Report on two HFI workshops

Download the full report

What is this report about?
This document reports the findings of two workshops conducted in March 2004. The purpose of the workshops was to elicit the opinions of the HFI stakeholder community, in both the defence and the civil domains, to identify those factors which act as a barrier to the effective application of the HFI process. Those factors that serve to enable the process were also explored.

What problem does the report address?
From the review of barriers to HFI, this report suggests areas to direct future research concerned with a more effective approach to HFI that addresses the identified shortcomings.

What is the benefit of this work?
This work will direct the future research conducted by the HFI DTC to specifically target those barriers to HFI that have prevented the full and successful application of HFI within MoD programmes.

Who should take note of it?

• DPA IPT personnel (particularly HFI Foci)
• MoD Industry Group and similar HF committees
• HF practitioners
• Service Principal Personnel Officers

What is the report's status?
This is one of four reports under the banner of a Work Package to identify barriers with the current HFI process. The other allied reports investigated the issue of barriers to HFI derived through a literature review and interviews with MoD IPT personnel and HF practitioners working for civil organisations. The final report which is under review, summarises all barriers to HFI and recommended prioritised areas of research that should be conducted to address the problems identified in the earlier reports.

What are the main issues addressed in the report?
The topics addressed in this report include:

• Getting HFI on the agenda from day one
• Identifying and managing HFI issues throughout the project
• Integrating HFI with other engineering and management activities
• Does HFI need a new name? What are the organisational issues?
• Ensuring that the value and benefits of HFI are understood
• Getting the customer to ask for HFI
• The need to focus on the end users of the equipment rather than the procurer
• How to help HF practitioners to express business cases well
• Reinvention – the lack of reuse within HFI
• Procurement should be capability led rather than equipment led
• Training for HFI: Competency development
• Maturity of HFI process
• Supply of HF professionals and their status on the project
• Costing for HFI in a competitive environment
• Providing incentives for HFI by project milestones
• Risk dissemination/dilution of HFI through the supply chain
• Failure to integrate HFI within the wider project
• Providing understanding and education for HFI
• Handling trade-offs between HFI domains and across the project

What are the findings?
The findings reflect the recommendations below.

What is recommended?
It is recommended that research and methods to support the following be addressed:

• Determine who drives the HFI process and who should by identifying a strong HFI champion and/or sponsor within the IPT.
• Determine what minimum budget should be allocated to HFI. It was suggested that the Directors of Equipment Capability (DECs) might specify an appropriate spend on HFI, with project managers only being allowed to under spend with sufficient justification. DECs would also need to have funding lines in place.
• Research should be conducted to determine and recommend a minimum expenditure for various project types based on a historical analysis of previous programmes.
• The HFI process should start earlier in an organisation, e.g. at the level of government strategy, concept development.
• Ensure HFI is represented in the requirements specifications (and in the ITT).
• Create a generic set of HFI requirements for use by DECs (and others) for inclusion in the URD. These should be specific enough to be useful. HFI requirement owners should be identified.
• Define an intelligent customer for HFI by determining what the HFI focus would need to know in order to be able to select and audit supplier HFI.
• Identify timely ownership of the processes to prevent HFI activities falling by the wayside.
• Mandate the application of the HFI process.
• The EHFA should make available a list of generic risks/impacts in a way that project managers can understand.
• Highlight stages within the HFI process where certain points, issues or questions must be discussed.
• Develop a set of fundamental questions for application at the start of the process.
• Identify the appropriate time for the application of the process.
• Create highly tailored checklists for specific roles.
• Consider the provision of education and better guidance.
• Ensure integration of HFI with engineering and other management disciplines by embedding the HFI process into the organisation's own system/project plans.
• Develop a range of measures to change the mindset of engineers and project managers from simple checklists to training courses to a national campaign to promote HFI.
• Broaden HFI's list of stakeholders. Constantly review the stakeholder list and hold more focused workshops on specific issues such as HFI training requirements.
• The HFI process model should show the two-way communication with other domains. Further work is required to fully understand the relationship between HFI and other engineering/management domains.
• The MoD need two HFI Plans – one for applying the HFI process to MoD projects and one for its suppliers doing HFI in industry.
• Develop a response to the question ‘What value does HFI add to the provision of a system/capability?'
• Consider whether HFI is a valid concept at all – Lines of Development may be a more appropriate viewpoint.
• Show the value of HFI to projects with a clear statement of value to individual projects. Benefits need to be expressed in terms of money saved or increased capability
• Provide a concise statement of value, improved integration with COEIA and a statement on how to get the message over.
• Provide case histories.
• Ensure education of those people with responsibility for the budget, including the finance team, bid teams and senior management.
• Provide training for project managers to ask the right questions (to manage the HFI) not how to do HFE.
• Provide the project manager with tools that show how to manage the HFI process.
• Provide a mechanism by which the procurer (Customer 1) understands the needs of the end user (Customer 2).
• Equip HF specialists with business domain knowledge and tools.
• Develop a general source of data and tools supplying performance data and cost benefit data to help HF people express business cases better.
• Develop a process to trace/link usability benefits to business goals and provide a test to assess the impact of a user not being able to perform their job in relation to impacts on business operations.
• Develop and apply firm cost metrics to usability.
• Develop a set of foundation data that can be shared across disciplines.
• Ensure a process to develop an ‘HF corporate memory bank' of reusable items.
• Develop risk lists, task analysis data and requirements that can be tailored and modified for other instances.
• Ensure that procurement is capability led rather than equipment led by developing acceptance/verification criteria that incorporate HFI issues.
• Design for capability by rewarding HFI financially at project milestones.
• Ensure that evidence and assurance be required to show that capability is a priority.
• Provide guidance for the assessment of COTS in relation to HF and capability.
• Ensure that contractors provide evidence of interoperability.
• HFI needs a training programme, a set of competencies and terms of reference. Provide a checklist of HFI requirements for individual roles within procurement
• Develop a method of accreditation for HFI in project management.
• Investigate the possibility of insertion of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to manage broad HFI issues, which can then be delegated to the relevant specialist for specific tasks.
• Develop trade-off tools to assist with the allocation of budgets across a programme.
• Ensure better handling of trade-offs by differentiating between longitudinal and lateral trade-offs.
• Develop flexibility in the HFI process to enable solutions individually tailored to the type of procurement/project.
• Present HFI risk and consequence in business terms.

So what?
This work should help direct future research and the production of applied tools to directly address the problems encountered within MoD and Industry in ensuring that HFI gets addressed.

Why bother?
The lack of HFI in the lifecycle can contribute to system inefficiency or failure and there are many real life, high-profile examples where this has happened. Getting HFI right is essential to the development of safe, productive systems for which the appropriate levels of manpower are available to operate.