Knowhow Management:
see Baldrige Winning Case Study
The IPPreserver® approach is typified by identifying the important deliverables or outcomes the organization needs to achieve to function sustainably. Knowhow management identifies the tasks performed regularly to achieve these outcomes in order, together with the systems, documents and other parties accessed. This is then represented in the accelerated learning format proven and advocated in TurboSigma® (itself a recognised approach to SixSigma® style process improvement).
Know how management does not force you to archive and document manage every document - it does however have the ability to hyperlink to any document or data you have stored on any shared drive and launch any application (that MSWindows® API calls can launch) to access that document or data.
What it does facilitate you doing is, taking the important material scattered across a multitude of documents and asks you to distill the key tasks involved with preserving the way you work. This is achieved through a simple and instructional template in a text editor. This process has been able to reduce the number of documents needing management by a factor of more than 70:1
Knowhow management does not force you to extract all of your data or deconstruct all of the content in all of your existing documents or databases into content repositories. IPPreserver® is capable of launching any application that MSWindows® API calls can launch to access that document or data ( If you had a lot of material tied up in a non-relational data base like Lotus Notes®, you could leave it there and access it from the IPPreserver® interface, effectively allowing you to develop any new relational database application for the future without having to migrate valid and obsolete material from the old one first. New solutions need not wait on the migration of old ones if IPPreserver is managing the linkages and directing traffic to both.
Presentation
Analogy: The analogy is a newspaper; the headline being the name describing the set of tasks that lead to the outcome i.e. the name of the Process or Procedure.
Under the headline there is a simple 5 box flowchart which is the equivalent of the descriptive paragraph under a newspaper headline. This is where the actual substance of the article or in this case the procedure, is made clear to you so that you can decide if you wish to read this article or not. The simple flow boxes overview the tasks encompassed in the procedure.
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You can see at a glance if they describe the steps to the outcome you are wanting from the procedure. This ensures you do not waste valuable time reading the detail of a procedure you were not looking for.
The columns under each flow box are the detailed series of tasks in the correct order that allow you to achieve the step described in the flow chart box above. The box acts as the label of a subroutine or sub-process to be completed on the way to achieving the performance goal.
As each task is completed in order down the column, the next column or subroutine is encountered. By the bottom of the fifth column the procedure has been completed and the outcome delivered.
Any system, document or collaborator needed to complete this work flow can be hyperlinked to from the interface to complete the task.
In a separate section at the bottom of each column is a series of hints tips and links that describe the best way to complete the task in this organization -'best practice here'.
The procedure's author is one click away from receiving your e-mail as to how their procedure could improve.
Cost Profile: IPPreserver® is costed much the same way as an enterprise version of a Microsoft product at a base price of $50 per user, per month, plus GST with discounts applying at the 30 plus, 100plus, 200 plus user breaks as well as 'significant enterprise' pricing by negotiation. There is also a higher start annually diminishing licensing model option with almost total up front purchase option. Because the application's look and feel is customized with your logos and colour scheme (within reason) and a customized installation package is made to facilitate self installation in your organization, there is a first time 'one-off 'set up fee.
Support: Once installed no internal IT support is necessary. All content is created by authors using text editors and rich text format files. These files are published to a master location serving client PCs. Every time the IPPreserver® application is it automatically updates itself with new files from the server and displays the content in the interface. Author/Publishers are in control of all content sensitive button labels, descriptor roll rollovers, hyperlinking, font colours etc via rich text format (.rtf) files created in any text editor.
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KEY FEATURES: IPPreserver® has a logical aligned hierarchy of documents.
This structure and the resulting documentation templates are from the final 'standardisation phase' of TurboSigma® process improvement methodology; where 'know how' is presented in a way that users can access it to perform or guide the performance of task or process.
Of course this is also the stuff of which process improvement can be accelerated with. Once 'how we do it now' is well understood and simply documented, it is easy to ask how the process or practice could be better and sort out the steps that do not add value from the ones that do!
IPPreserver is a user interface and navigation system capable of launching templates, databases and other local and network applications in the work flow of the procedures described. All navigation, linking and content are driven by rich text files ( truly meaning NO PROGRAMING necessary - just the ability to write links etc. into the software's .rtf templates.)
FOR THE USER:
•Content owners do their own authoring and if authorized; publishing!
•All content is controlled by .rtf files created in any text editor.
•RTF content is organized by the application into the accelerated learning "Top Down Flowcharts" advocated by TurboSigma® process improvement methodology.
•Content is organized into the detailed tasks that need to be completed in the order required to achieve the goal described by the column header.
•Text within each column scrolls, enabling unlimited steps to be recorded.
The templates themselves have reduced the number of documents by ratios exceeding 70:1 by distilling just what needs to be done to execute a task (procedure) in the organization and by capturing best practice 'hints and tips' in a dynamic 'living documentation' way, to help people perform these tasks and get things done right first time.
BY Grant Ford www. knowhowmanagers.com |
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