Change Prediction within the P3 Tool (CPM-in-P3)

Research Theme: Change Management

The Change Prediction Method (CPM) is a technique that continues to be developed at the EDC for identifying relationships among entities (which may be physical components, team members, tasks, etc.) and determining the criticality of the interconnections. This work draws upon lessons learned in many earlier projects and in the design and implementation of the standalone CPM Tool.

Motivation

Most designs are modifications of existing products, processes or services; likewise organisations evolve over time rather than being created from nothing. At any stage in the lifecycle of an organisation, product, process, or service, designers and managers need to assess the implications of changes. There is a clear industrial need for a software solution that supports prediction and management of change. By reimplementing existing work within the EDC's modelling and simulation package, P3, and then building upon that foundation, CPM techniques will be realised in a fully supported and integrated software tool, enabling users to rely on a robust user interface and integrate their change applications with other modelling strategies.

Objectives

  • Give designers and managers the ability to assess the risks associated with a change before it is implemented
  • Visualise the possible effects of changes and enable these to be communicated to other stakeholders
  • Provide an overview of the architecture of the system being modelled
  • Enable designers to explore the architecture of the system being modelled and analyse "what-if" scenarios

Method

CPM-in-P3 is being implemented as a series of plugins for the Java-based P3 tool. The following functionality is supported:

  • CPM model construction and cloning of variants of a model
  • Multiple change propagation algorithms and display of results in tabular representations.
  • Visualisation of results as case risk plots, incoming / outgoing risk portfolio plots, and product variant portfolio plots
  • The ability to apply DSM (design structure matrix) algorithms to CPM model instances

Ongoing and future work includes (but is not limited to):

  • Maintaining the user documentation.
  • Implementation of additional visualiation algorithms from the standalone CPM Tool
  • Support for hierarchical CPM models
  • Automatic model creation and updating
  • Support for multiple impact factors

Details

Please see P3 download for more information on the P3 tool.

Acknowledgements

Support for this project is provided by EPSRC.