Emily Fischer

30 August 2017
Visual Programming
Dr. Adwoa Donyina

Stochastic Modelling & Analysis of Dynamic Human Resource Allocation: A Summary

Dr. Adwoa Donyina is a Toronto native who received both her MSc and her PhD from
University of Leicester after receiving her undergraduate degree from University of Toronto. She
specializes in software engineering and currently teaches at Chapman University. She is also the
recipient of this summary of her video on Stochastic Modelling & Analysis of Dynamic Human
Resource Allocation (StADy), which, for simplicity, will be written in third person.
StADy is basically a robust way of optimizing operational decision-making for human
resource allocation. In laymans terms, it finds the most efficient ways to assign people jobs
within a business. Dr. Donyina believes StADy is a useful tool for project management because
its goal is to change the way workers are assigned. The other aspect of her goal is to test her
allocation without implementing it (thus, to run simulations). This can certainly increase
productivity, but she was interested in answering a few questions:
Will deadlines, priorities, or a combination of the two increase the number of tasks completed
before a deadline? How will it or they change the number of completed tasks out of the total?
Will the assignment policies decrease idle workers? Do escalation or balancing (or both together)
either increase the percent of tasks completed within the deadline or reduce the time past the
deadline (or both)? The short answer (for all of these) is: yes.
Of course, every endeavor has its challenges, and StADy is no different. Its difficult to
graph human behavior, because its difficult to fully predict human behavior. An example Dr.
Donyina gave in person, but not in her video, was using a GPSone could assume a human will
follow most if not all directions, but some people might take one left as opposed to the next, or
someone might hate left turns altogether and use right turns to avoid them. This is where
dynamic behavior comes into play. There are participants, roles, and responsibilities, and
multiple participants can fulfill multiple roles as it benefits task management given certain
conditions. These conditions include available actors (participants), open jobs (roles), and actors
capabilities (responsibilities). Other conditions include events such as escalation and priority.
There are certain requirements for StADy. They are access control, dynamic assignment,
unpredictability (errors included), and scheduling (either by deadline or priority). Then there are
optional requirements, such as policy and escalation. These combine to create the system by
which StADy functions. Dr. Donyina has made numerous contributions to this, including the
methodology, the language (both configuration and transformation modeling), and the translation
of design models into simulation models.
Dr. Donyina only cites one case study in her video (though she intends to add more). This
case study is her mothers pharmacy. The actors are the registered pharmacist, the technician, the
pharmacy student, the cashier, and the patient. The roles are dispenser, enterer, filler, cashier, and
customer. Different actors sometimes can play different rolesfor example, a registered
pharmacist could dispense, enter, fill, or cashier; however, a patient could only be a customer.
Next, there are tasks (bringing the prescription [Rx], entering the Rx, filling the Rx, checking the
Rx, receiving payment, and counseling the customer).
StADys methodology includes business modeling (UML diagrams), process execution
design (using StADy models and graph transformation rules]), process encoding (using visual
automated model transformations syntax). Finally, this ends up as performance evaluation
simulation and analysis of the simulation. Dr. Donyina then explains the syntax and provides
diagrams for the technical and laymans diagrams. The highlight of StADys language is how it
replaces a traditional control flow structure with a rule-based approach, allowing for different
actors fulfilling different roles conditionally, based on ability and need.
Dr. Donyina provides a couple of scenarios to explain the application of StADy. The first
has Emily, the patient, fulfilling the role of the customer. Bob, the cashier (who, later, can fill
prescriptions for level two escalation), and Cindy, the registered pharmacist, are both available,
and the dispensing pharmacist position is open. That application is simple: Cindy would fulfill
the dispensing role. Due to the close deadline, the escalation has, well, escalated. The next
scenario builds on the first one, with a second task (unnamed patient, but well call him George)
with a higher priority. Cindys task is now realized to be missing the filled prescription. So, what
happens? Cindys task, now level two, can be done by Bob, while Cindy can work on Georges
task (whereas Bob doesnt have the capability). The application in this scenario is slightly more
nuanced, but thats the gist of it.
So, whats next for StADy? Dr. Donyina has a few ideas in mind. She would like to
expand the language to account for flexible work hours, malicious unexpected actions,
emergencies, and the removal of a job position. Shed like to have quantitative validation. Shed
like to test and promote usability in StADy and add more case studies. Dr. Donyina has a great
program already, and it seems to be headed in an even better direction.