unFIX case study university org design switzerland

Motivation

A university stands for a type of organization with a long-standing tradition. On the one hand, universities are characterized by a high degree of autonomy - the freedom of research and teaching - and exhibit a high degree of self-organization. On the other hand, they have to operate within politically set framework conditions which, compared to the economy, may be much tighter and can have a strong impact on daily business. Can a university be unfixed and to what extent does it make sense at all to regard it as an agile, dynamic organization?

Of course, every university is different. The concrete organization designs vary around the world, and even in the same country there can be different types of universities. In this respect, there can be no generic answer to the above question. In the following, we rather consider the specific case of a school at a Swiss university of applied sciences. Specifically, we are talking about the School of Computer Science and Information Technology at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Switzerland, which was launched in 2016. Its founding made it possible to experiment with structures and processes; at the same time, there was a desire to create a fresh, dynamic culture, to implement agility, and to try out ways that are more difficult to realize in other, long-established structures. The school has set itself the goal of being a lively organization that takes on a pioneering role not only in the context of digitization, that creates impact and that can react quickly to a changing environment. unFIX can serve as a stimulus in this regard and offers an appealing construction kit to clarify the structure, to visualize it, to make it discussable and thus to develop it further.

The reasons why we consider it essential to experiment and remain flexible with regard to our organization are manifold:

We operate in an environment where change is the constant. If we want to help shape technological development and support partners from business and society in using it, we ourselves must be agile and adaptable.
We want to be innovative, which requires that we practise and experience what we teach: New forms of teaching and learning, alternative forms of organization and work in research and development, novel topics in our continuing education programs.
We must attract highly qualified employees: The shortage of specialists in the field of computer science is and will remain challenging, and as a university we must also strive to provide attractive working conditions that enable employees to develop their potential and use it profitably for the organization.
Since professional experience is a hiring criterion at a university of applied sciences, many employees have already dealt with agile methods and new work in companies. A large number of employees are therefore accustomed to using new forms of work, which in turn enables us to leverage such background experience.
Universities as expert organizations are characterized by special features: It is well known that the high autonomy of employees usually comes along with a high inflexibility of the overall organization. In this respect, appropriate measures have to be taken in order to anticipate changes as part of the system.
As a living organization, we are interested in learning about ourselves and exploring ourselves.
Finally, with nearly 250 employees, the school has reached a size that requires an expansion of structures. unFIX can serve as a structural framework and help to systematically explore organizational variants. The school is in a new phase, and at the same time the agility and spirit of the start-up phase should be preserved. Against this background, it is self-evident that the following descriptions represent a snapshot of the organization and that the system will continue to evolve.

Background

The School of Computer Science and Information Technology is the youngest of the six schools of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, which is one of the nine publicly funded and administered universities of applied sciences in Switzerland supported by the six Central Swiss cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden and Zug. It was founded in 2016, with parts of it being separated from the School of Engineering & Architecture and the School of Business and merged in the new organizational unit. In setting up the school, agility and organizational flexibility were central from the outset. For example, research was established in a largely self-organized manner. Since then, the School of Computer Science and Information Technology has grown rapidly. From an initial staff of 66 (50 full-time equivalents), the department now has 244 employees (175 full-time equivalents), nearly 1200 students have enrolled in various bachelor's or master's programs, and the continuing education programs have been visited by over 1300 participants.

The school is active in the areas of education, continuing education, research & development, and services. The focus is on the link between science and practice, i.e. the transfer of knowledge and technology to business, culture and society. The target audiences vary depending on the service area. In education, primarily young people are enrolled in the study programs; in continuing education, professionals represent the main audience; and in the context of research, development and services, mainly companies and other organizations use the university's expertise to implement innovative solutions for practical applications. Even though there are overlaps, the target groups represent separate sectors according to which the activities are grouped – namely, education, continuing education, and research and development including related services – at the university and at the School of Computer Science and Information Technology.

Furthermore, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts is embedded in a political framework defined by both the federal authorities and the funding cantons. This concerns personnel and labor law, but also the financing of the university. In principle, the system is designed in such a way that, in addition to basic funding provided by the cantons, income from the Confederation primarily serves as a source of revenue. In education, the additional funding is based on the number of students. In contrast, continuing education and services must cover their costs, i.e. they must be self-financing. In research and development, it is assumed that a large part of the funds – the specific share depends on the subject area – will be raised from federal funding agencies, foundations, companies or other donors.

The great challenge for the School of Computer Science and Information Technology today is to maintain innovation and agility, while the organization is growing rapidly, moving from a startup phase to a consolidation phase, and requiring novel structures where flexibility is part of the system. The staff of the school has committed itself to a credo based on the following five statements:

We are agile and flexible: with profile!
Our attitude and spirit: go for it!
The world is diverse and connected: so are we!
Interdisciplinary and international: we cooperate!
We act reliably and creatively: sustainably!

This requires that the organization develops step by step, experimentally,

and this is where unFIX can be helpful as a building block model.

Basic Implementation

The school as an organizational unit represents the Base in the unFIX model. With almost 250 employees, the size of the base is relatively high with regard to the Dunbar number, but more than one fifth of the staff is only employed on a small part-time basis or for a limited period of time.

The products that the school offers are provided by various Value Stream Crews, referred to below as teams for simplicity. Teams are active in only one service area, be it education, continuing education, or research and development. A team is responsible for a product, e.g., a Bachelor degree program in education, or a product group, e.g., continuing education courses or research projects in a specific topic. Furthermore, each Value Stream Crew is represented by two Captains (cf. Fig. 1). Co-leadership was chosen because teams have a certain stability and do not change permanently as perhaps in industry; we will go into this in more detail later. The team as such is responsible for the product or product group assigned to it.

unFIX Value Stream Crews — Fig. 1: Value Stream Crews are responsible for specific products or product groups and are represented by two Captains

Teams serving similar target markets are grouped into a Turf. There is a Turf for education, a Turf for continuing education, and a Turf for research and development, see Fig. 2. This also means that each of the Value Stream crews is assigned to a Turf and, strictly speaking, does not operate across Turfs.

unFIX university Turf — Fig. 2: Value Stream Crews serving similar target audiences are grouped into Turfs reflecting the areas of education, continuing education, and research and development.

In addition, there is a Governance Crew, the School Board of Management, which is composed of the dean and three vice-deans (Fig. 3). The latter are responsible for one Turf each, i.e., there is a vice-dean for education, a vice-dean for continuing education and a vice- dean for research and development. The dean is also a member of the University Executive Board and represents the school on this body within the University. The majority of employees report to one of the four members of the Governance Crew, but there are exceptions, which will be discussed in more detail later. The core tasks of the department management are, in addition to personnel management, the overall strategy, which must be in line with the university strategy, the coordination of the school and the development of the organization (work on the system).

unFIX School Board Governance Crew — Fig. 3: The School Board of Management represents the Governance Crew with one dean and one vice-dean per Turf

The Value Stream Crews and the Governance Crew are supported by various Platform Crews that provide essential services (Fig. 4). On the one hand, there are Platform Crews that are specific to individual Turfs. For example, the teams in a Turf are supported by employees who are responsible for reporting and other administrative tasks. In education, there is also a Platform Crew that deals with methods and projects and develops general principles for the courses.

In addition, the two teaching-related Turfs, Education and Continuing Education, use a common Platform Crew for the administration of students and participants.

On the other hand, there are services for the whole Base. There is a central IT team that maintains the infrastructure for teaching and research, and there is another team that is responsible for space management, event management, and general support for the School Board of Management.

Finally, there are university-wide services such as human resources, controlling, accounting, marketing, and IT services that are located outside the school. For some of these platform crews, e.g., human resources and controlling, specific persons are responsible for the school; these persons are employed at the university headquarters, but work locally at the school and are also involved in the activities of the school. In this respect, one can speak of coupled central services in the latter case.

Fig. 4: Platform Crews support Value Stream Crews and the Governance Crew; we distinguish internal services, university-wide central services, and coupled central services

The coordination of the Value Stream Crews within the Turfs and between the Turfs is ensured via various Forums. There is one Forum per Turf, the strategy committee, within which the captains exchange ideas and define guidelines and requirements for the crews (Fig. 5). The vice-dean responsible for the respective Turf in the Governance Crew acts as the Chair of the strategy committee in each case; however, the vice-dean is not involved in any of the included Value Streams Crews.

Fig. 5: Turf-specific strategy committee consisting of the Captains and the vice-dean as Chair of the Forum

The strategic coordination of the Turfs is carried out by the Governance Crew. Professional exchange among the Turfs is ensured by topic-specific practitioner groups (Fig. 6); these Forums are formed as needed and the initiators usually also act as Chairs. In addition, there are Forums across the organization. Online brown-bag events are held monthly over lunch for the entire staff to communicate issues relevant to the entire school, and a face-to-face informational event (“Mitarbeitendeninformation”) is held twice a year – for both Forums, the director acts as the Chair.

In addition, there is a participation commission, which can also be considered a kind of Forum and represents the concerns of the employees. It is made up of elected members of the staff, with all employee categories represented. Once a year, for example, the participation committee organizes a one-day school seminar during which all employees exchange views on a topic and jointly create ideas for developing the organization further.

Fig. 6: Various Forums span multiple Turfs or refer to the entire Base

Extensions

The unFIX model provides a good basis for describing the essential structures of the school and their interactions. In detail, however, there are aspects which require specific solutions. This is to be expected:

Any generic model can only provide a rough template for an organization,
but the specific design depends strongly on the individual case.

The special characteristic of the School of Computer Science and Information Technology is that there are relatively stable Value Stream Crews – in unFIX such teams are classified as Steady Teams – while at the same time we are aiming at building flexibility into the system to allow for continuous experimentation and reflection. There are different reasons why the set of Value Stream Crews does not change. On the one hand, the expertise of the employees is not or only to a limited extent interchangeable and teams are evolving anyway due to the discplinary discourse.

On the other hand, there are various personnel categories that are defined by the canton: Lecturers – these are experienced, mostly permanent employees – provide the main part of teaching and take on central functions in research; academic staff – these can be students, people with professional, Bachelor, Master or even doctoral degrees – complete part of their professional, academic career with us and are usually employed on a temporary basis; administrative staff are primarily active in the platform crews. As a result, parts of the Value Stream Crews – mainly lecturers – rarely change, while other parts are subject to personnel fluctuations.

Nevertheless, new Value Stream Crews do emerge, while others disappear; the reasons for this can be personnel changes, but also thematic realignments. Experience shows that change processes in universities are extremely slow, which is related to the institutional anchoring of organizational units, but also to the high autonomy of the staff. Change can require massive efforts. We want to reduce these hurdles and integrate the possibility of change in the organizational design in order to remain adaptable. These specific circumstances give rise to a couple of extensions which are briefly discussed below.

Management

A central task of the School Board of Management is to embed the organizational unit into the university, because the school has to integrate into a system with existing structures. Accordingly, the Governance Crew represents the school on various committees: The director is a member of the University Executive Board, the vice-deans represent the Turfs across the schools in corresponding area-specific conferences. Here, foundations are developed across the schools for research or teaching. For this reason, the vice-dean are the Chairs of the Turf- specific strategy committees, although in the pure unFIX model members of the Governance Crew are explicitly not intended to be Forum Chairs. In our system, this dual role has advantages. The same is true for the Forums over the entire Base, where the director serves as Chair.

The principle that the entire staff is subordinate to the Governance Crew is also implemented differently from the unFIX model, which is partly due to the personnel categories mentioned above. Lecturers are in principle subordinate to one of the four persons from the Governance Crew. The same applies to most of the currently 15 permanent academic employees, who are primarily active in the areas of research and service. Temporary academic staff, on the other hand, such as doctoral students, must be closely supported and coached by an experienced expert (lecturer), which is why they are also subordinate to the latter. In the case of administrative staff, too, there are middle managers outside the Governance Crew to whom several employees report. Thus, in deviation from the unFIX model, personnel management is distributed in certain areas. The aim here is not only to supervise and promote employees as closely as possible, but also to reduce the management span of the Governance Crew; for instance, an appraisal and promotion interview must take place with each employee every year, according to legal requirements.

We also ensure that the principle of distributed leadership is applied to key positions. In the case of the Value Stream Crews, we have chosen co-leadership, as mentioned above. In this way, we want to avoid fixing existing structures on the one hand and strengthen the team spirit on the other. The roles of the Captains can therefore be handled flexibly, i.e. they are not tied to specific personnel categories, but are regulated via function-realted, flexible pay increases.

Team Structures

In addition to working together regarding a product, the culture of collaboration is also extremely important for the performance of the teams and the school – in particular, because employment at a university is characterized by a high level of individual, intrinsic motivation. Identity is important given the current size of the school. Because we mainly have Steady Teams, team involvement and team development are central aspects of the culture. Furthermore, new employees need to be trained on the job and that happens best within a team. The challenge for the school, though, is the fact that many employees work in multiple Turfs and thus teams. For lecturers this holds per se, but also academic staff members are to a limited extent active both in teaching and research. This raises the question of team membership and involvment.

The Value Stream Crews play a central role here, especially when it comes to identification with the organization. For this reason, each person has a home team where most of the work is done and team development and team events takes place. In order to reduce the balance between work on products and coordinative activities within a team, employees are only assigned to more than one home team in justified exceptional cases. In particular, we make sure that a person only takes on the role of a Captain in one team at most – although here, too, the exception proves the rule.

In addition, there are employees who work for the school only on a part-time basis and with a small workload – this applies in particular to freelance lecturers. They work on clearly defined tasks and are not involved in the development processes of teams and products. These employees do not have a home team, nor do they necessarily have to be a member of a team, although they may be involved on a selective basis. Instead, they are affiliated with one or more Value Stream Crews and have a contact person in the respective teams, see Fig. 7.

Fig. 7: Working in multiple Value Stream Crews

Assignments to teams are not made centrally, but are arranged in a decentralized fashion, comparable to a marketplace. Lecturers are responsible for how they fill their workload, and Captains or lecturers approach each other directly to clarify the question of cooperation and membership depending on the possibilities. Even though the Governance Crew does not actively manage this process, it has the authority to make decisions on this issue in cases of doubt and in the final instance. An alternative to the marketplace principle, which we also discussed, would be to place all faculty in a pool, a Capability Crew or several discipline- specific Capability Crews, where they could then be booked by the Value Stream Crews. However, the identification would not be oriented towards the product, but to the subject matter, which is why we decided against it.

Collaboration Across Turfs

Collaboration among the Turfs is an important foundation for the schools professional development and the organizational culture, especially in order to promote certain topics from an overall perspective.

For example, in the fields of artificial intelligence or immersive reality, there are activities in all Turfs. They represent areas in which we want to position ourselves as a school and within which coordination between Value Stream Crews is important from a thematic perspective. This is not just about exchange, but about a common strategy.

The classic approach to addressing this requirement is to create institutes, sub-organizational units that are responsible for a specific topic across all four service areas. Usually, this involves subordinations of personnel, but in practice this creates silos and leads to separation. To get around this issue, we are currently pursuing two alternative approaches to promote the idea of collaborating across Turfs.

On the one hand, the interlocking of personnel on Value Stream Crews across Turfs naturally results in exchanges that do not require formal structures. On the other hand, specific steering groups are envisaged to drive the relevant topic forward in an overall manner and to coordinate the Value Stream Crews involved, cf. Fig. 8.

Even though steering groups can be regarded as Forums in the unFIX model, we are currently experimenting with them on an informal basis. In our experience, the approach of only formally establishing Forums once they have reached a certain level of maturity increases the acceptance of such bodies.

Finally, it has been shown that a separate classification of Forum types is helpful for internal communication. On the one hand, there are pure information Forums, where one person from the Governance Crew usually represents the Chair. On the other hand, there are self- organized practitioner groups, where employees exchange topic-specific information and share knowledge, or the school seminar, which is itself self-organized by a Forum – the participation committee. Finally, there are Forums such as strategy committees or steering groups, within which binding decisions can be made.

Fig. 8: Topic-specific Forums represent Turf overarching steering groups

Conclusions

The unFIX model is a useful tool for reflecting on and further developing the architecture of our organization. It helps us as a academic organization to explore organizational variants and to look at the university from a different perspective, besides the classic structures. Such a model is also useful for communication. It allows us to visualize the structure of our school and make it discussable.

However: nice boxes are one thing, every day practice is another.
A model should serve the living organization, and not vice versa.

In this respect, we follow the principle of "only as many formalities as absolutely necessary". While we always regard Crews as formal units that are either appointed by the Governance Crew or – in the case of a bottom-up initiative – approved by it, we proceed differently with Forums. In many cases, informal exchange groups are formed, which then grow into formally established Forums over time. This also shows that the culture and mindsets of employees form the foundation for organizational development, which must be nurtured and continue to grow accordingly.

This blog post describes the current status of our journey. We are in the process of testing various ideas based on the unFIX building blocks. For example, we are considering Capability Crews in the context of personal development: Experienced, specially trained employees support others, especially new employees, in their development within the organization. Another idea is in the direction of Facilitation Crews, which accompany new teams in the development and establishment of self-organization.

How to unFIX a University