This paper is written for executive and departmental managers in companies that
produce educational materials for K-12 and higher education. It focuses specifically on
the challenge of unpacking, identifying, and quantifying the creation of editorial
content for deployment in learning products in both print and digital forms. The
quantified perspective and transparency gained from this approach affords a much
more textured view into the development process, allowing superior resource
assignment and management, and informed cost reductions as well as inherent
efficiencies gained from seeing redundancies and anticipating bottlenecks and
conflicts.
The document provides an overview of a seminar on project management frameworks. It begins with introductions and an explanation of the seminar objectives to provide a basic structure for understanding, discussing, and managing projects. The seminar then covers key project management concepts, different project life cycle models, and the roles and responsibilities of project managers. It aims to equip participants with foundational knowledge and skills to improve project effectiveness.
Monica Mower is an experienced IT leader seeking a Director position. She has over 20 years of experience implementing ERP systems like PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and ADP HRIS. Currently, she is a senior project manager at First Group responsible for implementing their first HRIS system using ADP. Previously she has led teams as a PeopleSoft business team lead and analyst manager. She is skilled in project management, business analysis, and driving technological strategy and innovation.
Project Home Run was a two-year initiative to transform the human resources (HR) function at the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to better support the organization's goals. The project centralized administrative tasks, established HR centers of expertise, and refocused school-facing HR partners on strategic support. This led to improved recruitment and retention, enhanced HR staff capabilities, and allowed HR to focus on program design instead of administrative work. The transformation faced challenges such as resistance to change, unclear decision-making processes, and operating within a public education system, but demonstrated that private sector HR best practices can succeed in the public sector as well.
This document discusses the importance of developing workplace competencies for engineering students to be successful professional engineers. It outlines 15 competencies that were identified by employers as important. These competencies include engineering knowledge, innovation, teamwork, integrity, continuous learning, analysis and judgment, quality orientation, planning, customer focus, initiative, communication, safety awareness. The document provides descriptions and key actions for competencies like communication, teamwork, planning, continuous learning, and initiative. Students are asked to self-assess their performance on the key actions for initiative and identify their top 5 and bottom 5 competencies along with ways to improve the bottom 5.
This document provides an overview and agenda for a two-day training on project management. Day one will cover getting started with a project, including defining goals and success criteria, mobilizing the team and organization, and planning the work. Day two will focus on managing the project, including managing deadlines, resources, and change, as well as how to properly hand over and close down a project. The learning points emphasize how to establish relationships with sponsors, deliver projects on time and budget, support teams, and ensure sustainable change.
The document summarizes the key learnings from a three-year research project focused on gaining employment for people with mental health issues. It identifies six crucial areas for the project's success: clients, staff, project organization, employment outcomes, risk, and flexibility. It explains that these areas vary in importance at different stages, with an initial focus on strong foundations (organization, staff, clients) before later prioritizing employment outcomes. Personalized, adaptive approaches are identified as most effective for meeting clients' diverse needs.
The document provides an overview of strategic workforce planning. It discusses that while 92% of companies do some workforce planning, only 21% take a strategic long-term approach. It then outlines a 6-step process for strategic workforce planning: 1) establish business strategy, 2) understand the labor market, 3) identify future talent needs, 4) assess current talent, 5) identify gaps, and 6) implement strategies to address gaps. The document emphasizes that strategic workforce planning is a continuous process that requires executive sponsorship.
The document provides an overview of a seminar on project management frameworks. It begins with introductions and an explanation of the seminar objectives to provide a basic structure for understanding, discussing, and managing projects. The seminar then covers key project management concepts, different project life cycle models, and the roles and responsibilities of project managers. It aims to equip participants with foundational knowledge and skills to improve project effectiveness.
Monica Mower is an experienced IT leader seeking a Director position. She has over 20 years of experience implementing ERP systems like PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and ADP HRIS. Currently, she is a senior project manager at First Group responsible for implementing their first HRIS system using ADP. Previously she has led teams as a PeopleSoft business team lead and analyst manager. She is skilled in project management, business analysis, and driving technological strategy and innovation.
Project Home Run was a two-year initiative to transform the human resources (HR) function at the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to better support the organization's goals. The project centralized administrative tasks, established HR centers of expertise, and refocused school-facing HR partners on strategic support. This led to improved recruitment and retention, enhanced HR staff capabilities, and allowed HR to focus on program design instead of administrative work. The transformation faced challenges such as resistance to change, unclear decision-making processes, and operating within a public education system, but demonstrated that private sector HR best practices can succeed in the public sector as well.
This document discusses the importance of developing workplace competencies for engineering students to be successful professional engineers. It outlines 15 competencies that were identified by employers as important. These competencies include engineering knowledge, innovation, teamwork, integrity, continuous learning, analysis and judgment, quality orientation, planning, customer focus, initiative, communication, safety awareness. The document provides descriptions and key actions for competencies like communication, teamwork, planning, continuous learning, and initiative. Students are asked to self-assess their performance on the key actions for initiative and identify their top 5 and bottom 5 competencies along with ways to improve the bottom 5.
This document provides an overview and agenda for a two-day training on project management. Day one will cover getting started with a project, including defining goals and success criteria, mobilizing the team and organization, and planning the work. Day two will focus on managing the project, including managing deadlines, resources, and change, as well as how to properly hand over and close down a project. The learning points emphasize how to establish relationships with sponsors, deliver projects on time and budget, support teams, and ensure sustainable change.
The document summarizes the key learnings from a three-year research project focused on gaining employment for people with mental health issues. It identifies six crucial areas for the project's success: clients, staff, project organization, employment outcomes, risk, and flexibility. It explains that these areas vary in importance at different stages, with an initial focus on strong foundations (organization, staff, clients) before later prioritizing employment outcomes. Personalized, adaptive approaches are identified as most effective for meeting clients' diverse needs.
The document provides an overview of strategic workforce planning. It discusses that while 92% of companies do some workforce planning, only 21% take a strategic long-term approach. It then outlines a 6-step process for strategic workforce planning: 1) establish business strategy, 2) understand the labor market, 3) identify future talent needs, 4) assess current talent, 5) identify gaps, and 6) implement strategies to address gaps. The document emphasizes that strategic workforce planning is a continuous process that requires executive sponsorship.
The Executive's Guide to Strategic Workforce Planningassessmentedge
The executive briefing provides a guide to strategic workforce planning. It outlines a 6 step process: 1) establish business strategy, 2) understand labor market trends, 3) identify future talent demands, 4) assess current talent, 5) identify talent gaps, 6) implement strategies to close gaps. The document emphasizes that workforce planning is critical for business success but often overlooked or not taken strategically. It also notes common barriers that can undermine the process.
Chuck Sanders is an organization development consultant and coach with over 30 years of experience helping organizations address challenges and improve effectiveness. He has extensive experience in strategic planning, leadership development, business process reengineering, and change management. Sanders' background includes positions managing modeling and simulation programs at the Department of Defense and consulting on organization development, where he developed an immersion process for creating high performing organizations. He currently works independently as an organization development consultant.
This document discusses managing confidence levels in projects. It defines confidence as feeling certain about the truth of something. Confidence in a project is important because it translates to authority over the project. Confidence is based on perceptions rather than facts. To establish confidence, the key questions, assumptions, dependencies, and goals must be understood. Dimensions like stakeholder profiles, the project profile, and the business environment impact confidence levels. Improving communication of these profiles can help boost confidence over time through concerted short, medium, and long-term actions. Managing confidence in a balanced way across all three profiles is important for sustained project performance improvements.
The document discusses developing great leaders through a measured approach using leadership assessments. It identifies the four main building blocks of great leadership as vision, interpersonal style, communication, and problem solving/decision making. An effective methodology for leadership development involves three phases - assessing strengths and weaknesses, understanding implications, and creating an action plan. Regular assessments paired with guidance can help leaders improve their skills over time and ensure organizations have strong leadership.
Most companies have a process/roundtable during which senior managers makes decisions about end of year compensation and promotions. As a line manager, your role is to make recommendations on behalf of your team members. At the same time, other managers will be doing the same, so being prepared/convincing can make a big difference in the outcomes.
This deck can be used as a worksheet to help prepare for those roundtables.
The document discusses establishing an employee program called "The Program" to improve engagement and performance by providing opportunities for employees to contribute their talents and discretionary efforts. The Program would involve employees submitting project ideas, voting on projects, and working in teams over 3-month rounds to develop solutions. It aims to tap into employee dreams and passions to increase value delivery and engagement.
This document provides an agenda for the "Budgeting and Forecasting 2010: Restructure Your Forecasting for Improved Reporting" conference held from April 19-21, 2010 in San Diego, CA. The conference will focus on tools and techniques for improving budgeting and forecasting processes, including implementing balanced scorecards, integrating analytical tools, improving cash flow forecasting, and transitioning to rolling forecasts. Speakers will discuss topics such as measuring factors that drive return on investment in budgeting/forecasting systems, employing balanced scorecards for increased transparency and accuracy, and identifying better cash flow drivers. Attendedees will learn how to create accurate forecasts with imperfect data, set budget priorities, and streamline forecasting processes.
Succession Planning for Sustainable Organizational DevelopmentCharles Cotter, PhD
The strategic imperative, value and relevance of Succession Planning as a driver of sustainable organizational development. Applying the Succession Planning process.
Nancy McPheeters has extensive experience managing finances and human resources to improve performance. She developed tools to track costs, workload forecasts, and staffing plans that helped reduce budgets while maintaining or improving productivity. Feedback from clients praised her organization, knowledge, and ability to distill complex information clearly.
Kathy Priest is a senior project manager with over 15 years of experience managing healthcare projects. She has a proven track record of successfully delivering complex multi-million dollar projects on time and on budget. She is seeking a new position that utilizes her strong project management and healthcare experience.
This document discusses talent assessment processes, specifically talent review dialogues. It begins with an overview of why organizations focus on developing internal talent for leadership positions. It then describes the key elements of a talent program, including a leadership competency framework and talent assessment and development processes. Talent review dialogues are discussed as a method for talent assessment, where managers and other stakeholders discuss an individual's performance patterns over time to assess leadership potential. The document provides details on how talent review dialogues are conducted and compares them to development centers. It also discusses creating a sustainable ecosystem for ongoing talent assessment and review. An example case study of a large Indian company that implemented the talent review dialogue process is also included.
Culture vs Strategy: How to Beat the CompetitionBen Eubanks
This is a 90 minute session that covers some of the key elements of culture and strategy in a business context. It's understood today that culture is a critical part of business success, but when used as part of an overall business strategy, companies will see amazing results.
If you'd like to learn more or have Ben speak at your event, please contact ben@upstarthr.com
Recruitment as a lever of strategic competitive advantage Charles Cotter, PhD
The document discusses how recruitment has changed and the roles of a future-focused recruiter. It outlines that recruitment has transitioned from face-to-face interactions to facilitating connections between people and technology. Savvy recruiters now take on four key roles: the strategic recruiter who uses metrics and data to make decisions; the cognitive recruiter who leverages technologies like AI; the social recruiter who utilizes platforms like LinkedIn; and the analytical recruiter who analyzes metrics and key performance indicators. Recruitment is increasingly focused on building an employment brand, creating compelling candidate experiences, and optimizing sourcing channels through the strategic use of new technologies.
1) Talent management has evolved from personnel departments to strategic HR and now focuses on continuously developing and managing an organization's talent pipeline.
2) It involves integrating recruiting, performance management, learning and development, succession planning, and compensation to align them with business goals.
3) Developing a talent management strategy requires integrating existing HR functions, using competency management, and maturing software solutions to link all talent processes.
Betsy Richards has over 25 years of experience as a technical writer and instructional designer. She has extensive experience developing documentation such as user manuals, reports, and training modules across various industries. She is proficient in many technical writing and design tools. Her background includes project management, team leadership, and working closely with subject matter experts.
The document discusses resource management challenges and how Innotas helps address them. It describes how Innotas provides visibility into resource capacity and demand to improve project scheduling and resource utilization. It also allows organizations to efficiently assign work, understand resource availability, and ensure resources work on high priority projects. Innotas helps optimize resource allocation through predictive analytics and automated scenario modeling to improve planning.
Management Science (Group Assignment) - Semester 3Yee Len Wan
The document provides information about Precision Construction Sdn Bhd, including its vision, mission, organizational structure, and departments. It details the company's background, goals, culture and values. The organizational structure outlines the roles and responsibilities of key positions within project, engineering, purchasing, marketing, financial and HR departments. Job duties are described for positions like site engineer, quantity surveyor, project manager, and safety supervisor.
Master Class on Talent Management & Engagement - Deepa MohamedCorporateShiksha
This document provides guidance on assessing employee potential and performance for talent reviews. It introduces a talent matrix model with four quadrants to plot employees based on their potential (high, medium, low) and performance (high, medium, low). The methodology involves assessing employees on factors like aspiration, engagement, intellectual quotient, emotional quotient, and adversity quotient. Managers are expected to plot employees on the matrix and provide development paths accordingly, such as grooming high potentials for leadership roles or moving underperformers to more suitable positions. The talent review process aims to identify employees with potential for more senior roles and develop succession plans.
Managing your projects effectively in a shared resource environmentStephen Hightower
Stephen Hightower discusses how using checklists can help project managers deliver projects on time. Checklists provide a structured and repeatable process to manage complexity and ensure critical tasks are completed. Dr. Atul Gawande's book "The Checklist Manifesto" explains how checklists have been successfully used in industries like aviation and construction. Hightower argues that utilizing checklists in the first 30 days of a project is especially important for setting up success, as that initial period often determines the ultimate outcome of the project.
This document summarizes a panel discussion on project management. Some key points made:
- Project managers should provide opportunities for employees to grow their skills and abilities. Managing people is a major challenge.
- Program managers create an environment that allows project managers to succeed efficiently by finding synergies between projects and shared resources.
- Understanding individuals and motivating them is a challenge, especially on large projects. Project managers must get to know employees' skills, interests, and future potential to align them with roles where they can grow.
- Balance is important for employee commitment and dedication. Project managers should accommodate reasonable work-life balance needs when possible.
The Executive's Guide to Strategic Workforce Planningassessmentedge
The executive briefing provides a guide to strategic workforce planning. It outlines a 6 step process: 1) establish business strategy, 2) understand labor market trends, 3) identify future talent demands, 4) assess current talent, 5) identify talent gaps, 6) implement strategies to close gaps. The document emphasizes that workforce planning is critical for business success but often overlooked or not taken strategically. It also notes common barriers that can undermine the process.
Chuck Sanders is an organization development consultant and coach with over 30 years of experience helping organizations address challenges and improve effectiveness. He has extensive experience in strategic planning, leadership development, business process reengineering, and change management. Sanders' background includes positions managing modeling and simulation programs at the Department of Defense and consulting on organization development, where he developed an immersion process for creating high performing organizations. He currently works independently as an organization development consultant.
This document discusses managing confidence levels in projects. It defines confidence as feeling certain about the truth of something. Confidence in a project is important because it translates to authority over the project. Confidence is based on perceptions rather than facts. To establish confidence, the key questions, assumptions, dependencies, and goals must be understood. Dimensions like stakeholder profiles, the project profile, and the business environment impact confidence levels. Improving communication of these profiles can help boost confidence over time through concerted short, medium, and long-term actions. Managing confidence in a balanced way across all three profiles is important for sustained project performance improvements.
The document discusses developing great leaders through a measured approach using leadership assessments. It identifies the four main building blocks of great leadership as vision, interpersonal style, communication, and problem solving/decision making. An effective methodology for leadership development involves three phases - assessing strengths and weaknesses, understanding implications, and creating an action plan. Regular assessments paired with guidance can help leaders improve their skills over time and ensure organizations have strong leadership.
Most companies have a process/roundtable during which senior managers makes decisions about end of year compensation and promotions. As a line manager, your role is to make recommendations on behalf of your team members. At the same time, other managers will be doing the same, so being prepared/convincing can make a big difference in the outcomes.
This deck can be used as a worksheet to help prepare for those roundtables.
The document discusses establishing an employee program called "The Program" to improve engagement and performance by providing opportunities for employees to contribute their talents and discretionary efforts. The Program would involve employees submitting project ideas, voting on projects, and working in teams over 3-month rounds to develop solutions. It aims to tap into employee dreams and passions to increase value delivery and engagement.
This document provides an agenda for the "Budgeting and Forecasting 2010: Restructure Your Forecasting for Improved Reporting" conference held from April 19-21, 2010 in San Diego, CA. The conference will focus on tools and techniques for improving budgeting and forecasting processes, including implementing balanced scorecards, integrating analytical tools, improving cash flow forecasting, and transitioning to rolling forecasts. Speakers will discuss topics such as measuring factors that drive return on investment in budgeting/forecasting systems, employing balanced scorecards for increased transparency and accuracy, and identifying better cash flow drivers. Attendedees will learn how to create accurate forecasts with imperfect data, set budget priorities, and streamline forecasting processes.
Succession Planning for Sustainable Organizational DevelopmentCharles Cotter, PhD
The strategic imperative, value and relevance of Succession Planning as a driver of sustainable organizational development. Applying the Succession Planning process.
Nancy McPheeters has extensive experience managing finances and human resources to improve performance. She developed tools to track costs, workload forecasts, and staffing plans that helped reduce budgets while maintaining or improving productivity. Feedback from clients praised her organization, knowledge, and ability to distill complex information clearly.
Kathy Priest is a senior project manager with over 15 years of experience managing healthcare projects. She has a proven track record of successfully delivering complex multi-million dollar projects on time and on budget. She is seeking a new position that utilizes her strong project management and healthcare experience.
This document discusses talent assessment processes, specifically talent review dialogues. It begins with an overview of why organizations focus on developing internal talent for leadership positions. It then describes the key elements of a talent program, including a leadership competency framework and talent assessment and development processes. Talent review dialogues are discussed as a method for talent assessment, where managers and other stakeholders discuss an individual's performance patterns over time to assess leadership potential. The document provides details on how talent review dialogues are conducted and compares them to development centers. It also discusses creating a sustainable ecosystem for ongoing talent assessment and review. An example case study of a large Indian company that implemented the talent review dialogue process is also included.
Culture vs Strategy: How to Beat the CompetitionBen Eubanks
This is a 90 minute session that covers some of the key elements of culture and strategy in a business context. It's understood today that culture is a critical part of business success, but when used as part of an overall business strategy, companies will see amazing results.
If you'd like to learn more or have Ben speak at your event, please contact ben@upstarthr.com
Recruitment as a lever of strategic competitive advantage Charles Cotter, PhD
The document discusses how recruitment has changed and the roles of a future-focused recruiter. It outlines that recruitment has transitioned from face-to-face interactions to facilitating connections between people and technology. Savvy recruiters now take on four key roles: the strategic recruiter who uses metrics and data to make decisions; the cognitive recruiter who leverages technologies like AI; the social recruiter who utilizes platforms like LinkedIn; and the analytical recruiter who analyzes metrics and key performance indicators. Recruitment is increasingly focused on building an employment brand, creating compelling candidate experiences, and optimizing sourcing channels through the strategic use of new technologies.
1) Talent management has evolved from personnel departments to strategic HR and now focuses on continuously developing and managing an organization's talent pipeline.
2) It involves integrating recruiting, performance management, learning and development, succession planning, and compensation to align them with business goals.
3) Developing a talent management strategy requires integrating existing HR functions, using competency management, and maturing software solutions to link all talent processes.
Betsy Richards has over 25 years of experience as a technical writer and instructional designer. She has extensive experience developing documentation such as user manuals, reports, and training modules across various industries. She is proficient in many technical writing and design tools. Her background includes project management, team leadership, and working closely with subject matter experts.
The document discusses resource management challenges and how Innotas helps address them. It describes how Innotas provides visibility into resource capacity and demand to improve project scheduling and resource utilization. It also allows organizations to efficiently assign work, understand resource availability, and ensure resources work on high priority projects. Innotas helps optimize resource allocation through predictive analytics and automated scenario modeling to improve planning.
Management Science (Group Assignment) - Semester 3Yee Len Wan
The document provides information about Precision Construction Sdn Bhd, including its vision, mission, organizational structure, and departments. It details the company's background, goals, culture and values. The organizational structure outlines the roles and responsibilities of key positions within project, engineering, purchasing, marketing, financial and HR departments. Job duties are described for positions like site engineer, quantity surveyor, project manager, and safety supervisor.
Master Class on Talent Management & Engagement - Deepa MohamedCorporateShiksha
This document provides guidance on assessing employee potential and performance for talent reviews. It introduces a talent matrix model with four quadrants to plot employees based on their potential (high, medium, low) and performance (high, medium, low). The methodology involves assessing employees on factors like aspiration, engagement, intellectual quotient, emotional quotient, and adversity quotient. Managers are expected to plot employees on the matrix and provide development paths accordingly, such as grooming high potentials for leadership roles or moving underperformers to more suitable positions. The talent review process aims to identify employees with potential for more senior roles and develop succession plans.
Managing your projects effectively in a shared resource environmentStephen Hightower
Stephen Hightower discusses how using checklists can help project managers deliver projects on time. Checklists provide a structured and repeatable process to manage complexity and ensure critical tasks are completed. Dr. Atul Gawande's book "The Checklist Manifesto" explains how checklists have been successfully used in industries like aviation and construction. Hightower argues that utilizing checklists in the first 30 days of a project is especially important for setting up success, as that initial period often determines the ultimate outcome of the project.
This document summarizes a panel discussion on project management. Some key points made:
- Project managers should provide opportunities for employees to grow their skills and abilities. Managing people is a major challenge.
- Program managers create an environment that allows project managers to succeed efficiently by finding synergies between projects and shared resources.
- Understanding individuals and motivating them is a challenge, especially on large projects. Project managers must get to know employees' skills, interests, and future potential to align them with roles where they can grow.
- Balance is important for employee commitment and dedication. Project managers should accommodate reasonable work-life balance needs when possible.
Alec Millman has over 10 years of experience in product management, operations, and analytics roles. He has worked at startups like TaskRabbit and helped the company scale from 5 employees to over 60. At TaskRabbit, he created processes to optimize the vetting of contractors that improved conversion rates 50x. He also established weekly scorecards and analytics to measure product performance and identify areas for improvement. More recently, he has advised other companies as a consultant on business intelligence and optimization strategies. Millman's experience spans the full product life cycle from requirements and design to implementation, analytics, and ongoing optimization.
The project is based on demonstration of the baseline scheduling in MS project. A sample project is taken and then baselined schedule was made. Then risk management and cashflows were recalculated to make the project more feasible. The alterations made in the project discussed in the presentation and further enhancement was made in the project schedule to make it more interesting for the learners who want to develop tracking Gantt chart and also workout on variety of project management problem.
Ch. 13 designing and conducting summative evaluationsEzraGray1
The document discusses summative evaluation, which determines whether instruction meets expectations. It has two phases: expert judgement to evaluate instructional quality, and impact analysis to assess skill transfer. Unlike formative evaluation which improves instruction, summative evaluation makes decisions about maintaining, adopting, or adapting instruction using external evaluators unfamiliar with instruction. Instructional designers make good summative evaluators due to understanding instructional design criteria.
The document discusses managing change in the education sector. It provides an overview of change management approaches and tools. Specifically:
- Change is difficult but essential in education due to various pressures. Managing change requires teamwork, leadership, and adapting to culture.
- The infoKit guides users through change management approaches focusing on people, processes, and culture. It provides templates and tools to analyze problems, clarify goals, and monitor progress.
- Appreciative Inquiry is introduced as a positive approach to understanding current practices and planning improvements by focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. Examples are given of universities using this technique.
The document discusses the roles and responsibilities of a project manager. It outlines 7 types of project management reports including availability, status, project health, risk assessment, time management, project baseline, and summary reports. It then describes 6 key responsibilities of a project manager: planning, organizing, leading, monitoring, communicating, and managing risk. Finally, it analyzes a project manager's roles using Mintzberg's management theory, outlining the interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles of figurehead, leader, liaison, monitor, disseminator, spokesperson, entrepreneur, disturbance handler, and negotiator.
Performance Management - Keeping it FlexibleDarryl Judd
This document discusses performance management and argues that it should be a continuous process rather than just an annual evaluation. It proposes that performance management shift to having agile and aligned goals that are reviewed quarterly, regular check-ins and feedback between managers and employees, and a future focus on growth rather than just evaluating past performance. Large companies are moving in this direction by removing ratings and rankings and focusing on continuous coaching and development.
The Talent Management Navigator Performance ManagementSeta Wicaksana
Effective Performance Management supports the achievement of both individual and business objectives. Through the Performance Management Process:
Employees understand how the work they are doing supports the broader goals of the organization
Employees understand what is expected of them, how they’re performing against those expectations, and how they can continue to improve their performance and contributions to advance their own career and business objectives
Managers provide feedback and coaching throughout the year to support employees in sustaining and improving their performance and developing their capabilities in alignment with their career goals
Employees and managers maintain on-going communications about performance and development progress and use the Company’s approved documents and/or technology to document progress
FUNCTIONAL MANAGEMENT and its functions chSealBently1
Production management involves planning, executing, and directing operations to convert raw materials into finished goods and services. It aims to ensure the right quality, quantity, and cost of goods are produced on time. A production manager oversees inputs like time, staffing, materials, and costs to meet manufacturing goals and client satisfaction. Career planning is assessing one's strengths and goals to identify career opportunities and the steps needed to achieve them. It involves self-awareness, research, decision making, and developing a plan to meet short- and long-term career goals. The benefits of career development include career progression, learning new skills, planning for the future, and higher earnings potential.
The document discusses the project preparation phase, which aims to identify the project work, establish goals and objectives, and set up efficient decision-making. It involves conceptualizing the project, establishing goals and objectives, issuing a project charter, outlining an implementation strategy, developing cost estimates, identifying risks, defining roles and responsibilities, and holding a kickoff meeting. The preparation phase comes after identifying solutions and allows checking preconditions before moving to the planning stage.
In this file, you can ref useful information about annual performance appraisal report such as annual performance appraisal report methods, annual performance appraisal report tips, annual performance appraisal report forms, annual performance appraisal report phrases … If you need more assistant for annual performance appraisal report, please leave your comment at the end of file.
A New Way to Look at Setting Goals for Your BusinessAli Mayar
This document provides guidance on effective goal setting within organizations. It discusses the importance of goal setting for business results and employee development. It recommends that goals be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely), cascaded down from organizational to individual levels, and aligned across teams and functions. The document includes examples and worksheets to help readers practice writing SMART goals that support business strategies. It emphasizes limiting the number of goals per employee to focus effort, including both business and development goals.
This document outlines the curriculum for the Here's Help Workforce and Community Development Program. It provides an overview of the general education program, applied/professional skill training, and computer skill training courses. The general education program focuses on preparing students to succeed in today's workforce by building professional skills like personal branding, interview skills, career planning, leadership, and job searching. The computer skill training provides instruction on Microsoft Office, Outlook, Word, Excel, as well as QuickBooks and Salesforce. The goal is to give students both computer and application skills needed for today's business environment. The teaching approach emphasizes student-centered learning, critical thinking, and using positive reinforcement to boost self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Building an Action Plan From the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey: Steps to ...AchieveGlobal
AchieveGlobal proposes a five-step process that every agency can take to make improvements in workplace environments and productivity, and, at the same time, launch solutions that support long-term culture change initiatives.
Running head CHICK-FILL-A ACTION PLAN 1CHICK-FILL-A ACTIO.docxsusanschei
Running head: CHICK-FILL-A ACTION PLAN
1
CHICK-FILL-A ACTION PLAN
2
Chick-fil-A Action Plan
Chick-fil-A Action Plan
The Chick-fil-a organization hired Team C as consultants to address needs this organization feels needs resolving. Team C was able to develop a project plan that will address the needs of this organization. Team C created an action plan to help the organization better understand the process of the project plan. In this action plan summary, Team C will discuss the data collection process, the different measures used to for the action plan, taking the data collection and converting into monetary value. Team C will discuss how to take all this information and utilized it terms of training and development for Chick-fil-A.
Data Collection
Collecting data for the project is done to assess how well the project is meeting, or has met the stated goals and objectives. According to Shays (2005), “Data collection is a delaying tactic to decide where to begin" (pg1) There are multiple ways to collect the data including questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and focus groups are types of data collection that require human interaction. Collection methods would be ideal in helping the project team evaluate the differences in customer service, before and after the training. Measurement tests, simulations, and observation are a few other ways for the researchers to collect data. Measurement tests, simulations, and observation are meant to evaluate the depth of the employees learning or practical application of the skills taught as a part of the training program. This is ideal for Chik-fil-A’s training program evaluation. Project teams must research each data collection method to ensure they have selected the best methods of collecting the data for their project, so they are able to properly assess the project's performance (Phillips et al., 2015).
Methods for Data Collection
To ensure project success, the consultant will utilize different data collecting methods. The consultants will conduct interviews with top management to gather input at the reaction level. These interviews will provide a clear understanding of how main stockholders and top management perceive the project, how useful do they believe it will be and how effective do they perceive the chosen communication methods. Feedback on the reaction level is essential to ensure customer satisfaction.
Data collection for the learning level will consist of a small survey given to the trainees. A small survey with mainly close-ended questions will provide information on how the new training program skills are received. Addressing the learning objective will be key in knowing if the trainees understand the new tools and if the learning process is being effective.
Application and implementation level are to measure the various times during the project. Prior every location manager is trained, they will be provided with an action plan with step by steps instructions on h ...
Project Management Methodologies
PPMP20009
Week 10 Lecture
Dr Bernard Wong
[email protected]
1
Assignment 4
Continuous Improvement Plan
Week 12 Friday
Open the course profile to review criteria.
2
Reminder
PPMP20009
Presentation weeks 11 or 12
4
Create your own Deming PDCA cycle relating to the last assignment that you handed in.
Change Management
6
Formulate change
Plan change
Implement change
Manage transition
Sustain change
Take the ‘Act’ segment of the PDCA cycle you created earlier and define the five CM stages.
Formulate change
Plan change
Implement change
Manage transition
Sustain change
Continuous Improvement?
Why are we wanting to improve?
Where are we now?
What are we working with?
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
Cheshire Cat
(Alice in Wonderland)
There are a number of things to consider when deciding what level of maturity to aim for.
Why are you wanting to increase your level of maturity in this space?
-Some might be wanting to do it simply as a continuous improvement strategy.
Some may be having issues with the performance of their program and project delivery or portfolio investment returns
Others may need it to be competitive in a market that looks at the P3M3 levels of organisations in the tendering process
Others may be required to undergo a mandatory audit – as did the Qld Govt in 2012.
One organisation that I have spoken with has noted that their environment has become increasingly fiscally constrained and as such funding is much more competitive. They want to increase certain sections of their maturity, specifically relating to benefits management, business case and blueprint development – so that they can be more competitive in seeking funding for initiatives. So in this case they are not necessarily trying to improve their maturity as a whole, but an aspect of it. In doing this however, it is likely that they will have an increase in maturity in other areas as well.
We need to know where you are now to assist in deciding where you want to go. This is where going through an assessment is essential and I do believe in this being independent. You can self assess but this will always be impacted with bias. You need to baseline.
What are you working with? What is your organisational context? What resources do you have both budget and people? Do you have authentic sponsorship or are your leaders just ticking a mandate off? What’s your organisational culture like, are they open to P3 management or are they likely to see effort to increase maturity as unnecessary overhead?
So when we went through this process we were fortunate to have an authentic sponsor, we had a culture of project and program delivery so the staff understood the value of the practice (and I do say practice rather than methodology – as if you have experienced practitioners, they will argue methodology with you – this is a good thing!). We.
This document outlines 8 HR metrics for organizational development. It discusses metrics in 4 categories: employee characteristics, leadership, HR processes, and innovation culture. Each metric is defined and an example calculation is provided. The document concludes by promoting the Academy to Innovate HR for online HR education programs.
The 5 Critical Elements to Creating a Project Management Center of ExcellenceFlevy.com Best Practices
Original article from the Flevy business blog can be found here:
http://flevy.com/blog/the-5-critical-elements-to-creating-a-project-management-centre-of-excellence/
Creating a Project Management Centre of Excellence is the driving force that takes an organization forward to realize their project management mandate. It encompasses the process of creating a strategy for project management, re-shaping the culture to be more focused on the consistency in the management of projects and implementing a project management process.
Creating a Project Management Centre of Excellence
project_management_COEA Centre of Excellence is a business unit that has organization-wide authority. The key elements of a successful Project Management Centre of Excellence include:
Vision and Strategies
A clear vision of what it represents and the strategies to identify how it will reach this vision in the short and long term.
Competencies
The selection of resources based on project competency requirements compared to actual project resource competencies. The identification of coaching, training and other developmental activities to close any competency gap.
Culture
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One approach to creating a vision for the Centre of Excellence is to brainstorm ideas that focus on what the future will look like. Start by creating scenarios that describe what the Centre will be doing 5 years into the future. What are some of the things that they will be doing that reflect a successful Centre of Excellence? What will employees and customers be saying about them? How did they get there?
The outcome of this process is the creation of a vision statement for the Project Management Centre of Excellence. Determine how this vision aligns and supports the organization’s strategic direction.
The alignment of the Centre of Excellence to the goals of the organization is key to driving strategy implementation. Strategies translate this vision into reality. They close the gap between the present and the “ideal” future described in the vision scenarios. These strategies must be described clearly so that the organization understands and accepts them.
We at Think Talent believe that strong organization culture help build an environment with meaning, and offer ways to interpret and shape events and situations.
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Decreasing costs and improving quality in educational content creation through quantification + transparency of process
1. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 1
RATIONALE………………………………………………………………………1
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ………………………………………………………2
AUTHOR.………………………………………………………………………....3
CONTEXT: The Handicraft Industry ………………………………………4
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING: The Need to Innovate…….………………..5
THE PROBLEMS…………………………………………………………………7
GOALS FOR CHANGE…………………………………………………………………9
SUGGESTED STEPS AND VALUE PROPOSITIONS……………….……….12
By Pat Coryell, February 2014
RATIONALE
The education materials industry today is in the midst of a disruptive innovation cycle,
with the ability to create learning solutions with greater intelligence using the
capacities of technology, yet it continues to generate the learning content itself as a
handicraft art. Consider the hierarchy of understanding (figure 1) in this context:
Education products
today are moving
from
knowledgeable to
intelligent yet are
produced by an
editorial process
that straddles
somewhere
between data and
information.
Consider figure 2 showing a generic process of discover, define, develop, and deliver
for program content development regularly followed by education publishing
2. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 2
companies. Information, knowledge, and intelligence are built and used throughout
discovery, definition, and delivery phases, yet the actual process of determining
resource needed to develop education content is a best guess “3 editors, five months,
2 vendors, and a freelance budget of $40k.” Companies have great information and
knowledge of the market, and even in flux they demand evidence; still, they lack rigor
around an editorial process that can cost 50% or more of project time and operational
expense.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
This paper is written for executive and departmental managers in companies that
produce educational materials for K-12 and higher education. It focuses specifically on
the challenge of unpacking, identifying, and quantifying the creation of editorial
content for deployment in learning products in both print and digital forms. The
quantified perspective and transparency gained from this approach affords a much
more textured view into the development process, allowing superior resource
assignment and management, and informed cost reductions as well as inherent
efficiencies gained from seeing redundancies and anticipating bottlenecks and
conflicts. Editorial directors, heads of project management, and finance officers will be
helped to understand, plan, and execute transformational changes to staff capacity
planning and management through workflow process analysis and quantification.
Positive outcomes should include process verification & consistency with some degree
of appropriate standardization; tools for improved, more granular capacity planning for
3. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 3
content development, scheduling, & budgeting; facilitation of metric goals for staff &
program performance and outcomes; and new forms of reporting to track resource &
budget use.
AUTHOR
Patricia Coryell has worked successfully in editorial management in higher
education and K-12 and in a general manager-type role in global ELT. Her
uniquely broad background also includes experience in medicine, nursing, allied
health, and academic publishing.
The bulk of Pat’s management career was spent primarily feeding the topline -
leading Editorial through market evaluation, project ideation, talent acquisition,
business case development, content & program development, and product
launch and representation to customers and Sales. But when she joined a major
university press as group director for a global publishing arm, and realized that
brilliant, successful publishing was happening but profitability was zero, she
became a bottom-line zealot. Process, workflow, program staffing, use of
vendors & freelancers – all had to be analyzed, understood, and quantified.
Profit has to be everyone’s concern and responsibility, and transparency with
facts; clear, consistent communication; and behavior-change campaigns are
necessary.
Later as SVP, Publisher for K-12, Head of Editorial for one of the world’s largest
educational publishing companies, Pat’s role was both traditional in providing
strategic direction and leadership for the Education Group's Content and
Product Development staff, and it was nontraditional in the extent of the
operations focus, work, and responsibility. Tasked with providing measurement
and reduction of the cost of developing their products, while ensuring product
quality, reliability, and efficacy, she went on to quantify the curriculum
development process across disciplines. In the process, she was able to
standardize where appropriate and helpful the curriculum development process,
and determine actual task times and use the data to measure performance, in
order to fine-tune planning and accuracy of resource use and capacity, set
metric goals, and support results and decisions through data-driven measures
and processes. This provided what is possibly an industry-first data-driven
process refinement and capacity-planning innovation.
4. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 4
CONTEXT: The Handicraft Industry
Over 17 years in editorial management for some of the world’s largest education
publishers, I’ve never seen staffing projections and plans for content development
based on anything other than seat-of-the-pants estimating or following past patterns
and decisions. No data is used in this process, although, I’ve heard: “I need 8 editors
for 5 months.” “I need 7 grade-level teams of 5 editors each, through the end of
June.” “I need one development editor and one editorial assistant full time through
September, and I need to hire 2 freelancers for $40,000 each.” “We are adding more
content to the program and I need 2 more editors and $2 million for outside
development.” Thus, currently Editorial departments don’t have accurate means for
quantifying resourcing needs or a tool for planning staff resourcing on future programs.
This means they have no ability to predict, measure, and report on productivity – and
surely no way of proving improvement.
Program staffing projected by editorial managers is usually in month-long blocks – not
weeks, days, or hours. Core throughput tasks (tasks with metrics, such as page counts
or screens) such as creating content, writing storyboards, editing content, or proofing
manuscript and/or HTML program builds, have no supporting data to differentiate task
times. I’ve seen evidence showing that managers’ estimates for development of print-
bound content are more consistent with real task times, whereas estimates for working
on content for digital delivery can be wrong by 50%. Work that consumes an average
40-43% of total project time – which is on average equal to the amount of time for core
throughput tasks on any project – such as vendor management, second-level edits and
review, thumbnail development, and post-approval meetings, is often underestimated
if not omitted altogether in project and staff planning and scheduling. Similarly, work
on partner or other (e.g., free) content is often underestimated or not planned for.
Other critical factors, such as content complexity (work on pick-up, revised, or new
content) or market and discipline differences affecting work length and complexity, are
never based on real data. And, there is lack of visibility about the effects of
overlapping or multiple tasks being performed.
And if the estimated volume of content for development is wrong (e.g., a blended
learning course with 5 times the amount of content when brought to market, as
opposed to originally scoped), staff, vendor, or freelancer time and costs become that
much harder to plan and understand.
What results is a profound lack of true measurement – any data - and control of one of
publishing’s most expensive resources, the creative staff. Content development in
educational publishing continues to be an expensive handicraft industry. During my
5. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 5
first week as head of a publishing group, an editorial director explained her staffing
assignment roadmap, including “Mary is assigned to video development for one
program through next May” (this was in August). Highly compensated senior editors
like Mary working on a solitary task for 10-12 months (in this case, giveaway videos to
support an adult ELT course), or performing iterative tasks like filing permissions forms,
or entering component thumbnail sequences in legacy systems – these are common
misuses of talent with multiple causes, but lack of clarity on time-on-task and value-of-
task can be leading causes.
Staff time may be capitalized to projects or not – my experience is that attribution of
staff time as a company asset makes no difference in management’s understanding of
the true value of an employee’s time, in their ability to make decisions about their
work, and in their assessment of performance (because, again, there is no data).
Editorial managers differ widely in their ability and interest in maximizing staff work
time, and Glassdoor.com is still rife with comments from staff unable to accomplish
workloads, or who have no work.
You may go for months with having absolutely NOTHING to do, to months/years of
having EVERYTHING to do. There is no clear direction…
Glassdoor anonymous review
Heads of editorial rarely have dashboards and data to maximize staff mobility. Millions
of dollars are spent yearly on freelancers and vendors doing both specialized and
routine work, without value differentiation. These are often ex-employees hired back
to complete the teamwork and perform work across a spectrum from high-skill tasks to
those requiring low-level skills. Benchmarks and improvement goals remain largely
qualitative, based on market performance, favored process and procedures
idiosyncratic to individual publishing managers and groups, and these lack statistical
improvement goals – how can you improve something you can’t measure?
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING: The Need to Innovate & Change
The educational learning industry is under immense pressure to innovate and change
in order to maintain business and remain relevant. Publishers of educational materials
must invest deeply to provide a robust “connected system of learning services”
(Pearson CEO John Fallon, February 2013), in the process shifting and/or reducing
spending away from content development.
Two cost-reduction drivers can be found in
• Process improvements and consistent execution
• Improved use of development resource.
6. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 6
Pressures facing publishers across the industry landscape include 1) migrating learning
products historically delivered in print over to fully or partially digital solutions, 2)
ensuring customers of learning outcomes as a result of use of their curriculum products
& programs, 3) competitive threat from disrupters such as MOOCs, open educational
content, and open educational courseware, and 4) competitive pricing from low-cost
entrants, thus decreased revenues. These and other industry changes and pressures
are forcing spending cuts and improved use of creative resource during program
development. In this paper I will suggest practices for understanding current practices
and making change for improved operations and spending.
Content costs less than 10% of margin, while expense and value has shifted to
logistics (printing, distribution), away from content.
-- Deutsche Bank Markets Research
A recent study (August 2013) of the industry published by Deutsche Bank Markets
Research detailed the product and services conundrum faced by educational
publishers: The broad shift to digital in Education markets that are increasingly tech-
enabled, the proliferation of cheap tablets and smartphones, and the demand to
bundle services with curriculum materials, exposes the diminishing value of content.
The costly, highly developed, very high-quality content provided by big publishers has
strong competition from free content and content provided by low-cost entrants
(sometimes licensed from the big publishers and re-packaged to compete with
identical or very similar content offered by those publishers). Deutsche Bank estimates
content costs at less than 10% of margin, while value has shifted to advantages in
programming & delivering programs and services. Several significant pedagogical
demands & innovation trends, such as differentiated learning and adaptive learning –
the latter requiring as much as 5-times more program content – place pressure on the
need to decrease content costs overall. For over a decade, publishers have been
cutting content creation staff while increasing use of external developers (freelancers,
vendors) and/or simply doing less content development overall. During 2011-2013,
one big K-12 publisher spent overall 10% less for content development. While K-12
publishers spend up to 80% of budgets on external development resource, they retain
several hundred staff across editorial and learning design (15%-20% of total annual
development expense), while College publishers may retain 50-150 staff for content
creation. Across companies, there is a push to maximize productivity and skill-mobility
of on-staff workers in content development.
7. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 7
Consider, then, again, the content development process complexities of planning and
staffing (shown previously in Figure 2) with the addition of strategies for disciplines and
markets that call for scaling and re-use of content and the potential and need to use
staff differently, and increase their mobility and flexibility. Figure 3 below, shows one
possible view of development innovation.
THE PROBLEMS
Productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is.
- Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Content & program development managers are being asked to make spending cuts of
10%-20% in addition to rounds of staff reductions that began in earnest in the mid
1990s and have been ongoing. But consider that editorial managers responsible for
content development across major market segments (K-12, higher education) are
trained and experienced in business planning - market analysis & segmentation,
product ideation, author/writer acquisition. These same managers, who oversee
subsequent program and discipline content development performed by internal and
external staff, have yet to be trained in operational skills & decision-making.
8. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 8
The graph below (Figure 4) summarizes major steps in program development regularly
performed by Editorial managers and their staffs for all education markets.
Task areas with white backgrounds show activities that ED managers are well-trained
and incentivized to do and lead, or collaborate with leaders from adjacent groups like
Product Management, working according to directives from financial directors setting
policies, round-figure benchmarks for gross margins and/or net profits, and past
practices and decisions. Summarized, they are expected to
• effectively plan & propose competitive programs to sell well in markets 1 to 3
years from the present,
• manage and oversee development procedures that ensure product quality,
reliability, and learning efficacy,
• understand and plan for content delivery across all appropriate platform and
other deliveries, and,
• project growth and control spending to achieve 65-70% gross margin and /or
15%-20% net profit generally.
9. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 9
However, it is difficult to see how the following goals could be met with these
managers:
• Implement true planning and spending change that will reduce the cost of
developing industry-leading products.
• Standardize as possible the curriculum/course materials development process
across disciplines to create content that can easily be repurposed and to
support any/all content development strategies.
• Manage, monitor, & improve financial performance of all editorial operating
expenses.
• Measure performances of all levels of staff with metrics-driven goals.
• Support results/decisions through data-driven measures & processes.
Current managers in ED learning companies such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, Cengage, Wiley, Macmillan, and others, have neither the deep
understanding, nor the actual tools, nor the dominion to perform to these goals at a
time when publishers have had to
• shorten and truncate content development schedules overall due to late,
delayed state adoption calls in K-12 or changed market models in higher
education,
• adapt planning and development execution to deliver content & products
across multiple modalities, to new markets (e.g., international) and to consumers
(e.g., parents, direct to students), in new service/product bundling
configurations, and to OEMs and other digital partners
• decrease spend in regular operations (content development staff, internal &
external) in order to shift investment (e.g., digital delivery) or simply to deliver
drastic spending cuts overall.
Now look again at Figure 4, at the boxes with red backgrounds. These are the work-
task segments of product and content development that should benefit from data-
driven process refinement, increased standardization of work and workflow, and
capacity-planning innovation.
GOALS FOR CHANGE
Ultimately, managers responsible for segment (primarily discipline) content creation
should have access to data & tools to manage their business quantitatively across three
key areas if they are to achieve budgetary and other improvement goals set for them:
• planning for program and content development
• staff planning
• work effectiveness
10. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 10
Only when process and work is understood in quantitative terms can actual metric
goals be set and can managers and staff be clear about benchmarks and goals for work
and improvement.
Within planning for program and content development, much gain could be expected
from process standardization where rational. However, individual managers who have
followed successful & idiosyncratic process steps & workflows in order to be successful
cannot and should not be asked to evaluate and make changes across an organization.
From my own close analysis of process, across the major phases of program
development – Initiating, Planning, Executing, Closing, and Monitoring & Controlling –
steps, actions, & decisions taken by publishing groups regularly diverge, and outputs
critical to success vary - such as planning and monitoring documents, tagging of
content, staffing plans, style and other guidelines, technical formats, etc. Opportunity
for improved efficiencies via standardization measures & steps include the following
task areas: standards analysis; definition of program architecture, learning model, and
scope & sequence; staffing planning; content creation (writing core and assessment
content); metadata tagging; proof reviewing; and quality control.
Staff assignments, estimated time on task, relative value of task work, internal versus
external resource use, access to staff across groups (staff mobility) – all issues
surrounding staff planning lack transparency in current organizations and retard
possibilities for analyzing and improving. In truth, development staff is often “on the
beach” without any work, and no tools exist to measure and ensure staff utilization.
Visibility into content development work enabled by access to data would help to
guide and check decisions on program staffing, to view the value (e.g., productivity) of
staff roles, to assess performance, identify trouble spots, and guide improvements, and
to set measurable goals (e.g., annual, program) for staff and/or specific content
development.
Access to real information about in-progress work effectiveness is rare. Data or
information on performance against budgets set for program development or specific-
purpose content - such as for a market (e.g., international, custom, or consumer), or a
purpose (e.g., assessment), or a delivery (e.g., tablet) – isn’t available real-time, and
sometimes isn’t assessed or acted on until a project is closed. Time-reporting, which
could be supported by enterprise systems like SAP or by simple Excel spreadsheets,
would allow tabulation and reporting, and would yield data for overall evaluation and
opportunity for improvement. Task-time targets could be established for program
type, component type, editorial role, and in-house staff versus vendor for maximum
11. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 11
resource utilization and performance. Examination of individual performances overall
and on programs, and evaluation of all work on any program or plan would be
possible. Editorial managers could regularly (e.g., monthly, quarterly) view all time
logged to program work and all staff time. A head of editorial, a finance manager, or
operations director could change resource allocations based on facts.
Setting metric goals is made possible by having a quantified process, tools to project
tasks with time, and actual time data to update the constants laid into tools. When as a
manager I had completed a thorough process review across workflows, tools, and
actions; when I had managed all editorial staff into a process of time reporting and into
compliance; when I had real access to view work performance over time, over content
types, over subject area, and over task type – only then did I have real information to
manage our editorial work.
Examples of what I learned:
Pre-approval product ideation work takes an average of 14% of editorial time on
a project.
Time in meetings takes an average of 20% of editorial time on approved
projects.
Work on throughput tasks and work on all other tasks are approximately equal
on approved projects (thus 43% each).
Editorial managers’ estimates of time required to write content for print
components (pages of content per hour) was fairly accurate whereas estimates
of development time for content for digital delivery (screens per hour) were off
by 50% (low).
Examples of possible goal setting:
Achieve <5% variance in content development budget for program.
Reduce time spent in post-approval meetings from 20% average to 10%.
Ensure 90% staff utilization rates composed of 75% capitalization rate + 15%
program planning.
Increase/decrease time on throughput tasks (writing, editing, reviewing, proofing)
by 10%.
Reduce annual spend on freelancers by 10%.
Increase annual spend on approved vendors by 10%.
12. CONFIDENTIAL: Coryell 12
SUGGESTED STEPS + VALUE PROPOSITIONS
• Analyze & chart current organization-wide product & content
development workflow, process, inputs/outputs.
Value: Consistent workflow; common process ‘vocabulary’ & description;
tagging of process & steps; identification of efficiencies & standardizations;
elimination of redundancies; management of priorities (e.g., throughput tasks);
facilitation of goals – metrics, behaviors – for use in management; clarifies and
quantifies annual staff goals & ongoing work management
• Establish task-time reporting or estimating across Editorial and
creative staff.
Value: Quantify, differentiate, & establish value of work tasks; truly granular
knowledge of work; develop/provide insight into task times and related value;
differentiation - throughput work, complexity, market, content type; support
descriptive needs & tools (e.g., rubrics); establish baseline, benchmark, & other
metric goals; visibility of compliance/success/work improvement/degradation;
assess/ensure/increase staff utilization; determine/direct use of internal versus
external resource; identify bottlenecks & failures; overall educational &
communicative purposes
• Build labor-forecasting tool using task times to plan labor weeks on
program content development. Train managers on use to create
more granular schedule/use of creative resource forecasting, base
insource/outsource decisions.
Value: Unprecedented labor time & budget planning, tracking, management, &
monitoring improvements; fact-based forecasting; facilitates & supports staff &
task mobility; supports complicated scheduling such as overlapping tasks &
identification of baseline program staffing needs & JIT additional staff needs;
supports labor metric goal-setting; identify & steer training needs; vendor
engagement & management tool
• Establish reporting on data for program staff time, spent/remaining
budget, and expected use of data.
Value: Access to actual spending versus budget on program and content
development; ability to adjust spending; trouble-spotting and in-time corrective
action