in this issue

Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere

2006 PCD Awards

B2B Usability

The Elements of a Design Pattern

The On-Demand, Open Source Business Software Transformation

A reflecting and/or refracting Pool: When a local community becomes autonomous online

Common Elements of Risk

Allison Rossett

Amazon's book description:

Not all training requires a formal classroom or complex computer solutions. For some tasks, a job aid is the most efficient and accurate way to get the performance trainers want. This book is revised and updated to reflect both contemporary thought and technology. Written by training expert Allison Rossett, this revised classic text provides all the guidance and tools needed to select, design, develop, implement, and evaluate all sorts of job aids for a variety of workplace needs and environments. This second edition reflects the current technology and emergent thought on cognitive distribution, workflow engineering, and knowledge and learning content management.
 

The PCD Toolbox

In the past few issues of EPSScentral's .infoREADER and News and Events we have been highlighting exciting new tools for developing performance centered systems, such as MeasureLive™ and BriteWorks™. At the same time we have been engaged in project work where we apply such tools. We therefore thought that you might like an overview of the project landscape and how we are applying the tools.

First, the performance centered systems that we are building relate to enterprise systems, including customer relationship management (Siebel), human resources (PeopleSoft) and the like. In some cases these are new enterprise systems; in other cases, significant upgrades. In all cases there are legacy systems or third-party systems that are included in the performer's (aka "end user's") workflow. In most cases performer turnover is high per annum. The new systems not only replace existing functionality, but provide enhancements to processes that will ultimately improve business performance.

For example, adding Siebel's Quote functionality to an enterprise sales process will not only improve performance on the quote process itself, but will also enhance the sales force's ability to gather customer intelligence through data mining, better manage the pipeline through analytics and forecasting and generally improve the prospecting strategy. Ultimately, there should be a significant return on investment for implementing the new enterprise system, and this is where our PCD projects play a substantial role.

What are the performance support challenges that we are addressing, I hear you cry? They are best represented by the graph below:



We need to:

• Shorten the development cycle (time to "cutover")
• Mitigate the performance dip at cutover
• Minimize errors and omissions during cutover
• Support and improve performance continuously over time

Translation: Don't boil the ocean with complex technical solutions, but meet the needs with a focus on performance, both business and human performance. Manage change in such a manner that existing workers continue to perform at exemplary levels. Then increase performance by monitoring and closing gaps, refining and deploying best practices and incrementally introducing the new functions that the system investment was intended to support. Ultimately, ensure a hearty ROI.

Performance centered solutions are not just knowledge or learning based, but include business process improvement, system enhancements and increased usability. What are the tools of the trade that can make all of this happen? They include "factories" such as BriteWorks™, which provide enterprise power without coding, reducing development time by as much as 80% and affording focus on business and human factors rather than on technology. BriteWorks not only enables us to develop enterprise-class applications in this manner, but provides the means to create performance centered bridges between legacy applications and new applications. All without dependency on IT.

What about the business processes and related quality measurements that inform improvement? Tools like MeasureLive and Impact 360 take snapshots of real performance - transaction times, cycle times, bottlenecks, utilization and more, in the live application space. Performance is monitored before, during and after cutover and measured against a set of standards. We can thus regularly intervene with improvements that close performance gaps. In this way we ensure that existing performers do not experience lapses in productivity while new performers reach competency in minimal time. In other words, tools like MeasureLive are critical to achieving the shortest time to competency; and minimal time to competency is critical to ROI.

Performance centered systems are compromises between the best business processes, human factors, knowledge and learning. All knowledge support is embedded in the task context and generated from model-driven tools, which are those that capture processes from the performer perspective and rapidly generate context and content to address knowledge gaps. Tools like Epiplex and RWD Infopak catalog the business processes while working hand-in-hand with the process measurement tools and the development tools like MeasureLive and BriteWorks.

When a gap is identified you can immediately review it, quantify it, determine the optimal solution in terms of embedded knowledge, process improvement or system redesign with the right focus on the human factors. These tools rapidly identify gaps, afford development speed and quickly generate knowledge objects that fill the gaps, address the performance curve and, ultimately, establish the ROI.

When we apply this combination of tools to create performance-centered systems, the resulting returns-on-investment (ROI) are profound. Typical results are net increases in annual revenue ten times the solution investment. In one case a $200,000 investment yielded a $4Million net annual increase in revenue for three years straight. In another case an investment of $400,000 resulted in a first year net increase of $4Million and $21Million over five years.

I've said it before: These are exciting times! The PCD vision expressed in 1990 is becoming a reality now that we have the methods and tools to address not only the learning component of performance, but the business process, enterprise system and human factors.

Regards, 
 

Gary J. Dickelman

It's that time again! EPSScentral LLC is now accepting submissions for the 2006 Performance Centered Design Awards! Here's your chance to gain recognition for yourself, your organization, your solution or tool, and your business sponsor.

User testing shows that business-to-business websites have substantially lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings.

Design teams are discovering that a well-built design pattern library makes the user interface development process substantially easier. A quality library means team members have the information they need at their fingertips. Choosing usable components that work smoothly for users becomes the developer's path of least resistance. Innovation, while not prohibited, is reserved for those times when it's really necessary, allowing the team to leverage the work already done by others.

Traditionally, responsibility for completing a mission and the resources needed to pursue it aligned with organizational boundaries. However, key drivers in the business environment, such as the globalization of business and the fast pace of technological change, have resulted in increased outsourcing and partnering among organizations. It is now common for multiple organizations to work collaboratively in pursuit of a single mission, which creates a degree of programmatic and process complexity that can be difficult to manage effectively. In today's business environment, management and staff must be able to deal with intricate and unclear interrelationships and dependencies among technologies, data, tasks, activities, processes, and people. Mission success in these complex environments requires people to sort through the inherent complexity when making important decisions. Effective risk management that is based on a solid conceptual foundation is an essential part of this decision-making process. This technical note begins to define this foundation by identifying the basic elements of risk and exploring how these elements can affect the potential for mission success.