The OR Society Undergraduate Award

One prize is awarded per registered institution per academic year. At each institution, the student who completes the best OR project as part of their relevant undergraduate degree course is awarded: 

  • A certificate
  • £50
  • Each winning student’s name, their institution and course details and project abstract is published on The OR Society's website
  • An article also features in Inside OR magazine with photographs of all prize winners at the seminar series or with photographs forwarded by the institutions

Please submit entries by emailing [email protected].

Citation for The OR Society Undergraduate Award 2024

Ana Blanco Moreno, University of Warwick

Ana is an upcoming MMORSE graduate who is looking out for opportunities that allow her to combine her passions in mathematics, statistics and the creative industries.

THE ROLE OF PROBLEM-STRUCTURING METHODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANALYTICS CAPABILITIES

This project investigates the potential for using Problem Structuring Methods, specifically cognitive mapping and SODA (Eden & Ackermann, 2001), in developing an organisation’s analytics capabilities.

It relies on a case study review from her analytics placement in a large media company and existing academic research to evaluate the DELTA+ Model (Davenport & Harris, 2017), the most prominent framework for analytics development.

In analysing her case study, she developed a hybrid Kolb-Brookfield reflective model. Ana’s model leverages Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (1984) and Brookfield’s Four Lenses (2017), to formally structure the examination of a case study, explore a range of perspectives and communicate findings in an organised manner.

Overall, Ana’s review of DELTA+ found that:

  • It requires executive support to align analytics efforts with the broader goals of the organisation. Without said support, the model expects most institutions to fail to develop analytically.
  • It neglects analytics acuity (Abdul, et al., 2018), i.e. fails to address the set of factors that ensure technical sophistication translates into value creation. These include analytics integration, clear communication between analysts and stakeholders, strong analytics leadership, and a robust feedback process by which to identify emerging analytics opportunities.

By applying cognitive mapping (a key tool within SODA) to her case study Ana was able to identify local analytics objectives directly tied to the organisation’s needs. The technique also provided a strong basis for a feedback cycle with which to review analytic priorities. Hence, cognitive mapping on its own showed strong promise in addressing the limitations of DELTA+.

Furthermore, a review of SODA´s literature indicated SODA workshops´ potential in developing analytics acuity. Such workshops were shown to transform stakeholders into active participants in the analytics process (Rosenhead, 2006), thereby facilitating analytics integration. They also equipped analysts with mediation and communication skills, capabilities that are necessary to become effective analytics leaders (Eden & Ackermann, 2001).

Hence, Ana proposes a novel model for analytics development, the SODA-DELTA+ Model, which leverages SODA and cognitive mapping to enable a bottom-up approach to analytics development and could allow a more diverse set of organisations to reach analytics sophistication.