The Latest and Greatest Tools and Techniques for Developing Performance Support

Innovations in eLearning Symposium

Methods and Technologies for Competency and Performance

EPSScentral LLC

Gary J. DickelmanPresident & CEOEPSScentral LLC

gdickelman@epsscentral.net+1 (703) 842-7437

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About this session…

• Discover the latest tools and methodologies for creating electronic performance support systems. You'll also explore an in-depth analysis of technical needs, available protocol, development life cycles, and how the latest and greatest tools are used in this context. Real-world examples will be shown, along with ROI metrics.

• You will learn: • About the capabilities of outstanding performance

support development tools. • To understand the latest techniques and development

lifecycles for EPSS in context with the tools. • The latest criteria for determining whether an EPSS

development tool has the right stuff.

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Objectives

1. Know the fundamental of performance-centered methodologies and tools

2. Understand the relationships between competency, performance and quality

3. See how organizations have achieved business performance through human performance by applying performance-centered tools and methodologies

4. Become familiar with available products that support the performance-centered developer’s toolkit

At the conclusion of this session, you will:

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Grudin’s Law

“When those who benefit [from technology] are not those who do the work, then the technology is likely to fail or, at least, be subverted.”

- Jonathan Grudin*

*from Donald A. Norman’s Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine

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Miller’s Law

“The average person has the attention span of a ferret after two cappuccinos.”

- Dennis Miller

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Performance Centered Methodology

• Performance in Performance Support and Performance Centered Design (PCD) means business performance through human performance

• Models of PCD have therefore evolved along with business models that address current economic conditions

• For the current era, PCD means getting the right process right, quickly and continuously

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Issues

• Today the majority of business processes are supported through the strategic application of enterprise systems (SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Siebel, and more)

• On average, knowledge workers must interact with 5 –12 major computer systems to complete their business processes

• Knowledge worker competency is therefore a function of mastering business content as it relates to system/business processes

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Observations

• Much time and energy are spent in system development / maintenance documenting business processes to inform subsequent phases

• When systems are built and deployed explicit representations of process are lost to the performer (user, worker)

• Business processes representations remain internal to the system but not visible to the performer

• Therefore workers must be trained on business processes as system interfaces provide little support

• BUT training in advance of doing falls short of enabling performance by over of 80%

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Paradox

• Manufacturing and engineering systems enjoy methodologies that help organizations to improve business processes, such as:

– Deming Cycle– Kaoru Ishikawa Cycle– Total Quality Management (TQM)– Quality Function Deployment (QFD)– Reengineering– Six Sigma– Agile Development– Robust Design (Taguchi Methods)– Adaptive Enterprise

• BUT when business processes are manifested primarily in enterprise systems, such methodologies do little to make processes explicit and supportive of the performer and the work that must be accomplish.

Deming/Ishikawa

DMAICDMADV

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Example of the Paradox

Employee IDDate of MarriageMarried NameSpouse Name

AddressSpouse SSN

Spouse BirthdateSpouse BirthplaceSpouse GenderSpouse StatusSpouse Work

Federal Tax StatusFederal Tax Allowances

State of ResidenceState Tax Status

State Tax Allowances

In the PeopleSoft ERP system the knowledge worker is faced with mentally mapping the business rules to the navigation flow shown here for a simple task such as changing a marital status, with no explicit support.

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Example of the Paradox

• But the PeopleSoft system was developed and is maintained using one or more of the “Quality”methodologies

• The same is true for all major enterprise systems• Unintended consequences:

– Consistently high cost of establishing and maintaining worker competency (in 2002, one third of global system training expenditures were in support of SAP alone)

– Consistently high rate of system/business errors and omissions

– Customer and asset retention low (where knowledge workers provide customer service)

– Consistently high total cost of ownership of enterprise systems WITHOUT any significant improvement in the items listed above

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Question

How can the successes of “Quality” methodologies (Deming, QFD, Ishikawa, Taguchi, Six Sigma) be translated to improving enterprise system processes from the knowledge worker’s perspective?

DefineMeasureAnalyzeDesignVerify

DMADV DefineMeasureAnalyzeImproveControl

DMAIC

Ishikawa cycle

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Answer

Extend the analyst’s toolkit to include “Quality” tools that will make a difference to performers whose business processes are primarily within enterprise systems.

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Observations

Mitigatelow performance.

Performance

time

cutover

Reducetime tocutover.

Reduce lowperformancePeriod.

Continuouslyincreaseperformance.

Such a business analyst’s or developer’s toolkit would server to:

– Shorten development and maintenance cycles

– Mitigate lapses in productivity

– Shorten time of high errors and omissions

– Support and improve human performance continuously

– Reduces the complexity of business processes as the primary means of improving human performance

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Example 1

ASC Enterprise System (PeopleSoft)Toolkit used to:

• Rapidly capture four critical business processes and eight sub-processes• Analyze efficiencies • Model process improvement• Test process improvement via user experience simulations• Generate improved user interface objects• Test user interface objects• Migrate new interface objects to production

Results:• Entire cycle took less than one (1) work day• Eliminated 99% of all training on ASC for position management for all users• Decreased time-to-competency from 3 days to less than 1 hour• Increased accuracy from an average of 65% to over 99%• Reduced maintenance costs for ASC by 90% • Task simplification and application integration resulting in 5x productivity gains and

$4M savings

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Performance-Centered Solution

Intelligent Dialogue – Deliverscontextual support

Embedded guidethat monitors andensures performance

Simulation

Alternate interface

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Example 2

Saving $5M per year by applying PCD methods and technology$ 21,169,875 PCD vs. Conventional

Savings

$ 3,637,500 $ 24,807,375 Year 5

$ 2,910,000 $ 19,845,900 Year 4

$ 2,182,500 $ 14,884,425 Year 3

$ 1,455,000 $ 9,922,950 Year 2

$ 727,500 $ 4,961,475 Year 1

$ -$ -Duplication of Production - annual costs

$ 21,000 $ -License maint. Cost (1 year)

$ 235,500 $ 1,653,825 maintenance cost (1 year)

$ 471,000 $ 3,307,650 development cost (1 year)

with PCD toolkitConventionalCumulative CBA - 5 years

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Example 3

D

Solution # of tasks

Average Numberof Steps

Total dev. time PCD

EstimatedTotal Savings

Total Dev.time for conventionalsolution

A 19 5 2.5 Days (19 hours)

16.5 Days19 Days (152 hours)

B 14 5 2 Days(14 hours)

12 Days14 Days(112 hours)

C 14 20 7 Days(56 hours)

49 Days56 Days(448 hours)

14 10 3.5 Days(28 hours)

24.5 Days28 Days(224 hours)

• This table lists the number of tasks for each intervention, as well as the estimated time for creating interventions (Traditional vs. with PCD toolkit)

• Saving over $1M per year by applying PCD technology and methodology

E 32 10 8 Days(64 hours)

56 Days64 Days(512 hours)

F 14 10 3.5 Days(28 hours)

24.5 Days28 Days(224 hours)

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More Examples

Many more examples can be found among the annual winners of the PCD Awards:

www.epsscentral.info/knowledgebase/awardssamples/

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Analyst/Developer’s Toolkit

• Remote capture of performer actions

• Model current state of performer actions

• Analyze performer actions in relation to business processes / goals

• Model future state based on analysis

• Simulate future state and conduct formative evaluation

• Construct future state solution• Implement future state solution• Continuous monitoring /

iterations

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Observations

Deming/Ishikawa

DMAICDMADV

• Deming Cycle• Kaoru Ishikawa Cycle• Total Quality Management

(TQM)• Quality Function Deployment

(QFD)• Reengineering• Six Sigma• Agile Development• Robust Design (Taguchi

Methods)• Adaptive Enterprise

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Features of Developer’s Toolkit

Group I: Capture and Analyze

• System/action automated checksheets

• Real-time (remote, unobtrusive) capture of user actions within their enterprise systems (automatic raw data capture)

• Rapid analyzers– Create histograms, Pareto

charts, control charts, scatter charts, etc., immediately from captured interaction data

Group II: Model and Simulate• Inferred process models

– Significant portions of “as-is”models auto-generated from system/action checksheets

• Rapid process modelers– Quickly modify inferred

models to create “to-be”models based on analyzer results

• User experience simulation object generators

– Auto-generated from process models

– Remote capture checksheets and analyzers applied to simulations

Group III: Generate knowledge, optimize and integrate processes, embed/fuse knowledge

• Learning/Reference/Knowledge object generators and “contextualizers”

• Process optimization /integration generators

– From to-be process models– Bound to the enterprise

systems– Integrate systems / simplify

and improve business processes

The Toolkit (technology and methods) exemplifies best “Quality”practices.

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Caveats

• Products that support the Toolkit address a number of markets, in varying degrees of depth and breadth.

• The next slide is not meant to suggest anything comparative but only relates the product target markets to elements of the Toolkit.

• Just because a product addresses more of the toolkit than another does not mean that it is a better product.

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Available Tools

Epiplex™• Complete developer/analyst toolkit

(www.epiance.com)

Certify™ from Worksoft• Grounded in script-free software

testing, functional automation and certification and evolving to support major portions of the toolkit (www.worksoft.com)

AboveAll Studio• Next generation composite

application development environment based on semantic web service layer (www.aboveallsoftware.com)

2Work! EPSS • performance support

integrator for web-based applications (www.thinksmartps.com)

ActiveGuide • performance support

integrator for web-based applications (www.rocketools.com)

SimCad• Process simulator - design,

validate, and implement your ideas without disturbing your production process www.createasoft.com/

Morae• usability analysis

software (www.techsmith.com)

TeamWorks®5• tools for continuous improvement

of business processes by supporting multi-disciplinary teams with a “shared model”: approach (www.lombardisoftware.com)

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Above All Studio

Composite application assembly with no programming:

• Visual tools and wizards that focus on the business needs, not technology

• Semantic service layer• Application assemblers snap

together composite applications• Hides the technical intricacies about

underlying systems and technologies

• Organizes services in familiar business object terms (customers, orders)

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Above All Studio

Composite application assembly with no programming:

• Visual tools and wizards that focus on the business needs, not technology

• Semantic service layer• Application assemblers snap

together composite applications

• Hides the technical intricacies about underlying systems and technologies

• Organizes services in familiar business object terms (customers, orders)

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ActiveGuide

Provides embedded guidance for web-based applications.

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2Work! EPSS

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Epiplex BPI Suite

Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet

(1) Administrator schedules remote capture sessions across the enterprise

(2) Capture remotely

(3) Analyze

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…more tools

• Knowledge Stream – Jay Urbain (upstreamdevelopment.com)

• The Monitor Group – Jonathan Levy (monitor.com, jonathanlevy.com)

• Exegy – Kathy Larson (exegy.com)• Procarta – Graham Westwood (procarta.com)• Panviva – Ted Gannan (panviva.com)• Workforce Connect (DOL, open source –

workflorceconnect.org)• Instancy – Harvi Singh (instancy.com)

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Conclusions

• Performance-centered methodology embraces the “quality methods” including business process, content/knowledge and persona

• Performance and competency are enabled by addressing a complete lifecycle

• Tools and techniques are available to form a complete developer’s toolkit

• Many organizations are realizing the performance vision by applying the toolkit and measuring remarkable results, represented in $$Millions per year)

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Questions & Answers

EPSScentral LLCgdickelman@epsscentral.netwww.epsscentral.infowww.inforeader.netwww.epsscentral.net+1 (703) 842-7437