowest level of the
organization and are set by and for low-level managers to support the tactical goals.
At each level, the goals are defined with different degrees of abstraction, inherit
varying complexities, and serve different purposes. For example, at the strategic level,
goals are abstractly defined with the aim of supporting the mission and vision
statements. At this level, there are no clear directions of how the goals will be
realized. At the tactical level, department heads define goals for each department
relative to the strategic goals, and while the directions of achievement may be clearer,
the goal definitions are sometimes restrictive to the department. At the operational
level, goals are determined for realizing the outcome of specific processes. These
goals may be realized individually or by stakeholders working on the same process.
3.2 Assigned Goals vs. Interpreted Goals
Research in several disciplines (e.g., Human Resource Management, Personnel
Psychology, and Management Strategy) makes a clear distinction between the goals
that stakeholders interpret and understand, and the actual goals of the organization.
McDonald et al. [18] argued that stakeholders often have varying difficulties seeing
the link between what they do and how it contributes to the organizational outcomes.
The variation of difficulties is sometimes attributed to the stakeholder’s abilities.
Boswell et al. [6] categorized these abilities into four quadrants, namely – (i) deep and
accurate, (ii) deep and inaccurate, (iii) shallow and accurate, and (iv) shallow and
inaccurate. The authors elucidate that stakeholders may believe they understand the
organization’s objectives and are effective contributors, yet they may be wrong in that
assessment. There are also those who may accurately understand the objectives of the
organization, but they may not understand precisely how to contribute toward those
objectives. Yet there may be other stakeholders, who neither understands nor
precisely know how to contribute toward the organization’s objectives. These
classifications were exemplified earlier by George [13] who stated that there is an
implicit assumption that stakeholders will behave in a way congruent with the
organization’s goals. The degree of congruence however, is dependent on their
perception of the goal.
Given the different abilities, stakeholders can take different actions when they are
given assigned goals implicitly or explicitly. These actions vary from totally
accepting without changing, to redefining or reinterpreting, to totally rejecting the
assigned goal [10, 12]. The variations depend on stakeholders’ characteristics such as
level, experience, functional area [23], ability, past success, task complexity,
20 Proceedings of BUSITAL’08
performance constraints, and perceived importance of the job [15]. In many instances,
the employers are unaware of these actions.
4. Guidelines for Discovering Goals
This section presents a methodological approach for discovering goals. In
presenting the method, we offer a set of guidelines that system analysts can use for
discovering, verifying, and validating goals at the different organizational level. The
method is grounded on the premise that different disciplines focus on different
organizational levels, and a combination of these disciplines will provide richer
context than a single discipline when trying to understand the complexities at all
levels. We drew from the strategy discipline for goals that relate to the strategic level,
the RE discipline for goals that relate to the operational level and the management
information systems (MIS) discipline for goals that relate to the tactical level.
Detailed guidelines for discovering goals at the strategic and operational levels have
been presented elsewhere [21]. In this section, we elaborate on the guidelines for the
tactical level, and combine the three sets of guidelines into a single approach.
4.1 Discovering Goals at the Strategic Level
Not all organizations have corporate executives or relevant documentation that will
provide clear descriptions of the high-level goals. Even if they are, not all provide
descriptions that illustrate coherence among the goals. The strategy disciplines proffer
several frameworks (e.g., BGR Model and Balance Scorecard) for representing
strategic level goals. However, the literature offers little guidance in eliciting business
strategies and strategic goals. To provide the context and guidance for eliciting
strategic goals, we developed a questionnaire using the Boardman Comprehensive
Strategic Analysis Framework [5]. The questions were developed and validated
(Kappa score 0.88) with two independent researchers. Examples of questions include
“What is the firm's current short-, intermediate- and long-term strategy?”, “Are these
strategies amenable to the external industrial environment and internal firm
characteristics?” A complete set (18) of questions for eliciting strategic level
constructs and goals can be found in [21].
4.2 Discovering Goals at the Operational Level
Lower-level tasks and activities generally are structured in nature and can easily be
mapped using existing approaches in the RE discipline. Exploiting on this advantage,
we proposed for goals at this level to be elicited using formal modeling approaches,
and represented using a consistent view (e.g., Rolland et al. [20]) approach. Object
Oriented Enterprise Modeling (OOEM) [27] is one such approach that may be used
for modeling low-level constructs. The OOEM represents interactions between
objects/agents in form of requests/response. A request is defined as an object asking
another object to perform some service. The requested object may then perform the
service entirely or may designate parts of the service to other objects. When the
service is completed, a response is provided to the requestor. Goals are discovered for
every service in every object by: analyzing the service name, request that triggers the
Proceedings
P off BUSITAL’008 21
service, the
t attributes relating to thhe service, neeighboring serrvices that rellate to the
fulfillmennt of that seervice, responnse to the reequest, and constraints
c (ee.g., time,
completeness, accuraccy). The eliccited goals are a formalizeed for consiistency in
representtation by usinng the Rollandd et al. approach, which sttates that a gooal should
include a verb and at least one of four parametters (i.e., targget, direction, way, and
beneficiaary). The exam mple in Figurre 1 illustratees two goals relating
r to the services
provided by the univerrsity to a studeent requesting
g to attend a coourse.
Fiig. 1. Eliciting Goals at the Operational
O Levvel
4.3 Discoovering Goalss at the Tactical Level
Managgers use tacticcal goals as a means
m to streaamline high-leevel strategic goals into
low-levell operational level
l goals. Tactical
T goals are decompossition of strateegic goals
that are operationalizeed by middlee managers at the departm mental level, and serve
mainly ass performancee indicators forf departmen nts. In the RE discipline, B Briand and
colleaguees [8] stated that tactical goals
g lead to measuremennt goals. The Balanced
Scorecardd [16] is an example
e of a tool
t used in the
t strategy discipline
d for eevaluating
tactical goals.
g This toool focuses on o broader organizational
o perspectives (finance,
internal processes,
p cusstomers, and learning
l and growth). The Balanced Scorecard is
refined too an IT domaain by Alter [11], who profffers a set of inndicators (Tabble 1) that
serve as a starting pooint for a WorkW System. The metrics for the indiccators are
calculatedd or estimateed numbers that t summarizze specific aspects
a of perrformance
during a particular timme interval. The
T author em mphasized thaat the indicatoors of this
scorecardd are applicablle to a work syystem rather than
t to the enttire organization.
Adoptting the performance indicators (PI) con ncept as sugggested by Alteer [1], we
proposedd to elicit taactical goals by defining g PIs for opperational levvel goals,
categorizzed the PI, annd then discovver goals (su ubjectively usiing Rolland eet al. [20]
goal definnition as a guuidance) for each
e category relative to thhe strategic leevel goals.
22 Proceedings of BUSITAL’08
For example, at the operational level, goals may be grouped by a criterion (e.g.,
department types). Under each criterion, a set of PIs (e.g., accuracy, quality of
decisions, completeness of understanding) are identified. Operational level goals are
then grouped under each PI category relative to its context. Following the groupings,
and based on the context of goals in each category, emergent goals (tactical goals) are
defined, which are relative to the strategic level goals.
Given that the PIs at the operational level are relative measurements to the strategic
goals, the proposed approach for eliciting tactical goals forces for an equivalency
between assigned goals and interpreted goals. By setting the PIs this way, the
approach has the advantage of taking assigned goals and interpretation of assigned
goals into consideration without having explicitly to capture them. The resulted
tactical goals also provide the link to align operational and strategic level goals.
Table 1. Performance Indicators in a WorkSystem Scorecard [1]
Customers Products & Services
• Customer Satisfaction • Cost to the customer
• Customer Retention • Quality perceived by the customer
• Responsiveness of the customer
• Reliability
• Conformance to standards
• Satisfaction with intangibles
Work Practices
For Business Processes & Work Practices For Communication
• Activity rate • Clarity of message
• Output rate • Absorption of message
• Consistency • Completeness of understanding
• Speed • Signal to noise ratio
• Efficiency For Decision Making
• Error rate • Quality of decisions
• Rework rate • Degree of consensus attained
• Value Added • Range of viewpoints considered
• Uptime • Satisfaction of different interests
• Vulnerability • Justifiability of decisions
Participants Information Technologies
• Individual or group • Accuracy • Relevance • Functional
output rate • Precision • Timeliness capabilities
• Individual or group • Age • Completeness • Ease of Use
error rate • Believability • Appropriateness • Uptime
• Training time to • Traceability • Conciseness • Reliability
achieve proficiency • Ease of access • Ease of • Maintainability
• Job satisfaction • Access time understanding • Price/performance
This section presented the highlights and rationales for three goal discovery
approaches that were adopted from multiple disciplines. In ensuring consistency in its
application, we integrated the three approaches into a single unified goal discovery
method (Table 2). The unified approach is noted for encompassing bidirectional
mapping, which allows for discovering strategic goals through a top-down approach,
operational goals through a bottom-up approach, and tactical goals through a
Proceedings of BUSITAL’08 23
combination of top-down and bottom-up methods. Discovering tactical level goals
through the hybrid approach and using PIs as guidance create the opportunity for
detecting alignment/misalignment between assigned goals and interpreted goals.
Table 2. Guidelines for Discovering Strategic, Tactical and Operational Goals
Organization Guidelines for Eliciting Goals Across the Different Organizational
al Level Level
Strategic Elicit strategic constructs through questionnaire [21] Identify:
Goals 1. Products and Services;
(Discovery) 2. Long Term, Intermediate and Short Term Strategies;
3. Long Term, Intermediate and Short Term Goals;
Operational Elicit Operational Goals by:
Goals 4. Mapping operational activities through a formal modeling approach
(Discovery) (e.g. OOEM);
5. Elicit Goals by analyzing the-: service name; request that triggers the
service; internal and interface attributes relating to the service;
neighboring services that relates to the fulfillment of that service; the
response to the request; constraints (time, completeness, accuracy);
6. Formalize the goals for a consistency in representation by using the
Rolland et al. approach (e.g. target, direction, way, and beneficiary);
Tactical Elicit Tactical Goals by:
Goals 7. Identify the overall objectives for the tactical goals (e.g. Sales, Hiring)
(Discovery) 8. Categorize operational level goals (OG) based of a predetermined
criteria (e.g. departments);
9. Identify a set of key performance indicators (PI) for each criterion
using the Work System Method (Table 1);
10. Map each OG under a PI criterion relative to its goal context;
11. Determine new PIs if needed, and categorize OGs accordingly;
12. Identify the Short-Term Strategic Goals (business and IT);
13. By using the Short-Term Goals as a guideline, and the Rolland et al.
method of writing goals, define a set of Tactical Goals;
14. Define other Tactical Goals by evaluating goals across the criteria
(e.g. departments) set in #1;
15. Define time frames for categorizing (short, intermediate, long-term)
Tactical Goals;
16. Categorize elicited Tactical Goals under these time frames;
Validate 17. Validate elicited goals for consistency in representation;
Goals with 18. Resolve conflicting goals;
(Business 19. Discover hidden goals;
Executives 20. Refine goals that are redundant and/or synonymous
and Business 21. Define new goal set, and categorize goals according to the
Managers) organizational level and the stakeholders at each level.
5. Case Study
The case discussed in this section is adopted from a previous work [21], and
examines mapping of low-level IT system goals with business strategies. The
24 Proceedings of BUSITAL’08
objectives of this study include assessing the methodological approach (guidelines
proposed in Table 2), and its ease for discovering and integrating goals.
The case examines the recruiting process of support staff at a university. By 2010,
the university’s vision is to improve its rankings among the top universities in North
America. The business executives defined a framework for realizing this vision.
Inclusive in the framework is the objective of implementing a web-based system that
supports the hiring of potential applicants. A high-level overview for hiring a support
staff is as follows: department (dept.) determines the need for staff Æ dept. prepares
details for an Ad Æ applicant applies for position Æ through a matching algorithm;
the system prepares a list of potential applicants for the dept. Æ dept. forms an
interviewing committee Æ applicants are interviewed Æ best candidate is selected Æ
hiring manager acknowledges the selection Æ selected candidate is provided with an
employee ID and enter into the payroll system.
We summarize in the following two paragraphs the processes that were applied in
the previous case [21] for eliciting strategic and operational level goals. Strategic
level goals were elicited by administering a strategic form [21] to the business
executives. The responses were analyzed, and executives were contacted to clarify
those responses that were either ambiguous and/or inconsistent. Clarified and
consistent responses were validated by the executives and summarized (Table 3).
Table 3. Summary of Elicited Strategic Goals
Vision
The University aspires to be one of the world’s best universities, by preparing students to become
exceptional global citizens, promote the values of a civil and sustainable society, and conduct
outstanding research.
Strategy Strategic Goals IT System Goals
Enhance global influence Recruit the best faculty and Provide web-based tools to
Term
Short
by attracting top ranking staff members for any streamline recruiting
faculty and staff available position. processes for faculty & staff.
Promote a sustainable and Provide the resources and Develop a program,
healthy workplace conditions that will allow supported by funding, to
faculty and staff to fulfill which departments
Intermediate
their academic and can apply to support healthy
professional goals workplace initiatives
Enable students to Define and support the very Communicate about and
become exceptional best practices in promote opportunities for the
global citizens undergraduate, professional application of IT in teaching,
and graduate teaching and co- learning, research, and
curricular experiences. administration.
Emerge as a global leader Provide diverse learning Promote IT planning and
Long Term
by retaining top ranking opportunities for students, a foster cooperation within and
faculty & staff and rich environment for research between academic and
attracting stronger and a base for service to the administrative departments
students alumni and wider throughout the university
community.
The ‘primary’ stakeholders of the system were determined following a review of
existing documents, and talking to business managers. The identified stakeholders
Proceedings of BUSITAL’08 25
were interviewed on the tasks they perform. Existing documents (e.g., job
descriptions) and some brief observations of the stakeholder’s daily work assisted in
supplementing the task description responses. The stakeholders, tasks (services), and
interactions among stakeholders were then modeled using the OOEM approach. By
adopting the method as described in Section 4.2, goals were elicited for each ‘service
name’ in the OOEM diagram. A total of 28 services and goals were elicited. Due to
the page limit, we present in Table 4, a summary of the stakeholders (agents), the
services the stakeholders perform, and the discovered goals for each service.
Table 4. Summary of Elicited Operational Goals
ID Agent Service Name Goal
2 Admin Process request to advertise Prepare details for Ad that accurately reflect
available position the requirements for the position.
3 Dept. Establish guidelines and Determine specific and credible set of
Comm. selection criteria for hiring guidelines for recruiting high-quality
new staff. applicants.
4 Interview shortlisted Identify the best candidate who has the
candidates most experience, most qualified and who
best fits the culture of the department.
8 Hiring Evaluate candidate following Determine suitability for the posted
Manager the interview process. position.
9 Negotiate salary and benefits Acknowledge and sign off a complete and
with selected candidate. accurate summary of the job
11 HR Prepare a negotiated package Complete the paperwork to communicate
Admin offer for selected applicant. the offer to the successful candidate.
15 Arrange interviews for the Ensure the successful candidate is chosen
applicants short-listed by the from the pool of candidates
committee.
18 Match position requirements Provide information on mapping of
with candidates profile for applicants and current position.
current position.
20 Payroll Process approved staff Provide Employee ID for future
appointment forms. administration.
24 System Match candidates profile Ensure that the candidate’s profile
with the requirements of corresponds at minimum with the current
current advertised position. position selection criteria.
25 Post Ad for available Display accurately, the Ad generated by
positions. department head so that a potential
applicant can view and apply.
27 Process candidate's request Obtain applicants profiles for current
for applying for current position by displaying available positions to
available staff position applicants.
In the earlier study, we relied namely on the existing methods for discovering
tactical goals. The elicited goals were described subjectively by stakeholders, and
lacked cohesion and clear directions of contribution between operational and strategic
goals. By applying the method proposed in this paper, we were able to add further
context to tactical goals, which assisted in clarifying contributions and directions. In
deriving tactical goals, the departments (e.g., Human Resource, IT, and Payroll) were
26 Proceedings of BUSITAL’08
selected as the criteria for grouping operational level goals (guideline #8 in Table 2).
Performance indicators such as accuracy, quality of decisions, completeness of
understanding were selected for evaluating the operational level goals, and functional
capabilities and ease-of-use were chosen for assessing the web-based system in the
various departments. The operational goals were clustered under each category based
on its context relative to the performance indicators (guidelines #9 – #11 in Table 2).
Tactical goals were defined for every cluster relative to the short-term strategic goals
(guidelines #13 – #16 in Table 2). Due to the page limit, we present in Table 5 a few
examples of tactical goals that relate to the short-term strategic goal ‘Recruit the best
faculty and staff members for any available position’.
Table 5. Summary of Elicited Tactical Goals
Short-Term Strategic Goal
Recruit the best faculty and staff members for any available position.
ID Performance Indicator Tactical Goals
1 Completeness of Ensure that the stakeholders in each department have a
understanding clear understanding on the guidelines, and expectations
for hiring candidates.
2 Quality of decisions Hire candidates whose background and personality is
optimal to the experience, qualification, and culture for
the advertised job.
3 Accuracy Improve hiring process by ensuring the job posting
details, the guidelines for hiring, and the contractual
paperwork for the selected candidate is accurate.
4 Training time to increase Support the advancement of recruitment by providing
proficiency education and support to selection committees and others
responsible for hiring faculty and staff.
5 Ease-of-use of the web- Ensure that the web-based system is easy to use by both
based system applicants and university stakeholders.
6 Functional capabilities of Assure that the web-based system is functionally capable
the web-based system for attracting candidates globally;
Assure that the web-based system is functionally capable
for accepting and processing complete applications;
Assure that the web-based system is functionally secure.
This section presented the summary of goals elicited from the case, using the
guidelines proposed in Table 2. Table 3 summarized the people (i.e. staff, faculty and
students) aspect of the strategic goals that relate toward achieving the vision of
becoming one of the best universities in world. Table 4 reviewed the operational level
goals that relate to the process of hiring the best people (support staff). Table 5,
provided a description of goals which emerges as means for linking Tables 3 and 4.
In concluding this section, we present an example as a means of exemplifying the
links between Tables 3, 4 and 5. At the operational level, goals for example ‘Identify
the best candidate who has the most experience, most qualified and who best fits the
culture of the department’ (Goal ID #4 in Table 4) was mapped to performance
indicators (PI) ‘completeness of understanding’ and ‘quality of decisions’ (ID #1 and
#2 in Table 5) at the tactical level. At the strategic level, strategic goals for example,
‘Recruit the best faculty and staff members for any available position’ were
associated to the PIs (e.g. ‘completeness of understanding’ and ‘quality of decisions’)
Proceedings of BUSITAL’08 27
at the tactical level. By analyzing expectations of the strategic goals that are mapped
to the PIs at the tactical level, and the operational goals that are mapped to the same
PIs we were able to derive goals for the PIs at the tactical level. For example, we
concluded that in order to ‘Recruit the best faculty and staff members for any
available position’, the following tactical goal ‘Ensure that the stakeholders in each
department have a clear understanding on the guidelines, and expectations for hiring
candidates’ must be defined for each department. Similar analyses were conducted on
other PIs (e.g. quality of decisions) at the tactical level which was related to the
strategic goal ‘Recruit the best faculty and staff members for any available position’.
6. Discussion
One of the valid tests for a practical method is its use on several projects. While the
work reported here does not yet provide that level of validation, it does provide some
insights and conformation. In this section, we discuss the lessons learned in the light
of the case study reported above.
6.1 It is easier to relate IT system goals with business strategy via an integration
of the proposed approach with previous approaches.
In the earlier study, we elicited tactical goals relative to the proposed IT system by
interviewing managers, asking ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘how else’ questions. While
mapping the elicited tactical level goals with the strategic business goals, and
operational level goals, we found unaccounted goal variances (e.g., #6, and #7 in
Table 6) which were unrelated to the IT system. A possible explanation to this
deviation is the fact that departments encompass several business processes, which
may or may not be related to the IT system. When stakeholders are asked to describe
the tactical goals, they tend to encapsulate all the processes collectively in their
definitions. The challenge then arises in determining which operational goals are
relative to the IT system and justifying the contribution towards the tactical goals.
Table 6. Tacitcal Goals Derived from Current Goal Discover Methods
1. Advance the recruitment and hiring of members of equity groups by providing education
and support to those responsible for hiring faculty and staff.
2. Analyze data annually on recruitment issues at both campuses in order to address “hot
spots”, (i.e. finding prospective hires, future needs and developing strategies).
3. Analyze data at appropriate intervals on compensation salaries, benefits and leaves for
faculty and staff to ensure that the university is not falling behind the relevant markets.
4. Ensure that the university culture is maintained by promoting activities that foster
inclusion on staff and faculty members.
5. Continue to provide and, wherever possible, increase funding for professional
development, finding the balance between the needs of faculty and staff.
6. Celebrate achievements, individual or team-based at the department & institutional level.
7. Support events that enhance social interaction among faculty & staff within or with other
units.
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The proposed methodological approach allowed us to discover a set of tactical
goals (Table 7) that are relative to both the operational and strategic level goals. The
elicited goals illuminated clearer directions, rationales, and linkages when compared
to those discovered through the ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘how-else’ approach in Table 6.
Through the case study, we found that the proposed approach complements the
previous approaches well. Tactical goals were specific to the IT system when they
were derived from the proposed approach, and more specific to business strategies
when they were derived from previous ones. For example, goal #4 in Table 7 showed
contextual consistencies with goal #1 in Table 6. This complementary provided the
potential for aligning IT systems and business strategies
Table 7. Tactical Goals Derived from the Proposed Goal Discovery Approach
1. Ensure that the stakeholders in each department have a clear understanding on the
guidelines, and expectations for hiring candidates.
2. Hire candidates whose background and personality are optimal to the experience,
qualification, and culture for the advertised job.
3. Improve hiring process by ensuring the job posting details, guidelines for hiring, and
contractual paperwork for the selected candidate are accurate.
4. Support the advancement of recruitment by providing education and support to selection
committees and others responsible for hiring faculty and staff.
5. Ensure that the web-based system is easy to use by both applicants and stakeholders.
6. Assure that the web-based system is functionally capable for attracting candidates globally;
7. Assure that the web-based system is functionally capable for accepting and processing
complete applications; Assure that the web-based system is functionally secure.
6.2 Conforming the need for a multitier approach in discovering goals
The findings of the case study supported our earlier claim that different levels of
the organization inherit varying complexities in representing goals. To address these
complexities, especially from a RE perspective, system analysts will require multiple
approaches (for example the one proposed in this study) for eliciting goals.
When discovering goals from the three organizational levels, we found it was
easier to identify and relate goals to each other both within and across levels. This
was attributed namely to the richness of the goal context, and the supporting
processes and rationales, which anchored the goal derivation.
7. Conclusions and Future Work
It is arguably assumed within the RE discipline that goals are homogenous in
nature and complexities. According to organizational literature, goals are defined
differently (at different abstractions), serve different purposes (strategic, tactical, and
operational) and may non-uniform in distribution. The classifications of goals found
in the RE literature (e.g., soft-goal, achievement goal, maintenance goal [19]) do not
Proceedings of BUSITAL’08 29
explicitly reflect any of these inherent complexities and abstractness. Furthermore, in
RE, little emphasis is placed on the strategic level goals and its supporting constructs.
A survey of the RE literature revealed few approaches for discovering goals. These
approaches questionably, lack detailed systematic structures, are high level and
abstract in nature (asking how, why and how else questions), or unidirectional in
discovery. For these reasons, answers for questions such as, ‘What is a high-level
goal?’ and, ‘Who says it is high-level?’ are still unclear, even after eliciting the goals.
In an attempt to address some of the limitations of the current goal discovery
approaches, we presented in this paper a methodology for eliciting goals. By
grounding in multiple disciplines, we made a clear distinction between goals that are
defined by business executives, and assigned to stakeholders and goals that are
interpreted by stakeholders. We developed and integrated three different approaches
for eliciting assigned goals. The strategy discipline allowed us to develop a
questionnaire for eliciting strategic goals and it’s relating constructs, the RE discipline
allowed us to formally and systematically map agents with tasks and then elicit goals
for each task, and the MIS discipline helped us in identifying performance indicators
to be used as a guiding foundation for defining tactical level goals. The resulted
approach offers the following two main contributions: (1) a systematic bidirectional
process of discovering goals at different organizational levels; and (2) a means
(through structure and rich context) of understanding and explaining discovered goals.
In addition, we posit that by defining specific tactical goals that relates to the IT
system business managers will be in better positions to create specific measurements
for assessing IT factors such as cost-benefit analysis, obstacles and risks.
This research was limited in that only one case study was used and it was in an
academic environment, and for this reason, we were unable to report industry insights
that may not be found in the academia environment. Secondly, the approach focused
primarily on goals elicited from the system analysts’ perspective and validated from
the business executives and managers perspective, and for this reason, the elicited
goals may lack pragmatism of the actual organizational processes.
Our future work will concentrate on testing the methodology on several other
projects and seek formal measures to validate the usefulness and usability from the
practitioner and research standpoints.
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