SAFe-DevOps answers - SAFe 5 DevOps Practitioner (SDP) Updated: 2024

Scrum co-creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland are making new updates to The Scrum Guide to promote flexibility and clarity within the Scrum framework. The updated guide will now clear up common Scrum miscommunications about the framework, and provide a better understanding of Scrum inspection and adaptation.

“As new technologies and practices have evolved over time, a misconception that Scrum is rigid has arisen and these changes will resolve that,” said Schwaber. “Scrum is truly an empirical process that is not prescriptive and is adaptable by the teams using it. You’ll no longer find the words ‘there are no exceptions’ in this guide and with that comes the clarity that many releases can occur during a Sprint. We look forward to how the community will embrace this update.”

The Scrum Guide is Schwaber and Sutherland’s definitive description of the Scrum methodology. According to the guide, Scrum is a framework used to “address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value,” according to the guide. The guide has not been updated since July 2016, when Schwaber and Sutherland added five values of Scrum to the guide: courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness.

The guide includes a new “Uses of Scrum” section that explains what Scrum has, and can be, used for. Scrum was initially focused on software complexity, yet the co-creators have found it works in a majority of business and technology areas such as integrated, embedded and advanced technologies.

In addition, the guide clarifies that “a ‘Done’ increment is required at the Sprint Review,”  and “An increment is a body of inspectable, done work that supports empiricism at the end of the Sprint. The increment is a step toward a vision or goal. The increment must be in useable condition regardless of whether the Product Owner decides to release it.” It further details what a daily Scrum is, and updates the meaning of an increment.

The changes were based on community feedback, and made at the discretion of Schwaber and Sutherland.

“First and foremost, we want to thank our extended team of Scrum practitioners, who offer valuable insight into the day-to-day implementation of The Scrum Guide,” said Sutherland. “Without their input, The Scrum Guide would not be the living document that it is. Scrum continues to evolve in its use in delivering value to any industry.”

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Questions on Malpractice Insurance

A nurse practitioner (NP) writes:

"My collaborative MD believes that I should not need more liability insurance than his rider. My FNP liability insurance costs $1200 -- more than either PNP or ANP. My colleague in the same practice has separate credentials for ANP and PNP but as most of our patients are adult she only carries her insurance for adult -- $800. What do you think about the genuine liability needs?"

This question exemplifies the dilemmas NPs are facing when attempting to cover themselves for professional liability. Inherent in this NP's questions are the following questions:

Do I need my own policy, if I am employed and my employer covers me?

• How much malpractice insurance do I need?

• Do I need coverage for all of my areas of certification, even if my practice is limited to one area?

• Why do policies for some areas of certification cost more than others?

• If I don't sign up for the appropriate type of policy, can the insurer refuse to cover me if I am sued?

This article addresses those questions.

The questions that need to be answered to answer this question are:

Will my employer's coverage be enough?

• Is my employer's coverage dependable?

• Do I perform any services that aren't covered by my employer's policy?

• If I leave the employer, will my employer's policy cover me for an incident that occurred while I was still employed?

• If I have 2 policies, will the policy terms allow the insurers to argue about who pays?

Will my employer's coverage be enough? It is difficult to get reliable data to use to predict what settlements, judgments, and defense costs might run. However, according to 2 sources, defense costs are running between $20,000 and $40,000, depending upon whether the claim resulted in a payment.^[1,2] Data from the insurance industry places the average payout for serious injuries as now exceeding $1.5 million.^[3] Another source puts the average payout at just under $200,000.^[2] A third source puts the average at $320,000.^[1]

Average payouts mean little if the verdict or settlement against you is for an amount that exceeds the limits of your policy. Damage awards deliver clinicians clues that at least $1 million in malpractice insurance is necessary. Here are some accurate cases against NPs. All involve diagnostic errors, which is the most common reason for malpractice lawsuits against NPs and physicians in office practice.

Case 1:
A 15-year-old female, complaining of a severe headache, left school early. Her mother gave her Tylenol and took her to see an NP that evening. The teenager also complained of very stiff joints, aches, and fever. The NP noted a temperature of 103.7 degrees, no cough, no chest congestion, no rhinitis, and no abdominal complaints. A complete blood count showed a white cell count of 16,600. The NP performed tests for meningeal irritation but found none. A pediatrician working in the practice conducted a cursory observation of the patient at the end of the visit. The NP diagnosed probable flu, told the patient's mother to call if the girl vomited or showed other changes in symptoms, and sent the patient home. Later that evening, the mother phoned the office to say her daughter had vomited several times. The NP advised the mother to keep the girl at home for the night, and bring her to the office in the morning. By morning, the girl was lethargic to the point of being only marginally responsive. On her arrival at the clinic, staff called 911. At the hospital, the girl was diagnosed with meningitis, put on antibiotics, intubated, and admitted to intensive care. She continued to deteriorate, endured brain herniation, and died 1 week after the initial visit. The plaintiff's attorney alleged that the NP must have performed improperly the tests to elicit signs of meningeal irritation, as it was certain that the patient had unusual neck stiffness. The NP denied any negligence, arguing that the girl had influenza that quickly progressed overnight into meningitis. The parties settled the case for $500,000.^[4]

Case 2:
A 44-year-old woman whose mother had taken diethylstilbestrol (DES) while pregnant visited a women's health center for evaluation for hormone replacement therapy. An NP performed the evaluation, including a pelvic examination. The patient had some symptoms of pregnancy, but the staff reportedly attributed those symptoms to menopause. The patient said she had been told by doctors at the center that she was incapable of becoming pregnant and did not need to use contraception. The NP did not note an enlarged uterus. Six weeks later, the patient had a CAT scan of the abdomen to rule out tumor. There was no tumor, but there was a 6.5-month fetus. The woman gave birth to a daughter with asymmetrical dwarfism, also known as Russell Silver Syndrome. The child was expected to have to undergo a series of surgeries and use hormonal and physical therapies. The woman sued the women's health center, the larger institution of which the health center was a part, and the NP, who is an expert on DES daughters. The woman argued that her daughter's syndrome was caused by in-utero exposure to hormonal replacement therapy, CAT scans, prescription drugs, and lack of proper prenatal care. The plaintiff argued that the late diagnosis caused her to lose the opportunity to terminate the pregnancy. The parties settled for damages of $1.7 million.^[5]

Case 3:
A 29-year-old female nurse testified that she visited an NP in December 1992 for a physical exam. The NP pointed out a firm lump in the right breast. The NP diagnosed the lump as "fibrocystic breast formation." In April 1994, the patient saw the NP for an unrelated problem. She asked the NP about the breast lump. Later in 1994, the patient saw a coworker NP who examined the breast lump, which had increased in size and had become tender. That NP ordered a biopsy, which was positive for breast cancer with lymph node involvement. In March of 1998, the patient filed lawsuit against the first NP for failure to timely diagnose breast cancer. The NP's side of the story is that in December 1992 she performed a breast test but made no note of a breast complaint or abnormal findings regarding the patient's breast. Had the patient reported a lump or if there was a lump on exam, the NP would have recorded that in the record. In April 1994, the patient did not complain of breast lump, and no breast test was performed. There was no record of a complaint of breast lump or breast exam. In March 1998, the NP defended with the arguments that: (a) the statute of limitations had expired; (b) the patient never complained of a breast lump; and( c) the December 1992 breast test was normal. The patient died in 1999, leaving a husband and 3 children. A judge denied the NP's motion for summary judgment based on expiration of the statute of limitations. After mediation, the parties settled the case for $600,000.^[6]

Successful plaintiffs can enforce judgments or settlements by garnishing wages, putting a lien on the defendant's house, and exercising a levy on the defendant's bank accounts. There are various ways to try to shelter one's income from successful plaintiffs, but they have their own risks and costs.

The ethics of "going bare" (not having insurance) or not having enough insurance weigh heavily on many clinicians. If you make a mistake and someone is injured, are you going to feel ethically responsible for compensating the patient? If you try to get out of this obligation, is it going to weigh heavily on your conscience? If you elect not to purchase insurance or go with a policy with low limits, are you going to worry constantly about having the cash to pay off an injured patient? Will you save money in an account just for that purpose? Are you panic that your employer's policy won't cover you? Or are you unable to get information on your employer's policy? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," it is probably worth the cost of your own policy to maintain your integrity and have peace of mind.

Every NP is going to encounter different risks and different premiums. Do a risk-benefit analysis. Get as much coverage as you can afford, but no less than $1 million per occurrence. If an employer's policy has limits below $1 million, strongly consider purchasing your own policy for additional coverage.

Is my employer's coverage dependable? An insurance purchaser needs to feel secure that the insurance company is financially secure enough to pay out if necessary. To research the financial stability of an insurance company, find out which company underwrites the policy. This information should be provided on the insurer's Web site. Go to A.M. Best's Web site, or another of the several companies that rate the financial stability of insurance companies, to find the insurer's financial stability rating. You'll want to see a rating of A- or higher.

Do I perform any services that aren't covered by my employer's policy? Each insurer has different terms and conditions. If an NP relies on an employer's policy, the NP will need to be sure he or she can meet the conditions of the policy. Read the policy to determine whether the procedures and services you provide are covered.

If I leave my employer, will my employer's policy cover me for an incident that occurred while I was still employed? Most insurance policies for physician practices are "claims made." With a claims made policy, an NP must purchase a "tail" -- coverage extension -- when the NP leaves the employer. The prices for tails vary greatly and can, for a pediatric NP (PNP), be in excess of $5000. Some employers agree, as part of an employment agreement, to pay for the NP's tail policy. If the employer will not pay for the tail, the NP is going to have to do it when he or she leaves the employer, or the NP will be "bare."

Additional important advantages of having one's own policy are:

1. The NP will have her/his own legal counsel with expenses covered.

2. The NP may be covered for incidents that occur out of the employment setting (depending on the terms of the policy).

3. The NP can purchase limits that may be higher than the employer's.

4. If the NP purchases an occurrence policy, the NP will be covered if he/she leaves the employer's practice, and need not purchase a tail.

The disadvantages of having one's own policy are:

1. The plaintiff may draw the NP into the lawsuit, or attempt to keep the NP in a lawsuit longer than justified, in hopes of drawing on the NP's insurance. However, this may happen whether or not an NP has his or her own policy, as a plaintiff will not know until the "discovery" part of the litigation process whether or not the NP has an individual policy.

2. It is a significant expenditure.

Before electing to go solely with an employer's policy, ask the following questions of the employer:

• Who is the insurer?

• What are the limits?

• What is the company's financial stability rating?

• Am I a named insured? If not, what policy language assures that I will be covered?

• Are there any requirements on NP practice, such as level of supervision, that must be met under the terms of the policy?

• Does the policy state any conditions that I must meet in order to stay covered?

• Is it an occurrence policy or claims made? If claims made, ask: Who will pay the premium for the tail? If the employer refuses to promise to pay the tail premium, ask: How much will the tail cost?

Purchase your own policy if:

• Your employer's policy is claims made, the employer won't pay for the tail policy, and you can't afford to pay for the tail.

• You are not clearly one of the additional insured individuals on the employer's policy.

• You perform NP services outside of your employment.

• Your employer covers you only under certain conditions, and you can't meet all of those conditions.

• The employer's insurance company has a rating lower than A-.

• The employer's policy limits are below $1 million per incident.

If working for a government agency, the considerations are:

• Am I protected under a Tort Claims Act?

• If so, are there are any conditions under which I could be sued as an individual?

If working for a hospital or large organization, the considerations are:

• Does the organization purchase a commercial policy?

• Is the organization self-insured?

• If the organization has a commercial policy, what are the exclusions (ie, what are the circumstances under which I would not have coverage)?

• If the organization self-insures, are there are limits to what the organization would pay in the way of damages, attorney fees, and expert witness fees?

• Are any of my activities as an NP excluded from coverage?

How much coverage should I purchase? Rates vary, based on the company, length of time in practice, type of certification, state where practicing, and number of hours practicing per week. For an employed adult NP working full time in Maryland, accurate rates varied as follows:

• $590 a year for a $2 million per incident/$4 million aggregate occurrence policy

• $504 per year for a $1 million/$6 million occurrence policy

• $566 per year for a $1 million/$6 million occurrence policy

• $663.32 per year for a $1 million/$6 million claims made policy

Rates may be lower or higher in other states or for other NP specialties. Purchase as much insurance as you can afford, but not less than $1 million per occurrence.

Why do policies for some areas of certification cost more than others? Premium rates are determined by actuaries who analyze the risk for each category of clinician. If a policy for a family NP (FNP) costs more than a policy for an adult NP (ANP), that means the company's actuaries determined that it is more likely that the payout for an FNP will be more than for an ANP. One reason why the payout might be higher for an FNP would be the extended statute of limitations when the injured party is a child.

Do I need coverage for all of my areas of certification, even if my practice is limited to one area? Maybe. First, if you are an ANP and PNP but practice only with adults, are you committed to never providing services for a child? Second, have you been honest on your insurance application, stating that you are an ANP and PNP but are purchasing only ANP insurance? Third, have you checked with the company to see whether they have any term or condition that would require you to be insured as both ANP and PNP? Insurers may make their own terms and conditions and may deny coverage if their terms and conditions are not met.

If I don't sign up for the appropriate type of policy, can the insurer refuse to cover me if I am sued? Yes.

If I have 2 policies, will the policy terms allow the insurers to argue about who pays? Some policies state that if there is any other insurance policy that applies to the amounts covered under the policy, the other insurance must pay first. In that case, if an NP is insured through an employer as well as his or her own policy, the NP's insurance may be secondary (ie, would pay only if the other insurance has reached its limits). If an employer's policy had a similar condition, the NP might find him or herself involved in litigation about which insurer must pay first. Read and understand each policy's terms regarding other insurance. Ask insurers for terms that will suit your situation.

An assessor allowed candidates to plagiarise answers for health and social care exams, a hearing was told. Vivian Alan Bush also modified candidates' coursework before uploading it to an online assessment platform, an Education Workforce Council (EWC) fitness to practise committee found.

The three-person committee considered numerous allegations against Bush, who was registered as a work-based learning practitioner. The allegations arose when he was employed by Connective Care Education, a specialist training service provider for the health and social care sector in Pontypridd which has since gone into liquidation.

At the conclusion of the hearing nearly all of the proven allegations against Bush were found to have amounted to unacceptable professional conduct. The EWC's presenting officer, Sara Lewis, told the hearing – which lasted more than a week and was held remotely for its duration – that concerns about Bush's conduct came to light in February 2020.

READ MORE: Pupils called 'monkey' and attacked with rocks as shocking scale of racism in Wales' schools is uncovered

READ MORE: The man who wants children to have less summer holiday

She said another assessor, India Smith, observed him show a candidate's previously-submitted Essential Skills Wales (ESW) maths assessment to other candidates who were completing the test so that they could copy the answers. Join our WhatsApp news community here for the latest breaking news.

Mrs Smith, who was a witness in the hearing, told the panel she spotted the completed assessment on the table "directly between" two learners who were supposed to be sitting the test under test conditions. The committee also heard that another candidate told Mrs Smith that Bush had put a "dummy pack" – a completed assessment pack – in front of her when she was resitting an ESW maths test.

The panel found in the case of 10 learners Bush had either provided inappropriate assistance when they completed exams or had not ensured test conditions were adhered to. An investigation by the company into Bush's conduct had found "marked similarities" with learners who had completed controlled tasks on the same day, in the same location, and with the same invigilator tutor – Bush – with the same "unnecessary calculations" and writing which was "extremely similar or identical in wording".

The investigation by the company brought to light other concerns about Bush's conduct – including his modifying coursework by learners without their knowledge or consent before he uploaded it to Smart Assessor, the online platform which the company used. Witness Wendy Goddard, who was a quality assurance manager at Connective Care Education at the time and helped conduct the investigation, told the committee Bush uploaded work to learners' portfolios on the platform where the original author was a different individual.

In one instance Bush had sent an "sample answers" in an email to one learner and the same answers were sent back to him. He then uploaded those answers to Smart Assessor. In another instance Miss Goddard saidBush had changed terms in work submitted by another learner – such as changing CQC (Care Quality Commission, the body which regulates health and social care providers in England) to CIW (Care Inspectorate Wales, the equivalent for Wales) – before uploading it to the learner's online portfolio.

She added that in the feedback Bush provided to learners whose work he had assessed he did not mention he had modified their work or uploaded work that was not entirely their own. Mrs Smith had also alleged that Bush has displayed "obsessive behaviour" towards her – though not sexual in any way – and the committee found some instances of inappropriate behaviour to be proven.

These proven allegations included Bush telephoning Mrs Smith frequently, following her out of the room to wherever she was going, and following her into the toilet and knocking on the toilet to tell her he needed to speak to her – behaviour which she said had "impacted her dignity". The committee also found Bush had made derogatory remarks about the company to colleagues, sometimes in front of learners, including saying it was an "awful place to work" and the director was a "nasty, nasty man".

Bush, who did not attend the hearing and had no legal representation, had denied all the allegations. The hearing was told he had not been the subject of any previous disciplinary proceedings or any findings by the EWC. The panel noted he was an "experienced practitioner" and there was no financial benefit to him in helping learners pass assessments. But the committee said it was satisfied his actions were deliberate and he had attempted to conceal his actions.

Delivering the sanction committee chair Steve Powell said: "This committee has made findings that [Bush's] conduct was dishonest and lacked integrity" adding that his conduct had affected "several learners over a prolonged period" and had had "a serious impact on learners who needed to repeat the assessments concerned". The panel issued a prohibition order for Bush, meaning his name will be removed from the EWC register indefinitely and he will not be able to work as a work-based learning practitioner in Wales. After three years he will be able to apply for his name to be restored to the register.

• By R. Russell Rhinehart
• Operations & Management

Summary

Better collaboration between academic institutions and industry practitioners can Strengthen outcomes for industrial businesses and the schools, professors, and students they depend on.

Academic research about education is what substantially shapes higher education, which often leaves manufacturing and industrial businesses complaining about how new engineering graduates lack industry readiness. But if teachers had a better grasp of the applications and perspectives needed by industrial businesses, they could do a better job of creating an educational environment that generates fit-for-employment graduates. Additionally, with better collaboration, the creativity and expertise of academics could be a problem-solving resource for industry.

There is a need for industry to more effectively engage academic experts, and for more useful knowledge exchange. Although automation professionals and faculty are effectively working together in some places, there is a gap between what industry practitioners need and what academic experts provide. More frequent and influential collaborations can lessen that gap.

First, understand why a gap is there. Here are several reasons, categorized by contrasting terms:

Practicable-possible

Although industry requires what is practicable, faculty research is guided by what might be possible (and its mathematical demonstration). That means the knowledge being published in academic journals (like ISA Transactions) rarely affects the practice. Even if relevant, the journal articles require substantial cultural translation to become implementable. If academe is to support the practice, the practice needs to find a way to shape academic research.

Urgency-analytical

Academics work in a precommercial environment and have the investigative time to seek a clear and comprehensive system view of the fundamentals associated with a technical discipline. They want to discover nature and fundamentally defensible procedures. In contrast, practitioners tend to focus on immediate solutions for specific application cases, often using intuitive actions, workarounds, or a shotgun approach. Although true knowledge would be useful to them, situation urgency means practitioners often miss fundamentals that could become helpful.

Sufficiency-perfection

Industrial applications of technology are performed within a complex context, constrained by safety, regulations, human aspirations, and more; they are also applied on nonlinear processes. Such aspects are usually imprecisely quantifiable. Application success requires simple solutions, both mathematically and procedurally. By contrast, to achieve career goals, academics often seek complexity of mathematical analysis and proofs of certainty. These necessarily require an idealized context. One side is seeking perfection in an idealized context, while the other is seeking sufficiency in an ambiguous context.

Fruition-fundamentals

Industry wants to make things happen, to create and sustain a productive process or a marketable product. Academe seeks to discover the fundamental principles about nature. One focuses on how to do it, or the synthesis. The other focuses on defense of claims, or the analysis.

When people on one side read the publications of the other, they find little to nothing to address their needs. It is not that one side is doing it all wrong. Each side is doing what is right within its dissimilar environment. The gap between them—the differing goals, motivations, and measures of success—is what makes collaboration difficult.

About the survey

Collaboration, while difficult, is not impossible. In fact, the examples shown elsewhere in this article involving Miami University of Ohio, University of Michigan, and Purdue University are the results of successful collaborations. To bridge the gap in more places and for more institutions and industry practitioners, the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) conducted a survey of best practices.

ISA is one of nine professional societies in the American Automatic Control Council (AACC), which represents the U.S. to the IFAC Industry Committee (figure 1). An IFAC Industry Committee task force created the survey and analyzed the results, which are presented here.

The survey had 19 questions, about half of which solicited open text responses. The link to the survey was distributed within commercial publications, as well as via direct emails to the members of the IFAC Education and Industry Committees and ISA Divisions. Recipients were encouraged to further distribute the survey to their network of professional contacts. Approximately 260 individuals opened the survey, and 125 completed it.

Of those who provided geographical information, most are from Europe and North America. A total of 24 nations from six continents are represented, with the U.S. and France being the two largest contributors.

Most survey participants have experience in academia. In all, about 60 percent identify with academe and 40 percent with the practice; some claim significant experience in both. It is worth noting that many control practitioners are part of nonprofit, government, military, and even academic organizations, not just industry. So, we use the term “practice” to include all professionals who practice automation and control, regardless of their place of work. That is why we replaced the commonly used expression “university-industry collaboration” with the more inclusive “academic-practice collaboration” throughout the survey and this report.

The 12 academic disciplines represented in the survey were dominated by electrical, industrial, chemical, mechanical, and computer engineering. The 14 technology application domains were primarily represented by process, energy, and manufacturing. The nine practice sectors were substantially represented by industrial suppliers, industrial users, service providers, and vendors. The eight academic sectors involved were primarily research and graduate programs. Interestingly, most of the research entities listed their focus as application rather than pure science.

Understanding collaboration

Collaboration can take many forms, all of which can be mutually beneficial. Collaboration is an activity whereby individuals work together for a common purpose to achieve a common target benefit. Essential skills include trust, tolerance, self-awareness, empathy, transparency, active listening, and conflict resolution. Collaboration is not people working independently and following their own paths. Collaboration means accepting the experience of the others in the joint effort.

Examples of collaboration include industry practitioners helping in classrooms by providing guest lectures on Topics and application perspectives often omitted in education. They could provide case studies for teaching examples or student projects. Industry could help in laboratory experiences by providing equipment and technical support.

With such collaboration comes many benefits: The teaching faculty comes to better understand the needs of the practice. Respectful relations are formed for possible future problem-solving benefit. Contact with students gives industry folks a recruiting advantage. Students benefit from the exposure and enjoy the real-world insight.

As a reciprocal, industry could host academic associates at invited seminars or short courses for employee continuing education and skills development. The experience shapes the academic focus, improving both teaching and research.

Another example is industry-sponsored research projects for undergraduate or graduate students. Preferentially, these are precommercial investigations designed to help practitioners answer their questions or explore a possibility that might seem promising. The sponsorship could be one on one or within a consortium, and the students and faculty would be allowed to publish the results.

Industry also could hire faculty on an individual basis to solve a problem or to help develop a product, or it could engage equipment, faculty, and students to provide support through a university contract. Here, intellectual property (IP) concerns related to rights to inventions and patents would restrict academic publication. Myopic lawyers within both the industry sponsor and the academic institution seem to place IP possession above the benefit of collaboration and argue that their side should have exclusive rights. The IP impasse is often a barrier to collaboration, but when agreement can be reached, product and process development is enhanced.

The five players and their motivations

The survey reveals that five separate groups are involved in any academic practice collaboration. Each group must have an incentive to participate and to invest its resources to make a collaboration successful. The collaboration needs to be structured so each of the players experiences a benefit that justifies its investment. Each group also has its own culture and way of interacting. A collaboration must permit those diverse ways to synergize. The five groups are students, faculty, academic institutions, practitioners, and practice entities. Here is what motivates each to collaborate.

Students

Students are seeking practical knowledge and experience about the industrial context, which will lead to career and employment opportunities. Students are excited to work on real-world problems, to have access to state-of-the art hardware and software, and to relate the theory learned in class to specific practical situations. Students want to work with industrial mentors to gain in-depth understanding of the nontechnical side of practice, such as soft skills, project management, and market-driven decision making.

Faculty

Top incentives for faculty are professional development and funding. Professional development includes staying current with the state of the art in the field, selecting relevant research topics, validating ideas, having access to genuine data, networking, and maintaining visibility through academic publications. Research funding is required to build a research group, support equipment and travel, and provide summer income. Industry-funded projects provide the means to support and sustain an academic group. Sponsored projects identify ideas faculty can use for their more science-oriented research.

Other incentives for faculty are practical relevance of the curriculum and personal satisfaction. Collaboration with practice makes faculty more comprehensive teachers and mentors to their students, due to exposure to first-hand knowledge about technology, practices, expectations, and opportunities. Industrial collaboration can provide a unique and advantageous perspective on the state of the art. The ability to steer the students in the right direction naturally leads to personal satisfaction.

Academic institutions

Academic organizations seek funding, reputation, and societal impact. Sustainable programs tied to the practice community attract high-quality students, which in turn brings more interest from prospective partners to collaborate. Student participants typically are offered employment in the partner organization, which elevates the reputation of the academic institution. Universities like displaying collaborative programs and societal impact in their messages to alumni and when reporting to legislatures. Secondary benefits are acquisition of facilities, networking, and education quality.

Practitioners

Top priorities for practitioners are professional development, career promotion, and better ability to hire qualified personnel. Professional development includes access to new ideas, technological surveillance, refreshers on theoretical fundamentals, engagement in fundamental research, and peer benchmarking. Incentives also include personal satisfaction as a mentor, attending conferences, publishing in scientific journals, and an opportunity to influence the education of the next generation.

Collaborative projects with academia also provide an opportunity to train and evaluate potential employees before extending a job offer. In addition, student allegiance to the corporate collaborator is a recruiting advantage for students who are familiar with the technologies and practices of the corporation.

Practice entity

Top incentives for industrial companies and other practice entities are new ideas, new product/process development, access to new knowledge, recruiting, and brand-name recognition. Even if the involved students accept employment elsewhere, they might have a preference to use a collaborator’s product there, and their in-school affirmation of the experience will aid the sponsor’s recruitment of other students.

Companies may view collaborations with academia as low-cost research and development initiatives, or as investments in workforce development. The benefit-to-cost ratio is often enhanced when government funding also supports the initiative. Demonstrating societal responsibility is another motivator, achieved by helping and stimulating academia to focus on real-world problems and opportunities.

Ensuring collaboration success

Collaboration is not a one-sided game. An erroneous industry view is that a company hires the academic to develop a solution, the same way it might hire a consultant. An erroneous academic view is to take the position and the money and run (in pursuit of scientific publication). Notably, people may claim their academic-practice partnership is a collaboration, but in a collaboration the individuals share, are flexible, and accept each other’s perspectives.

Mutually beneficial collaboration requires all players to understand how the others perceive the initiative, and to help provide what the others will interpret as a win. It may require each player to deliver up on getting its primary “win” and to settle for a secondary benefit, so that other players also can experience a win. For example, faculty may primarily want to use industrial funding to support mathematical analysis and journal publications. This provides little value to an industrial sponsor. It is acceptable to pursue and publish mathematical analysis, but also seek to return the sponsor’s interpretation of benefit.

As another example, industry may primarily want, in return for a bit of funding support for a student, to be able to claim all rights to the lifetime of knowledge that the faculty advisor has acquired. Alternately, industry should accept the workforce development benefit of their contribution. Success requires each entity to find a way to shape the process and outcomes to satisfy their values, while making it satisfactory to the other entity. To create a win-win (actually win-to-the-5th-power) means that the process and outcomes that generate success for all may be suboptimal for any one entity. Industry practitioners are familiar with this condition of suboptimally operating one process unit to maximize manufacturing.

Collaboration also means mutual respect for the viewpoints and experience that the other has acquired. Having acquired career success, key individuals on either side of the gap are strongly immersed in their way of doing things. They have their own terminology, symbology, values, and conventions and often do not understand the other’s situation, ways, and needs.

As the survey results indicate, two aspects of collaboration are central to the success or failure of practice-academe initiatives: deliver the other collaborator adequate wins and respect the other’s experience. A summary of the top 10 ways to Strengthen collaboration is listed in figure 2; full survey results are available in the tables below.

What to avoid when collaborating

A list of aspects and attributes that create barriers to collaboration came out of the survey as well. Collaborative programs break down when one entity seeks to impose its way on the others. This might be the university claiming all rights to IP, industry imposing barriers to all publications, a faculty researcher taking the funding and steering the project for his or her preferred outcomes, industry seeking to manage the researchers with weekly reporting as if they were full-time employees, or the university wanting full control of all financial transactions.

Failure also happens when either side is not fully engaged, not providing the personnel time or resources required to aid the others. Engagement could falter because of personnel movement (either in management or the liaison), a shift in urgencies to be solved, or a “collaboration” that was really motivated by a nontechnical purpose. A collaboration must support the business needs. If it is motivated by an alumnus allegiance to the university, then support will prematurely end when the champion moves.

Final thoughts

Academic-practice collaboration is important to prepare industry-ready graduates and to align faculty research outcomes to have practicable value for practitioners. The structure, activities, and outcomes of any collaboration must be perceived as a benefit-to-cost win for each participant.

Collaboration can benefit industry by shifting academic expertise to provide industrial solutions, which prepares employment-ready graduates and adds value to the economy. Collaboration can benefit academe by providing research Topics and funding that lead to research productivity.

A director who understands all cultures and can actively shape the work, communications, processes, commitment, and outcomes to sustain credibility is a strong indicator of collaboration success. On the industrial side, the director needs to be powerful enough to sustain resource allocation during the next “corporate crises.”

Acknowledgements

The author enjoyed collaboration with task force members and others on the IFAC Industry Committee. We are especially grateful to the 125 survey respondents who provided valuable input and to Control magazine, ISA divisions, and IFAC for soliciting participants.

Successful Collaboration: Miami University of Ohio

The course segments are offered by application-oriented faculty and practitioners, and the course Topics are aligned with both industrial needs and engineering education criteria. The course and internships are attractive for students, and industry is happy that an academic program is supplying their workforce development needs. Visit the internship site. 

Successful Collaboration: University of Michigan

Benefitting industry, from 1997 to 2012, ERC-RMS produced more than 350 graduate students, most of whom are working in U.S. industry, and improved productivity in more than 69 production lines in 15 factories in the U.S. and Canada. Benefitting academe, application projects have been essential to the career development of many students and faculty and for bragging rights of the university. Although initial funding has waned, the legacy of collaboration, labs and courses, and relevant teaching continues. Visit the Engineering Research Center site.

Successful Collaboration: Purdue University

Glossary of Terms and Definitions

Key Survey Findings

The following tables list the attributes of the program and of the participants that are essential for success of each. Our analysis combined these results into “Top 10 ways to Strengthen collaboration” (figure 2).

Further reading

Evidence of the practice-academic gap in understanding is represented by the following articles. Some are academic analysis of the literature of collaboration case studies. They focus on discovering truth and present it in a sophisticated (high fog index) style, with secondary importance about what to do and not do for application success. Others seek to understand the problems and focus on what to do to overcome the gap.

Many organizations, as well as individuals, have or had accurate initiatives seeking to understand the gap and to provide guidance regarding collaboration best practices in education, or research and development. Despite the diversity of origins, countries, disciplines, methods to discover, and the academic or practice viewpoints of the authors, the bottom line of what to do is aligned with the results presented in the article.

• Awasthy, R., Flint, S., Sankarnarayana, R., and Jones, R. L. (2020) “A framework to Strengthen university-industry collaboration”, Journal of Industry-University Collaboration. 2(1), 49-62.
• Garousi, V. Petersen, K., Ozkan, B., (2016) “Challenges and Best Practices in Industry-Academia Collaborations in Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review”, Information and Software Technology, 79, 106-127.
• Mastellone, S., and van Delft, A. (2021), “The impact of control research on industrial innovation: What would it take to make it happen?”, Control Engineering Practice, 111 (3-43)
• Nsanzumuhire, S. U., and Groot, W. (2020) “Context perspective on University-Industry Collaboration processes: A systematic review of literature”, Journal of Cleaner Production, 258
• Pecas, P., and Henriques, E., (2006), “Best practices of collaboration between university and industrial SMEs”, Benchmarking An International Journal, Vol. 13 No. ½, 2006 pp. 54-67   
• Pertuzé, J., Calder, E., Greitzer E. and Lucas, W. (2010) “Best Practices for Industry-University Collaboration”, MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(4), 83-90
• Samad T., Bauer, M., di Cairano, S., Fagiano, L., Goodman, B., Goupil, P., Heertjes, M., Mareels, I., Odgaard, P., Rhinehart, R. R., Sanchez-Peña, R., Serbezov, A., and Sosseh, R., (2020) “Industry engagement with control research: Perspective and messages”, Annual Reviews in Control, 49, 1-14.                       
• Sauermann, H. and Stephan, P. (2013) “Conflicting logics? A multidimensional view of industrial and academic science”, Organization Science, 24(3), 889-909.
• Serbezov, A., Rhinehart, R. R., Goupil, P., Anizi, D. A., “Academic-Practice Collaborations in Automation and Control: Keys for Success” IFAC Symposium on Advances in Control Education 2022 (Hamburg, Germany, 24-27 July 2022.
• Wolfenden, H., Sercombe, H., and Tucker, P., (2019) “Making practice publishable: what practice academics need to do to get their work published, and what that tells us about the theory-practice gap”, Social Epistemology, 33 (6), 555–573.