As I am exposed to all these fantastic new tools - I am longing for an environment to test them out and implement. Ah, that shiny new system smell - all the productivity promise it brings. The 37 signals suite looks very promising, particularly the base camp, backpack and campfire applications. They seem to naturally blend knowledge management, collaboration and project management into a causal, friendly feeling UI and process flow. Of course - the demos look slick and the testimonials are glowing, but there seems to be some substance there. Also marketing to my heart - is the hip, funky, boutique-y feel to the app and the company as a whole.

I work for a really big company (made up of large sub companies~ 180k) and the app I work on has to fit a really broad range of needs and be approved by a large set of clients. In some ways, it is really interesting to work at this level - a window on the training activity of the entire enterprise. My metrics are big, my reports have loads of users and I have a slew of "super user" clients.
In some ways - because it must meet so many requirements - it waters down and dulls some of the sharpest aspects of the software. There are whole suites of tools we bought we can not use, because they would not be scalable. In our enterprise situation, processes and decisions are made all or nothing - it must suit all or can not be done.
I recently hit my ten year mark at my company. I looked over my resume and saw that the first 3 years - when I was working with a much smaller audience (6k)- I really got a lot more done than in my past 3. When I started, the department was new and processes had to be built everywhere - we were making up our structure as we went along. Now, in a more mature orginization, processes are improved, tweeked, the possiblity to implement a suite of apps like 37 signals has passed me by.
I feel envy for all of you who say your team is just getting started down this path - you have so many cool new tools to use and platforms to build that will take you to the next step. Enjoy it while you can.

obsessed with ancestry.com

I have become obsessed with ancestry.com. For those of you unfamiliar with the site, ancestry.com (which I am going to call AC ) is a family tree research site, which hosts raw historical data records and scanned documents. With a combination of user submitted family information, scanned historical records, a massive relational database and internet access; information that would have taken my grandmother a lifetime to pull together, has taken me less than a month to compile.

AC is a SaaS model where I pay a monthly fee to access the database records. The actual platform – the user interface and application, is secondary to the massive data that AC has digitized and made searchable. My mind boggles at the undertaking - digitizing hundreds of years of millions of records – records commonly found in county file cabinets, yellowing bits of census journals with pen and ink handscript. Optical character recognition (OCR) allows searches against images of the actual documents – I can view my grandparents signature on their marriage license.

My original goal of creating a basic family tree with the view towards getting a better idea of “where am I from” has basically been answered. (Long story short – the four corners of PA, VA, WV, OH before they were states) The more time I spend on the tree, the more engrossing the whole process becomes. I built a base of ancestors back to 1700 (as far back as I care to go). As I searched and added family data from census and other information; I came against misspellings of names, duplicate records for a single ancestor, and changing city, county names (this came into play as the commonwealths become states and the mason-dixon line created WV from VA). As anyone who has created a db from scratch will tell you – data integrity is key (no pun intended!) and an obsession of it's own. I kept an eye to what seemed the most accurate of records.

Of course, as soon as I had my data set, I wanted to play with it. I wanted to do a timeline chart, a chart by birth months, a map of residences; I wanted to see the whole tree in it's splendor. As I mentioned above, AC as an actual application is pretty light with very limited ways to view my data and no reports at all to showcase my records. I began thinking of AC as my system of record and searched for a reporting tool to feed my need for metrics. The common file type for family tree software is GEDCOM and exports as a large text file with keyed records. I couldn't easily export the file to excel or access to create a home-brewed report, so I needed to find software that would integrate and allow me to manipulate my newly-culled family data.

I have downloaded a demo of MacFamily Tree and look forward to testing out the touted reporting tools. Although I have been able to gather this hierarchical net of family data, what I am missing is the narrative – the family stories that truly populate a family tree. Luckily – it looks like I might be able to find some family stories via google books. Isn't technology grand?!

As a note to myself - future topics for posts:

As a note to myself - future topics for posts:

CMM, PCMM, and HRO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Capability_Maturity_Model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_reliability_organization

Favorite fruit/what feeds employee engagement

Audience size is everything, integration

Hosted/Internal - service and support

Charter - attempt #1

I really struggled with this charter - I was not sure where the line was between a proposal and a solution. Here is my first attempt.

Charter - LMS Catalog Cleanup

Problem Statement

The number one complaint against the Learning Management System is the course catalog is difficult to search. If learners are unable to locate training they will either open a help desk ticket or neglect to enroll and complete training. This compliant has escalated to the highest level of leadership. This issue is a major cause of mistrust/lack of buy-in of the LMS. (where can I find stats on time lost?)

Problem Details

The learning management system is enterprise wide and administered by regional training departments. The LMS is like a library in which any author can place his/her books on the shelves. The catalog search is made against course information, so clean and correctly tagged courses are key to a successful search. Administrators wish for their courses to be found - but are not always successful in understanding how to code the information correctly.

Customers

1. Learners

2. LMS Administrators

3. LMS Support Team

4. Learning Leadership

Business Case

(system agnostic)
(is this where I propose a solution?)

Create a series of course information audits (such as category, keyword, availability, course name, course ID, abstract, sponsoring dept, duration, domain, ce's, cancellation policy)
Trend existing course information to create a controlled vocabulary for keyword and category tags. Create a living taxonomy for course information.

Archive fallow courses.

Begin using existing description field for metatagging.

In Scope

Create a new set of best practices for creating courses. Changing policies, processes, training and job aids around course creation. Creating audit process to ensure practices are followed. (Is this too close to a solution?)

Out of Scope

Addressing the search functionality of the LMS. Saba owns the search functionality of the LMS. We can only address data/record issues.

Success Metrics
Reduced help desk tickets
Improved perception of LMS
(clean course information audits?)

Deliverables

Communication Plan
Communication of new policies, job aids, training and best practices

Training Plan
Revised training for administrators and learners

Resources

Functional/Technical
Enterprise Learning Services

Sponsors
National Learning Leaders

Core Team

Owners, sponsors and resposibilities

As I have mentioned – my department is going through a prolonged system upgrade. This morning we had a general discussion about business side and tech side involvement in an HRIS system and what it means to have “ownership” of a system. Does the business side own the functionality? Does the tech side own the ability to set boundaries (what is and is not available for what amount of money and time)? Where does the line lie that separates the two partners?

I personally think that these role and responsibilities will vary – depending on internal vs vendor systems, the size of the departments involved and the overall size of the system impact. A small business department working with a vendor created and implemented system will be quite different from a large business department working with a small internal IT department. If the HRIS system is a small competency management for a specialized workforce - the business might own a larger portion of the system than, say, a compensation system for an entire company. The business side (which I am on) seems to have differing levels of sponsorship; an executive who funded the work and gets to announce the success, department owner(s) whose team(s) is/are responsible for the planning, management, support and user acceptance.

Which brought up my question – to what level should a business sponsor understand how the system works? Beyond understanding the requirements they have and providing input on the user interface – what responsibilities does a business sponsor have to understand how the system performs and what it is made of? Is it fair to require an HR executive to have a working understanding of the HRIS?

Personally – I believe that business sponsors have a responsibility to understand the basic building blocks of the system. As public spokespersons for the system, project and results, sponsors should be able to answer a certain level of technical questions. As the “face” of the system to the rest of the company, communicating the project they will undoubtedly be asked questions by other business partners. I do not think they have the luxury of seeing the system as a black box in which someone makes magic happen.

When I took my first HR essentials class, I was surprised to find how very un-technical the HR world is perceived as being. My instructor did not know what a learning management system was (although she used one to deliver the online class) and the research I did for the HR scorecard paper all pointed to a disconnect from the HR Professionals to the data/metrics required to effectively manage a workforce. Is this your perception as well? As metric driven as companies are today – I assumed that HR, as a strategic business partner, would be using tools to bring them out of administrivia and into a guiding partner for the business. What do you think?