Transcript

Training for Global Software Development in an International “Learning Network”

Dr. Benedikt Lutz

Siemens AG Österreich [email protected]

Abstract

Siemens Austria’s Program and System Engineering Division SIS PSE has moved away from the classic approach of offering training via an in-house Training Center towards a new approach called “Learning Network”. This Learning Network is part of PSE wide international knowledge networking, and consists of about 100 internal trainers, who perform their training activities beside their main job as engineers, project managers, quality managers, or the like. Given the organization's set-up in a global software development environment, this has particular advantages in terms of international standardization of content (where needed), provision of local content, cost, and pedagogical efficiency. This paper briefly outlines the challenges PSE is faced with, introduces the approach adopted by PSE in detail, gives three examples of training for skills development specifically needed in global software development, highlights the critical success factors of such an approach, and provides a résumé. 1. Siemens SIS PSE

The purpose of this industrial practice paper is to present a new approach to in-house continuing education which has been introduced more than two years ago at Siemens Austria PSE Program and System Engineering. To make this approach easier to understand, I would first of all like to briefly describe the position and organizational set-up of PSE within Siemens.

Ever since its foundation in 1961, PSE has made a name for itself as a highly innovative R&D partner for all Siemens groups and divisions. Having not only broad experience in all areas of business where Siemens is active – information and communications, automation and control, power, transportation, medical – but also the ability to optimally tap into this knowledge network, PSE is at the service of all Siemens entities when it comes to finding an R&D partner, both at the corporate and regional levels.

Today, this offering by far exceeds technology issues alone, covering all phases of the product lifecycle.

In Austria, about 2,900 employees, more than 50% of whom hold a university degree, work for PSE at Vienna, Graz, Linz, and Salzburg. PSE's steadily growing subsidiaries abroad – PSE China, PSE Croatia, PSE Germany, PSE Romania, PSE Slovakia, ANF DATA in Prague and Brno, PSE Turkey, PSE Hungary – have a headcount of currently 4,000.

These basic facts alone define key requirements for what PSE has to be able to achieve - highly dislocated development combined with the implementation and maintenance of uniform quality standards as well as the roll-out of suitable processes and methodologies for implementing efficient technology and knowledge management.

Since January 2007, PSE is going to merge with other Siemens units, namely SBS (Germany and world wide), SISL (India), DIP (Greece) and BIC (Switzerland), most of them also acting internationally. Altogether, there are now approximately 43.000 engineers working in this new Siemens Group called Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS). This globally acting organization shows even more the need of high quality training in a global software development environment. 2. Challenges for in-house learning

It is precisely the enormous growth of PSE’s international organization outside Austria (a plus of more than 1,000 employees in fiscal year 2005/2006) that gives rise to major challenges for in-house education and training. Most new employees are recruited immediately after graduation from university-level education programs. While most of these institutions provide a high level of technical education, they still have little to offer in terms of project management, development methodology, quality management (for instance, reviewing, testing, effort estimation) and soft skills (teamwork, efficient communication in an international environment, presentation skills, etc.). In this respect, there is hardly any difference between the countries in South Eastern

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Europe and China, and – come to that – Austria, where there is also some catching up to do in this area.

The challenges in this field refer to different aspects and topics. The corresponding principles seem to be basically similar throughout the entire industry (with faster innovation cycles probably making things even more critical in the software industry). At PSE, we have identified 4 different categories of education demand.

2.1. Technical specialist information

This type of information is needed directly in projects. This includes classic technology issues such as innovations in currently used programming languages or new development frameworks (e.g. Java, .NET, etc.). Typically, education and training of this kind is needed promptly for a given case (project). For these topics, university education can, at best, furnish a sound basis, but the latest developments will have to be learned either on the job or with the help of additional training (mostly provided locally from company internal or external resources). Company internal standardization of such training is not necessary; most important is fast and up-to-date availability.

2.2. Domain specific specialist information

This may include such diverse subject matters as UMTS signaling, railway technology, cryptography or medical engineering standards. Education and training in this field is typically developed and provided by the respective operative units in close collaboration with Siemens in-house clients. This type of education and training can be planned over a longer term and is very important when it comes to acquiring what is called solution competence (Siemens PSE is expected to offer more than just the technical implementation of solutions specified by someone else). Acquiring and keeping such specialist information up-to-date requires a high level of in-house expertise as well as direct access to outside expert knowledge (industry gurus, standardization bodies, etc.). This type of training is restricted to specific domains, and should be standardized and offered for especially these business units for which the content is relevant. Company-wide standardization is not necessary.

2.3. Methodology training

This type of training is most important for the international standardization of company internal processes, as software development methodologies, quality management, project management and other

internal processes, which are applied uniformly throughout PSE. This type of education and training can be planned over a longer term as it is not immediately dependent on specific projects. The special challenge here is to offer the right mix of theory and practice: the primary aim is to acquire – on the basis of a theoretical framework – skills that can be used in day-to-day project work as a key element of applied corporate culture, common language and terminology (“in our projects, we do it this way:...”, “a quality assurance plan contains the following items…”, “the user requirements specification is a reference document for acceptance testing by the client”, etc.).

The examples given below (chapters 5-7) belong to this category, which is – at least in our opinion – most important for supporting high quality global software development.

2.4. Personal skills training

This type of training includes topics such as management techniques, leadership skills, teamwork, stress management, etc. (be it as individual training events or as career-specific curricula for experts, line and project managers). As in many other companies, this category of training is hosted and driven by the Siemens HR departments, and mostly performed by company external personal skills trainers. 3. Weaknesses of in-house training centers

Many large companies used to have and still have in-house training centers to meet these demands, in most cases by offering a mix of full-time trainers, specialists from various departments giving lectures on their respective fields of expertise, as well as external trainers offering training on specific subject matters and in particular personal skills. At PSE, we too used to have a training center located in Vienna for many years. However, during the course of the past few years, the weaknesses of such an organization form became clearly evident, with a corresponding decline in attendance: For PSE’s subsidiaries outside Austria, the professional services offered by the training center, which, equipped with Austrian staff, had to charge “Austrian” rates, was simply too expensive. What is more, the organization structure of a classic training center seemed to be too inflexible to promptly satisfy concrete project demands (customized training, project coaching, etc.).

The employment of full-time in-house trainers for technical and methodology subjects is another factor that is rather problem-prone in today’s fast-lived job environment: there always comes a point where full-

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time trainers – in spite of their excellent subject-matter and teaching expertise – develop a déformation professionelle, with the understanding of the real needs and wishes of course participants decreasing with the distance from concrete day-to-day project life. This applies in particular to methodology training of the type described above in chapter 2.3.

State-of-the-art approaches to adult education highlight the principle of situated learning: students are to acquire new skills on a step-by-step basis as close as possible to their real work situation, getting an opportunity to slowly take over more and more responsibility in line with their increasing skills and capabilities. In many characteristic features, this principle is rather similar to a classic apprenticeship (the relevant literature often quotes the learning of a trade or the education of midwives in this context; the most frequently quoted standard publication on situated learning was written by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger already in the early nineties [1]).

According to these principles, classic classroom teaching can at best be a part of training within the framework of an overall concept, which should in any case provide for an additional real-life component that is as authentic as possible.

Another key approach towards efficient teaching and learning is the concept of blended learning: a mixture of learning methods suitable for the given purpose is combined to form an overall package. This may include face-to-face sessions as well as e-learning modules or self-study, possibly combined with discussions in a self-organized learning group. What is always crucial in this context, however, is guidance and support provided by a tutor or coordinator. Given the obvious pedagogical shortcomings of pure e-learning approaches, it seems called for to apply the concept of blended learning to e-learning offers.

A vast and differentiated need for education and training, an international set-up, new pedagogical concepts - all of these challenges led us to giving up the classic training center concept in favor of an internationally oriented networking approach.

4. The new approach – PSE Learning Network

The key elements of this approach can be described as follows:

4.1. Part-time trainers

All in-house trainers have a full-time job as developer, tester, project manager or line manager, with their training activities typically accounting for only 10-30% of their overall workload. This ensures that trainers stay in touch with day-to-day work in PSE’s development projects. Course participants get first-hand, authentic information, “from practice for practice”. A key aspect in this context, however, is adequate selection and qualification of trainers (train-the-trainer programs, facilitator training, etc.); not everybody who knows a lot is also able to efficiently convey that knowledge to others. Altogether there are about 100 persons acting as internal trainers in PSE Learning Network.

4.2. International trainer communities

In order to move away from the classic centralistic approach (where all trainers come from PSE HQ in Vienna), we invest time and effort into setting up international groups of trainers. The aim here is to employ mixed pairs of trainers for key strategic training events, where the local trainer contributes the local perspective and the local know-how, while the international trainer represents the international overall perspective. We started with Austrians assuming the function of international trainers and are now moving gradually towards deploying trainers from different countries on a “cross-wise” basis. Apart from saving costs due to lower local hourly rates, this approach has two other positive effects: local responsibility (“this is our topic, and we want to present it as well as possible”) and international networking among trainers (informal know-how sharing, corporate culture).

4.3. Head Office for strategic issues only

We have now a very small Head Office (in Vienna): a training center with about a dozen employees was turned into a coordination office with only one full-time staff member.

We limited our Head Office tasks to strategically relevant issues only: When a Java course is needed in Romania, this demand will probably be satisfied best and most cost-efficiently at the local level (using local resources, university liaison, etc.). A training course

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for software development methodology or quality management (where the aim is to provide uniform standards worldwide) on the other hand needs Head Office attention (with respect to contents, course material, and trainer qualification). Consequently, we defined about a dozen “strategically relevant” courses (standard seminars) which are held internationally based on uniform standards. Basically, these are methodology training, as well as personal skills courses (for which HR is responsible).

4.4. Decentralization of course organization

In the country organizations outside Austria, the entire course organization effort is provided locally; in Austria, we collaborate with the Siemens AG Training Center when it comes to course organization matters (like publication of training content and date, participants’ registration, preparation of seminar rooms, photocopying training material, printing certificates, billing, etc.).

4.5. Clearly defined roles

A Seminar Owner (responsible for contents, in most cases the primary trainer for this subject matter) was defined for each standard seminar, as well as a Seminar Sponsor (the company institution behind it, typically a Corporate Unit such as Quality Management or Technology Management). The Seminar Owner dedicates about 10-30% of his capacity to this task, in addition to his or her actual job as project manager, developer or expert in a subject field. For seminars with several trainers in different countries the Seminar Owner serves as “integration person” coordinating the respective trainer community, and controlling the seminar content as well as the quality of seminar delivery. Self-motivation and identification with the seminar topic are the key success factors in this context.

4.6. Simple and robust processes and tools

In our international cooperation efforts, we restrict ourselves to only few mandatory elements, such as planning, documentation and feedback for standard seminars, which is necessary not least because we have to meet the requirements of various international standards relevant for PSE, such as ISO 9001 or the CMMI model (in the most recent Siemens internal CMMI assessment the PSE training system fully met all requirements asked for – we got a level 4, and the high maturity of our training content and international delivery was specifically mentioned).

A PSE-wide centrally managed education and training database (“Training Manager”) is already being used throughout Austria and being rolled out gradually in the international organization. A contact person responsible for handling communications and managing in-house education and training matters has been appointed for each country and subdivision. At the same time, it was also important to set up a simple commercial billing and charging process for in-house training services.

4.7. English as international training language

Siemens as one of the most famous German companies has of course a long tradition in the use of German as corporate language. Although the “official” company language was changed to English some years ago, it is still clear that German remains important, especially for the middle and east European countries being PSE´s subsidiaries, which have historically a strong German-speaking tradition (like Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Romania). Especially for the Austrians (and many of our internal customers in Germany, too), the change to English is not easy, and this is of course accompanied by a lot of intercultural challenges and - generally speaking - by a “loss of power” (you are simply “weaker” if you do not communicate in your mother tongue).

After all, the use of English as an international “lingua franca” is gaining more and more ground, and training events provide a good opportunity for all those involved to also practice their English. Another key argument in this context is the dissemination of a uniform terminology for development methodology and quality management. For this reason, we are currently revising all of our (centrally managed) training material to arrive at a “monolingual” basis. Only this English material will then be updated centrally, with translations to local languages, if any, being done on the responsibility (and at the charge of) the country organization in question. We are also using (spoken) English more and more in specific subject and methodology training, (something that comes naturally to international trainers). When it comes to personal skills training, being able to use one’s native language seems to remain an important issue – especially where sensitive matters such as communication and emotions are concerned, where your own language offers you a much broader and much more differentiated range of expression and understanding.

4.8. Sharing information and training material

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Even where training events are offered only locally, it may be useful to inform other countries and divisions about them (e.g. training for company “newcomers” in a specific country). So we strongly support open communication and information sharing within the training community. Our in-house motto in this context is “Don’t reinvent the wheel”! To provide support for such information sharing, we have set up an intranet website providing descriptions of training offers, a News function, as well as a file share with course material accessible to all Learning Network contact persons worldwide, who make frequent use of this feature.

4.9. Guidance and sponsoring for new training

The development of strategically relevant training courses is financed from central funds, which also offers a possibility of making targeted interventions where the content and pedagogical concept is concerned. What does the company really need and how can this be best implemented within the framework of training measures? Is classic face-to-face training or an e-learning module better suited, or a combination of self-guided study and regular meetings in a learning group, or might a fully customized training/coaching approach with expert help be the best option after all? Here we try to gradually pilot and evaluate new pedagogical concepts, offering them on a broad basis if they prove successful.

For the deployment of new face-to-face training courses we follow two possible approaches, depending on the importance of the training and frequency of delivery. For training which is to be “rolled out” in all countries and to be held regularly, we prefer a centrally hosted “train the trainer”-approach (for all future trainers), for less frequent training we prefer a “coaching”-approach (single future trainers make a “career” as participant – observer – co-trainer – fully responsible trainer).

In the following chapters there are three examples of this approach, which we find to be very useful in our global software development environment. 5. Example 1: Junior Project Manager Curriculum

Given PSE’s strong growth, the international education and training of (future) team leaders and managers of smaller projects is particularly urgent, as university education shows significant deficits in particular when it comes to project management issues. One aspect is to provide the methodologies needed, both in theory and practice, another aspect is the

development of personal skills. This is why we have developed – in parallel with the standard curriculum in Austria – a curriculum tailored specifically to the needs of PSE as an international organization, offering not only subject-matter and personal skills training, but also trying to convey our international corporate culture (as implicit part of this training).

The curriculum consists of three parts: A half-day kickoff meeting where the contents and

positions of the curriculum are presented, participants can get to know each other, voice their expectations and coordinate them with the trainers. A major aspect of the kickoff meeting is the presence of members of higher local management who talk about what they expect from the participants in concrete terms and then face a questions & answers session.

The second part, which is called PM Methods, is a 3-day methodology seminar based on international standards (like PMI), combined with Siemens specific regulations, and addressing the following topics: project management terminology – project environment analysis – structure planning – project organization – effort estimation – risk management – network planning – resource and cost planning – project controlling – PM in a global software development environment.

The third part, PM Culture, is another 3-day intensive seminar (held 1-2 months after PM Methods) which offers a mix of personal skills topics and company-specific information: phases of team development – contracting – conflict management in teams – development methodology applied in practice – the role of quality management – commercial aspects – use of in-house tools.

On the penultimate evening, a discussion round is organized with local management, which in most cases tends to be informative and personally enriching for both sides.

These seminars are normally held outside the company in a seminar hotel, which is a tried approach with many advantages (good learning atmosphere, fewer interruptions, intensive informal communication until late evenings…). This kind of “seminar culture” where events are organized outside the company and people stay overnight has been common practice in Austria for decades, while not being really widespread in Eastern Europe and especially in China until now (in addition, we found some interesting intercultural differences: In Eastern Europe, most of our young “upwardly oriented” employees liked such events as incentive and gratification, whereas in China people tended to feel “forced” to spend private time with their company colleagues).

The role of the trainer deserves special attention: Kickoff and PM Methods are presented by a “local”

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and an “international” trainer, an ideal combination of local content and corporate perspective. For PM Culture, the “local” trainer is also available for specialist topics, while personal skills topics are typically covered by a specialized trainer (from outside the company), often in the local language.

This approach enables us to achieve a high level of professionalism when it comes to convey in-house topics in an internationally uniform manner while keeping costs relatively low. A key prerequisite in this context is trainer training and support for the international trainer community. Trainers undergo a one-week basic seminar and then meet at least annually to share best practices and information. Apart from training-specific aspects, these meetings also serve an important community-building function across country and department boundaries, which has a highly positive effect on training quality.

6. Example 2: SEM Seminar

This is the basic seminar for the PSE specific System Engineering Method SEM. SEM has already a long tradition, starting in the early eighties as classical software engineering handbook. During the nineties there was done major rework, delivering SEM as an intranet application and in subsequent years offering step by step specific derivates (e.g. for supporting HW development, product development and the agile SW development approach). For detailed information, see [2]. The backbone of SEM is a set of highly elaborated document templates to be used in PSE projects, surrounded by detailed descriptions of activities, roles and responsibilities of all people involved in a project.

The major goal of this five day seminar is to develop a common understanding of the processes and terminology used in PSE projects and to learn the structure and content of the most important documents (e.g. software requirements specification, architectural specification, project plan, quality assurance plan, test plan…). Moreover, the participants learn and practice many topics relevant in “real life” projects, which still are not very common in academic computer science education (e.g. effort estimation, review techniques in theory and practice, writing a test plan and test cases…).

By delivering the SEM seminar we intend to teach a “common language of understanding” for people of different departments and countries of PSE (in April 2007, we had already the 250th SEM seminar). In many international projects there are tedious discussions about e.g. the structure and content of project plans or software requirements specifications. In PSE, we avoid many of such problems by providing and teaching high

quality document structures with paradigmatic contents, which are then afterwards in “real life” projects easily accessible via a common intranet platform open to the whole Siemens Company.

Based on this SEM seminar, there are two specific standard seminars for quality assurance topics:

According to SEM, there has to be defined in each project a responsible person for quality assurance (on project level). These QA responsible persons have to attend a specific 2 day seminar, which is delivered locally by an international trainer community similar to the PM trainer community mentioned in chapter 5.

For (dedicated) quality managers on organization level, there are two standardized seminars on advanced level (each 2 days long). These are the high level topics delivered by different specialists from central departments. These seminars are still held in Austria, because for the international quality managers, too, it is important to come into (personal) contact with people from the central departments (which are all still situated in Vienna).

7. Example 3: Curriculum for Software Architects

Whether the development of software architectures is an art or a science is something the experts cannot agree on. But what seems to be an established fact beyond any doubt is that software architects are much sought-after experts with rather special skills that are not taught to a great extent at university level. A combination of expert knowledge, both in theory and practice, a lot of project experience, and communicative skills seem to play a major role in this area.

Following extensive in-house discussion and searching on the external market, we came up with a curriculum for future software architects, which comprises the following parts:

We start with a 3-hour kickoff meeting for getting to know each other, sharing expectations, and getting an overview of the curriculum. At this kickoff meeting, all participants receive pertinent literature (a standard reference work on SW architecture).

The second part consists of a 3-day seminar “Analysis and Design” (proprietary): This seminar addresses UML (Unified Modeling Language), patterns (architectural, design and analysis patterns) and involves in-depth work on a case study.

The next 3-day seminar “SW Architectures” is a seminar offered throughout Siemens with internationally renowned experts from our Corporate Technology unit in Munich (Siemens CT), which not only provides a sound basic grounding, but also

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information on the latest trends and developments within Siemens.

These seminar blocks are followed by 5 half-day workshops on special topics with experts from PSE (e.g., model driven architecture, service-oriented architecture, role of the architect in writing and reviewing proposals, etc.). The experts present examples from their day-to-day practice and are available for questions. Participants can also present their own cases, thus making their own contributions to the workshops. Sometimes these discussions, in combination with the study of the pertinent literature, lead on to more advanced topics that can be addressed in workshops of their own.

The entire curriculum is accompanied and facilitated by a Siemens PSE employee who is a renowned expert in matters of software architecture and is in touch with many software architects throughout PSE. These contacts are cultivated in the form of so-called Expert Nets, which offer a forum for lively discussions of current topics, or even concrete project support in development projects (for the structure and functioning of PSE's in-house networks for knowledge management, see Heiss and Jankowski [3]).

The curriculum participants are introduced to the Architecture Expert Net, which unites PSE software architects across departmental and country boundaries, thus getting to know lots of other people from different departments who have similar tasks and responsibilities and may help them find solutions to all kinds of problems. 8. Critical success factors for this approach

This Learning Network approach has turned out to be considerably more successful than a classic training center in our specific situation. This applies to several aspects:

Costs have been reduced significantly (human resources for trainers, infrastructure).

International demand for the services offered has grown (lower cost, stronger local involvement and thus more focus on local topics and interests).

Training seems to become more “effective”: While this aspect is of course difficult to measure, the feedback we receive shows some evidence of this effect, which I personally attribute above all to the exclusive use of highly motivated “part-time” company internal experts (“from practice for practice”) and the more flexible attention to specific trainee needs and requirements that comes with it. I think that we will have to continue doing research in this area as well as piloting different pedagogical concepts.

That said, it is absolutely not a matter of course for such an approach to succeed. At PSE, we are fortunate to have had and still have well-suited instruments and a “friendly” environment:

1.) PSE has a large unit with about 700 employees (PSE KB, which stands for “competence base”) that works not immediately for the various Siemens Groups, but acts as PSE’s “technology think-tank”, providing support and assistance to the subdivisions that work for different fields of industry. Most of our trainers come from PSE KB.

2.) Within PSE KB, we have what is called Support Centers where dedicated personnel provide in-house support on technology and methodology issues (e.g., MS Windows technologies, databases, configuration management, project management, project experience, usability, etc.); for a detailed description of theory and practice of Support Centers see [4]. The declared mission of these Support Centers is to set up international networks dealing with their field of expertise and to disseminate their knowledge in the form of consulting and also training. For this reason, the Support Centers are a major factor when it comes to developing and holding training courses.

3.) Management commitment: Without the support of one’s superiors, it is hardly conceivable to consider a “part-time” job as trainer. Fortunately, “networking in practice” can rely on a long and also economically successful tradition at PSE. True to the motto that not having knowledge, but sharing it is power, this is a win-win situation for all stakeholders: Through their work, trainers acquire new skills (presentation, consulting, facilitation), get to know lots of new people and become better known within the company; superiors can be proud of successful employees who, from time to time, may come up with interesting contacts to other departments, countries and experts; and course participants get authentic and practice-related information first-hand. 9. Conclusion

For PSE, the move from a classic training center to a Learning Network has been successful because it ties in well with PSE's corporate culture, international organizational set-up and already existing institutions. A key aspect is the international networking among trainers as well as the combination of centrally managed high-quality course concepts and material with local delivery under full local responsibility.

Regarding the further development of pedagogical concepts, maybe incorporating e-learning approaches (which we have, on purpose, not been pushing so far),

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we have to keep on working: The top priority is to ensure effective training.

What is suitable for us will probably not be a cure-all for in-house education and training needs everywhere. However, where cost-efficiency under the circumstances of a global software development company is a priority, others may find this a useful approach. 10. References [1] Lave, J., E. Wenger, Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.

[2] Kaindl, H., B. Lutz, and P. Tippold, Methodik der Softwareentwicklung. Vorgehensmodell und State-of-the-Art der professionellen Praxis, Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1998. [3] Heiss, M., J. Jankowski, “The Technology Tree Concept – An Evolutionary Approach to Technology Management in a Rapidly Changing Environment”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Engineering Management Conference 2001. Albany, N.J, 2001, pp. 37-43. [4] Zopf, S., “Changing of Project Culture through Support Centers”, Proceedings of the Second World Congress for Software Quality (2WCSQ), Yokohama, 2000, pp. 485-490.

International Conference on Global Software Engineering(ICGSE 2007)0-7695-2920-8/07 $25.00 © 2007


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