[australia] Capturing Processes

[Andrew Breese]

Another obvious "reason" is simply a lack of time. 

In each flawed process we'd need to identify the deficiencies, note the
expectations, formulate the plan for improvement, gain stakeholder
buy-in, implement the change, and raise awareness. If this is even a
small change in a mid sized organisation, this could take significant
time. More if there is more than one technology involved which must also
be changed. 

Repeat for each document, of which there could be hundreds. As a
practical person, sometimes it is better to spend 15 minutes doing a job
slightly incorrect, than spend 5 hours improving it by a few minutes.
The old need vs. reward. I have working in many organisations who could
have benefited from document improvement, but could never find the time
to improve. 

Interestingly I often see the new hire as the person who documents the
current processes as they learn them. The issue here is that the experts
are not the ones doing the documentation, so while the new staff member
may have the raw time to document, they do so in an inefficient manner,
or miss the detail.

Cheers,

Andrew


-----Original Message-----
From: australia-bounces at lists.cmprofessionals.org
[mailto:australia-bounces at lists.cmprofessionals.org] On Behalf Of
Melanie Kendell
Sent: Monday, 17 July 2006 10:35 AM
To: australia at lists.cmprofessionals.org
Subject: Re: [australia] Capturing Processes [was: Engaging
contributors]

On 17/07/06, Melanie Kendell <melanie.kendell at gmail.com> wrote:
 > On 7/13/06, Matthew Moore <matthew.moore at oracle.com> wrote:
 > ...we are increasingly an economy of knowledge workers...

When I see Knowledge Worker as a category according to the ATO (or even
on something like SEEK) I'll believe we've finally cracked it :)

> On 17/07/06, Marius Coomans <mcoomans at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...capturing and documenting business processes is something we all 
> "on paper" promote...They'll pull a 18 month old printed copy out of 
> their desk drawer with handwritten notes on it. That's the real
process document.
>
> Is that a cultural issue? a technology issue? a management issue?

All of the above.

Cultural and management go hand in hand - people create personal
repositories for many reasons and management need to develop strategies
to counteract those "reasons".

Some of the perceived reasons are:

* knowledge=power - some people are still protective of their
information as a way of protecting their value to the organisation

* lack of empowerment - a corporate culture based on central authority
does not make people comfortable to contribute to, or correct, the
content that is delivered to them (hence handwritten scribbles on the
"official" procedure)

* not my job mentality - keeping content up to date is very rarely
explicitly tasked to anyone

Technology is certainly getting better all the time but it's often not
the technology itself that's the problem but the implementation of the
technology. I'm not always an advocate for formal usability techniques
(they can be overkill) but someone on the implemenations team (if not
everyone) must have a usability focus.

Great to see some excellent discussion on this list.

-Melanie

PS David, can we get the options for the list set to reply to list
rather than to individuals - ta.
_______________________________________________
australia mailing list
australia at lists.cmprofessionals.org
http://lists.cmsml.org/mailman/listinfo/australia