RED. PROF. DR.

MOJCA INDIHAR TEMBERGER

Process modeling of IT
Committee of BEST
SEMINAR FOR BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Dino Memovic

Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................ 3
Student organization BEST......................................................................................... 4
IT Committee of BEST................................................................................................. 5
Steps of interaction design...................................................................................... 6
STEP 1 Idea........................................................................................................ 6
STEP 2 Users & needs........................................................................................ 6
STEP 3 - Scenarios (use cases)............................................................................. 6
STEP 4 - Data requirements.................................................................................7
STEP 5 - Mock-ups................................................................................................ 7
STEP 6 Feedbacking........................................................................................... 7
STEP 7 Translating into tasks.............................................................................7
Task taken, developed and tested by developers....................................................8
Developer takes a task......................................................................................... 9
Task is completed................................................................................................. 9
Merge request is submitted to approve the changes in the code.........................9
Code is reviewed and feedbacked by Merger team..............................................9
Code is merged into the master branch...............................................................9
Code is deployed on production servers..............................................................9
Working application feedbacked and feedback implemented..............................9
Testing................................................................................................................... 10
New structure........................................................................................................... 11
No more direct recruitment of new members to committees................................11
Work is outsourced to projects that are open to all members instead of being
committee specific................................................................................................ 12
ITC Membership structure changes.......................................................................12
Proposed scrum-inspired improvements...................................................................13
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 15
Bibliography............................................................................................................. 17

Table of Figures
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure

1
2
3
4
5
6

The logo of BEST........................................................................................... 4

Basic interaction design process...................................................................6
more comprehensive interaction design process..........................................8
Development process.................................................................................10
ITC from idea to finished application...........................................................13
ITD new IT Department from idea to finished application...........................13

Introduction
In this paper we will explore in depth the details of the development process of IT
Committee of BEST. BEST or Board of European Students of Technology is a nonprofit European student organization with more than 3000 members on 96 partner
universities in 33 European countries. Over the years the organization has
recognized its need to automatize and move online its services. Over the years
needs grew and with them the online intranet that we use Private Area grew too.
We will first explore the current workflow of the committee and then we shall
proceed to identify and document current restructuring plans of the body as well as
suggest potential changes. Changes are ether connected to the restructuring of
BEST as a whole or to opportunities for improvement based on the change of the
structure.
This paper besides its academic value is also an invaluable resource to the
organization itself because they can use it for the direct purpose of improving future
projects organized. This is an exploratory paper striving to give some theoretical
context and provide basis for future improvements in the IT committee of the
organization by providing a clear understandable overview of its current workflow.
We wont focus as much on what other organizations in the world do, as the scale
and scope of work of IT committee makes comparison based analysis very difficult.
Instead we will look at their current work, and their upcoming changes and we will
try to provide their ideas with a more theoretical context.

Student organization BEST

BEST, Board of European Students of Technology is a constantly growing non-profit
and non-political organization. Since 1989 it provides communication, co-operation
and exchange possibilities for students all over Europe. Its 96 Local BEST Groups
(LBGs) in 33 countries are creating a growing, well organized, powerful, young and
innovative student network. (What is BEST, n.d.)
BEST strives to help European students of technology to become more
internationally minded, by reaching a
better understanding of European
cultures and developing capacities to
work on an international basis.
Therefore BEST creates opportunities
for the students to meet and learn
from one another through our
academic and non-academic events
and educational symposia. "Learning
makes the master", but the final goal
is a good working place, therefore
BEST offers services like an
Figure 1 The logo of BEST
international career center to
broaden the horizons for the choice on the job market.

Main activities of the organization are international complementary academic

courses that provide participants with ETSC credits upon successful completion.
Most of the work including the course organization is done by Local BEST Groups,
which are mostly autonomous units maintained and developed by students of the
local university on which the LBG is formed.
BEST beside local members also has a number of international teams, committees,
which provide higher level services to the rest of organization. At the moment we
have committees focusing on marketing, fundraising, grants, training of members,
evaluating quality of BEST Academic courses, improving European technical
education and IT.
Back in 90s ITC, the IT team of BEST, developed the first web application of the
organization. It was a simple internal website that showed contact information of
members of the organization. A bit later they implemented an online application
system for the academic courses, which were up to that point by snail mail
exchanged between LBGs or broth to General Assemblies, the semi-annual

meetings of delegates from all LBGs. Over time this intranet has grown to become
today's Private Area with its half a million lines of code and its considered the
most wholesome student organization intranet in the world.
In recent years BEST started rethinking the way it operates on international lever.
The system based on long-term committees was no longer completely fitting the
needs or following growth and development of the organization. To address this
BEST started moving from a committee based to a matrix structure. In the new
structure bulk of work will be done by time bounded projects, and current
committees will be transformed into departments which will be continuous bodies
which act as knowledge holders with main goal of transferring knowledge and
empowering younger less experienced members to work and contribute to BEST on
international level. This change affects the whole organization and we will see how
it will also affect the way ITC, the IT committee of BEST works.

IT Committee of BEST
IT Committee of BEST or ITC is a continuous body of BEST. Its main goal is to
support the organization as a whole with its IT solutions. The main division inside
the committee is by knowledge area. So we have IT Developers (in further text ITD),
IT Interaction Designers (in further text ITID) and IT Administrators (in further text
ITA). (ITC, 2016)
Developers are the programmers of the organization, their work on developing
applications based on the specification given by Interaction Designers.
Administrators on the other hand make sure our services and servers are running
properly and that we can access them securely and without outrages.
There are three levels of membership in ITC: trainees, experienced trainees and full
members. They are mostly distinguished in the level of skill they have in their
specific area of expertise and ability to communicate and collaborate with the rest
of the committee. The committee itself is managed by a Coordinator and his core
team. Core team consists of at least one HR and a secretary. The Core team is
elected by full members for 1 year mandate.
Other relevant internal bodies are Merger team and HR team. Merger team consists
of senor developers tasked with reviewing and feedbacking code developed by
other members of the department. While HR team is composed of ex-HRs and excoordinators, and is main source of improvement ideas of the ITC.
To join the committee a member must fill in an online survey and finish the
integration process. Integration process consists of multiple steps that are designed
to teach the member how different parts of the committee function. It teaches both
the technical aspect such us learning tools and platforms we use and other soft-skill

based aspect such us how communication, task taking and other minute details of a
members life look like.
In this part of the paper we will mainly focus on the development flow from a new
idea to a finished application. Currently we can separate the process in three parts:
-

From idea to set of tasks ready for developers

Task taken, developed and tested by developers
Testing

First part takes place usually outside of the committee, as we are covering needs of
the organization and not our internal needs. So someone has an idea about a tool
that would be useful for the organization. First step is for the person to put some
thought about the idea and send a proposal for the tool through email.
Next step is to identify key stakeholders and with them check if this is something
they need and if so the idea is handed over to Interaction designers. Interaction
designers follow a set procedure for understanding and specifying the application.

Steps of interaction design

(Bernhard, 2007a)
-

Idea
Users and needs
Use cases
Data requirements
Mock-ups
Feedback

STEP 1 Idea

Figure 2 Basic interaction design process

First step is to think about what needs to be developed and to get a clear picture of
the functionality of the end tool.

STEP 2 Users & needs

We start by identifying end users, or key stakeholders for the application. Then
together with the given stakeholders Interaction Designers come up with a detailed
list of needs that the end-tool is supposed to fulfilled. After a list of needs and users
is compiled we can move to the next step which is writing down use cases of the
tool.

STEP 3 - Scenarios (use cases)

The main point of this step is to allow developers to get a clear picture of what
needs to be developed. A scenario is a structured description of how user
uses/interacts with the system. Main focus is getting the most usual use cases for
the tool, thus avoiding digression into edge cases.
Format of the use cases is: Users action, result. So if we had a use case for a user
login page we would have following:
User action
User inputs his/her username &
password and then clicks on Login
button

Result
User is logged in and is presented with
his/her home page

STEP 4 - Data requirements

Based on the previous steps a list of data fields is compiled. With the input form the
developers the data needs are translated into Makumba Data Definitions or MDDs
which are files that describe database layout for the framework Makumba on which
our applications are developed.

STEP 5 - Mock-ups
Based on the specific definitions you make the mock-ups. Giving visual appearance
to specifications helps making it more understandable for non-IT people. In the
mock-ups you put all the possible details. In other words: draw the webpage you
imagine how the product will look like.
Based on the scenarios using a mockup tool like Balsamiqe mockups we actually
drawn the interfaces described in previous steps. Only with the previous steps the
mockups make sense, because otherwise we wouldnt know which needs and how
are we fulfilling with this tool. Spotlight in this step has improving user friendliness
and intuitiveness of the end tool. Oftentimes the work of Interaction designers is
misinterpreted by rest of the organization as people who do mockups, whereas as
weve seen mockups are just one of the steps in the process.

STEP 6 Feedbacking
This is the step that is crucial because it allows end users to see both how a tool
should feel and how it should look. Oftentimes they were not able to completely
define everything in previous steps, and in this step both propose new ideas and
clarify the existing ones. This allows for quick changes in the end design before it
reaches the developers.

STEP 7 Translating into tasks

During this step Core team of the committee together with senior developers split
the end task into sizable chunks that can be moved to the task list. In essence the
task is described in a way understandable to developers, a difficulty rating is
attached as well as links to further resources as well as who to ask for more
information. The result of this final step in design process is a list of tasks that are
ready for developers to take and start developing.

With these steps the interaction design is pretty much finished with the exception of
testing the developed application together with stakeholders and providing
feedback to possible improvement points. Now the development process is handed
to ITD or the developers. (Fonic, 2011)

Figure 3 more comprehensive interaction design process

Task taken, developed and tested by developers

Due to the volunteer nature of the organization we cannot force people to do
something if they dont want to, the internal culture reflects this and we dont
directly ask people to take on specific tasks except for highly critical tasks that only
a select few has knowledge and experience to tackle. So instead of assigning work
to them we have a tasklist from which people take tasks when they have free time
to dedicate to the organization. (Teeselink, 2007)
Typical task is being done in the following way:
-

Developer takes a task

Task is completed
Merge request submitted
Code is reviewed and feedbacked by Merger team
Code is merged into the master branch
Code is deployed on production servers

Developer takes a task

Inside the ITC space on the online task manger Trello a developer picks a task,
assigns it to him and notifies the core team of the committee. He self-selects the

deadline of the task, but is required to notify core team in cases when he is not able
to meet the deadline.
Task is completed
Within next few weeks or up to a month the developer does programming necessary
to complete the given task. He does the work and on his local development platform
which consists of a near identical copy of the production server he tests the feature
he or she developed.
Merge request is submitted to approve the changes in the code
After developer finished working on his task he sends a merge request accompanied
with his code changes trough GitLab our code versioning system. Merger team is a
team of senor developers responsible for reviewing, testing and feedbacking the
code submitted by developers before it reaches live servers.
Code is reviewed and feedbacked by Merger team
Merger team has a twofold job, they make sure the code works as specified and that
the structure of the code follows coding standards and best practices. They test
functionality by testing the section of the application that was just developed by the
member. In case of an issue found they will feedback the developer with a list of
changes required before the code is accepted.
Code is merged into the master branch
After being comprehensive review the code is merged with the master branch which
holds the newest current working version of the code deployed.
Code is deployed on production servers
Depending on urgency the code is ether immediately to production servers or it put
in queue to be deployed in some future time with the rest of the code. Deploying to
production simply means putting the code on the live server which is used by end
users of the application.
Working application feedbacked and feedback implemented
This steps follows live deployment and in it we tackle any bugs in the code that
were overlooked in the previous steps as well as tweaking the usability and design
in the tool based on input that surfaced after more extensive usage of the
application in real life. In some cases by previous plan or newly discovered needs
there might surface a need for the second iteration of the tool which would further
enhance the features and usability of the tool. In such case we simply redo the
whole process for the newly added needs, users and use cases.

Figure 4 Development process

Testing
Testing is not necessarily the final phase of the development process and can be
done even during the coding process. This is simply done using a staging or testing
server which has a version of the application with the code that is currently being
tested. (Bernhard, 2007b)
Simply the given code is deployed on the testing server and stakeholders are asked
to try out the developed features and give both feedback on their look, feel and
functionality as well as uncover bugs that might have slipped somewhere in the
previous steps.
After the given test period passes the given tool is deployed on the live server. Not
every tool is sent for public testing, as this is normally reserved for bigger more
comprehensive tools and applications. Testing can return the application to any of
the previous steps depending on the feedback received. It may require rethinking
on the part of interaction designers or simply a change in code from developers.
(Mayer, 2006)

New structure
The whole student organization is currently in the process to transition from
committee based structure to a matrix structure consisting of departments and
projects. Main issue being addressed with the change is lack of applicants for
international bodies of BEST from new members in local best groups. There is a
certain atmosphere that a person needs really high skillset in order to join
international bodies of BEST. (XXVII Board, 2014)
As previously mentioned the organization is moving to a matrix structure based on
departments and projects. Projects will handle the bulk of work of the organization,
and their main feature is that they are time bounded; so if a member joins an
international project he will exactly know how long that obligation is, as compared
to department or a committee which is without a definite end.
From now on departments, the new committees will be able to recruit only trough
project. Idea being that a person has to already develop certain skills through
projects before joining department. (XXVII Board, 2014)
This change to a matrix based organizational structure has multiple implications for
the committee; following are most relevant for this paper:
-

No more direct recruitment of new members to committees

Work is outsourced to projects that are open to all members instead of being
committee specific
ITC membership structure changes

No more direct recruitment of new members to committees

One of the big changes related to the new structure of the organization is the path a
locally involved member would take to become internationally involved. The way it
used to be, as a member you would directly apply for the body you wanted to join.
In the new structure this changes, as new departments wont be able to directly
recruit. Instead people will join projects and trough working in projects they will gain
skills necessary to be productive in the new departments and then they will be able
to join the department.
Main changes here are who is doing initial introduction and knowledge sharing
necessary to increase the productivity and knowledge of a new recruit. So far this
role was on the HR of the committee, but from now on it will move to the project
teams who will collectively have to integrate new members in their team.

Work is outsourced to projects that are open to all members

instead of being committee specific
As previously mentioned the departments, the name used for transformed
committees wont be doing the bulk of work now. Instead this work will be moved to
projects. Projects under new structure have specific goals, a start and an end point.
The main reasons for this change are that BEST members had a conception that to
be member of a committee, you have to be extremely good at things that
committee is doing, and mostly in reality this was not the case. Committees were
simply developing people in such a way that they achieve really high performance
levels. Another reason was lack of transparency and involvement of BEST with the
work of committees; they were simply put to do their own thing. Previous two as a
consequence had a huge pool of underutilized talent which was slowing down the
development of the organization.
This shift is quite significant, as it decentralizes the way we do projects in a way.
Now projects will be led by project leaders, which will be empowered to make
decisions and implement the project itself. This allows for much better overview
and efficiency in dealing with work of the organization as a whole. If you have more
people responsible for smaller chunks of the work, you have way less organizational
overhead meaning that more people can focus on doing things they want instead of
managing and overseeing the work of others.

ITC Membership structure changes.

As part of the new structure internal membership levels will also change. In the
future we will have members and trainees. In contrast to current membership
structure consisting of: full members, experienced trainees and trainees. (BEST,
2016)
So what will happen in practice current and future trainees will not be part of the
department, instead they will work as project members until they are ready to
become department members. This allows easier member filtration, because people
who dont want to stay for long term but simply try something new will join time
bounded projects, not indefinitely long committee membership commitments. From
the department side, this makes the department keep only active members
effectively increasing the productivity of the whole organization.
So we have seen three areas in which the new structure will change and affect the
way current ITC works, but besides being an agent of change it will also provide an
opportunity to rethink the way we do things. One of such changes is optimizing the
development process by moving to a scrum based project management system.

Figure 5 ITC from idea to finished application

Figure 6 ITD new IT Department from idea to finished application

Proposed scrum-inspired improvements

Scrum Is a project management framework made to deal with large-scale projecets
wth rapidly changing requirements. This makes it ideal for dealing with IT
development projects, mostly becouse users have a tendancy to constanly change
requirements based on new information or realisation of issues with previous
definition. (Rubin, 2012)

In the very hearth of scrum are plan-design-develop-feedback cyclels. Goal is to

avoid up-front planning of the whole product, but instead to focus on a small peace
of it. Project is split in chunks from few weeks to 1 month called sprints, and detaild
planning is done only for the next sprint, and for the rest ferther away in time less
detailed they get.
With this you avoind upfront planning. And the main reason to avoid upfront
planning comes from the simple fact that plan made upfront cannot be realistic
becouse it deoesnt account for all the issues and unexpected changes that happen
during the lifetime of the project and that have some sort of inpact on the project
itself.
This is the most essential definition of scrum as defined by Rubin (2002). As for ITC,
there are no current planns to immidately fully shift to another development
metodology. Instead we try to focus on periodical improvement of parts of the whole
process. One of the proposed changes that is planned for relativly soon is changin
form wholly upfront desing to doing periodical speciy-develop-feedback cycles.
So the Interaction design part changes, insetead of doing it completely upfront we
select a part of the tool, define it really well, send it to developers and wait to
feedback them. From the developer point of view everything stays the same expet
that there is a colective deadline at the end of each sprint.
Main benefits of this is that is dissalows people to get lazy and cozy. Forcing a near
deadline makes the whole team feel some pressure towards urgeny which is
important for getting results on time. As for users and steakholders as they get to
see the applicaton very soon after it was pubblished makes them both more happy
and more lilkely to quicly notice mistakes in use cases so that they dont afftect the
rest of the sysytem.

Conclusion
We have started by defining the basic workflow of IT Committee of BEST. IT has two
main parts, design phase and development phase. Then we proceeded to in greater
detail review steps of both parts of the process. After that we described how
projects will affect work of the committee and how we can use the wave of change
to introduce some other more mother methodologies.
Steps of Interaction Design:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Idea
Users and needs
Use cases
Data requirements
Mock-ups
Feedback

Steps in Development:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Developer takes a task

Task is completed
Merge request submitted
Code is reviewed and feedbacked by Merger team
Code is merged into the master branch
Code is deployed on production servers

Main changes due to structure change:

-

No more direct recruitment of new members to committees

Work is outsourced to projects that are open to all members instead of being
committee specific
ITC membership structure changes

New structure wont affect much of the development cycle, but of course it will force
us to move to a project based work it will allow us to experiment with other work
methodologies such us scrum.
Scrum based approach strives to replace of the sequential design whole application
and then develop it with scrum sprints. Meaning that we are during short term
define-design-develop cycles instead of developers waiting for interaction designers
to finish their job.
We have seen how this committee and soon to be department functions as well as
some of the future changes due to both organization level change to a project
based matrix structure and internal proposed change to a scrum based
development methodology.

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