Dealing with organizational changes

Pattern Clusters

Dealing with organizational changes is crucial in planning & reporting systems. However, handling such changes often becomes ad hoc, sometimes resorting to a haphazard approach each time. fusion_place incorporates various mechanisms to help manage organizational changes in an orderly manner, but effectively utilizing them requires certain consideration in application design.

This pattern cluster contains a collection of patterns helpful to achieve a design which underpins smooth handling of organizational changes without excessive burden. Each pattern can be selected based on the specific circumstances.

Synchronizing screens/reports with an organization dimension

  • Elastic axis: With forms, you can create screens/reports whose vertical and horizontal axes automatically grow or shrink to reflect organizational changes.

Allow aggregated reporting based on past organizational trees

The following two patterns represent different approaches to the same problem. While Annual Member Trees is more sophisticated, Previous Year Application is simpler and requires less operational effort if it meets the requirements. If the latter suffices, consider selecting it.

  • Annual Member Trees: Allows aggregation reporting of leaf department data with the organization trees before and after the organizational change.

  • Previous Year Application: Provides an application to report previous year data based on the application backed up at the appropriate point in time, which allows aggregation reporting along with the organization tree as of the year.

Setting the scope of permissions when using the annual member trees

The following two patterns also represent different approaches to the same problem. The Participants by Fiscal Year approach is simpler and requires less operational effort if the requirements are met. On the other hand, from the perspective of common users, the Permission Scope Trees approach may be preferable because it does not require the extra step of selecting a participant.

  • Participants by Fiscal Year: When applying the "Annual Member Trees," an disctinct member is assigned to each aggregation level department in each of organiztion trees by year. Accordingly, distinct participants are also created every year for these departments.

  • Permission Scope Members: When applying the "Annual Member Trees," a disctinct member is assigned to each aggregation level department in each of organiztion trees by year. Still, we can avoid the necessity to divide participants corresponding to the aggregation level departments by year.

Conduct year-over-year comparisons based on the current fiscal year’s organizational structure

  • Year-over-Year Comparison Scenario: When leaf-level departments are split or merged due to organizational changes, data reclassification is required to allow year-over-year comparisons based on the new organizational structure. When applying the “Annual Member Trees,” the previous year’s results before reclassification are often also needed. To meet both requirements, we can maintain reclassified data for leaf departments separately from the pre-change data. By accumulating the reclassified prior-year data within the new organizational structure’s member tree, year-over-year comparisons at the aggregation level become possible based on the new organizational structure.