ECM Critical Success factors Part 2

In a previous post titled, ECM Critical Success Factors, I reflected on a number of factors that I believe contribute to ECM success; strategically oriented leadership, learning orientation, experienced based subject matter expertise, communicating realistic expectations, and focusing on organizational readiness. I also touched on Top Ten Characteristics of a Really Good Business Transformation / ECM Project Manager.

There are a couple of other ECM critical success factors I'd like to explore in this post.

Think Enterprise Architecture
Even in the context of implementing Basic Content Services, it is very easy to succumb to a focus on technological views, opportunities, and challenges, in particular given the growing technical complexity of organizational technology infrastructures. One of the failures of many ECM projects is an insufficient focus on business processes / requirements and the needs for managing information created in those contexts, resulting in unusable solutions, significant resistance to change, and perpetuating of the status quo of managing, nor not managing, information.

This is where an Enterprise Architecture view, and even a partnership with an Enterprise Architecture group, is essential. Regardless of the approach, Enterprise Architecture / Architects focus first on business architecture, then information/data/applications to enable the business, then the enabling technology.

Not respecting this order of analysis / design, or attempting to do all three simultaneously during an ECM implementation, creates unnecessary complexity, anxiety and cost/schedule over-runs.

Having Enterprise Architecture as a key partner in the early planning / analysis and design stages can be of significant value.

Use Knowledge Management for Successful ECM
If you can stipulate that, differentiated from Information Management, Knowledge Management focuses on the processes / practices that enable people to share what they know, learn from each other, and work effectively towards a common goal, then knowledge management is a significant enabler of an ECM project or program.

ECM brings together a number of often competing perspectives - external supplier, client, service provider, project management, internal partner - and a number of disciplines - communications, IT, IM, security/privacy, legal/audit - with divergent interests, understanding, and language.

Combine this with the propensity to assume that "magic" happens when all the "right" people are in the room, and you've got the proverbial recipe for disaster.
Applying a knowledge management mind-set to shifting how people work together will ensure that:

• learning before, while and after doing is embedded in the way the ECM project is scoped, managed and delivered and communicated
• people effectively work together towards common goals, and personal / hidden agendas are subordinate to the common ones
• problems / issues are properly identified and dealt with quickly productively / transparently
• positive attitudes and a sense of team accomplishment is pervasive, rather than negativism / defeatism, and individualism

Seriously Consider an "Agile" Approach
Traditional "waterfall" project management, as often applied even today, has an underlying presumption of predictability. Project managers, project sponsors and key stakeholders presume a high degree of certainty / accuracy about the breakdown/ scope of work, schedules, resource use and costs, even when the project is large, complex and spans a year or more.

Unfortunately, given the complexity of organizations, and the pace of change everyone experiences, little works out as planned.
For most ECM implementations I strongly suggest an approach that explicitly embeds experiential learning and re-planning / iteration at FREQUENT key points in the project – and most importantly, sets and manages stakeholder expectations accordingly.

Some recommended reading/references:

The Blending of Traditional and Agile Project Management (PM World Today - May 2007 (Vol. IX, Issue V)

Stage Gate Process – divides project work into phases related to key management decisions.

Mike 2.0 – links agile project management ideas with ECM/IM implementations.

ECM Critical Success Factors

Of late, I've been thinking of some of the challenges related to implementing large-scale ECM programs and projects, and would like to extend some of the thinking in this very useful presentation created by AIIM, and host of other contributions on the 'net.

I suggest that for ECM to be successful:

Senior decision makers must be able to think strategically.
In knowledge-based organizations, it is very difficult to quantify the benefits of ECM projects that are broad / enterprise wide in scope (v.s targeted to a specific work group/isolated, well scoped problem). Highly improvisational/collaborative knowledge work, unlike production work, is hard to monitor / measure objectively for changes in efficiency and effectiveness. Given the complexity of organizations and the environments they operate in, cause and effect relationships are almost impossible to draw concretely in advance. Senior managers need to think with the end in mind, make investment and corrective action decisions based on weak signals (information, often anecdotal, that emerges from local intelligence and extended social networks often disconnected from the organization's structure), less than complete quantitative information, and a mix of abstract thinking and common sense.

Strong, strategic subject matter expertise leadership must be available start to finish. 
There is no "cookbook" for ECM.  Every organization is different, and what worked in one situation will not automatically work in another.  Technologies vary, organizational culture varies, degree of existing internal experience and capabilities vary. What is essential is to have a strong, experienced subject matter expert leading the initiative who has the ability to help the project team access and adapt proven practices to the situation / context of the project, to translate abstract concepts into practical reality, and who can develop / promote common understanding about the overall solution design across client groups, business and technology team members.

Learning must be explicitly built into the project plan.
Given the complex nature of both broad based ECM implementation and the organizations within which implementation takes place, any confidence in the accuracy of detail long range plans that cover the entire project / program from start to finish is misplaced. It could be argued that rigorous detailed planning for later / final project phases is misplaced as well. ECM is best managed as a learning oriented project, with explicit learning / after action review meetings scheduled in the plan after key project phases / milestones, and a "re-planning" step identified immediately afterward.  This step can also be synchronized with funding requests to continue progressing with the project / program.  Add explicit activities to ensure that delivery partners (e.g. IM/IT/Communications)  and program/project governance groups (e.g steering committee / working groups) learn what is required to fulfill their responsibilities and make critical, timely decisions as the project progresses.  ECM projects/programs are social systems that constantly change as time progresses, and planning and management of the project must accommodate.

Promote realistic expectations about plan accuracy and project outcomes and benefits.
In keeping with the above point, it is essential to resist the urge to tell "good news stories," to set unrealistic expectations about the degree of certainty of plan and outcome scope, and to tell decision makers, and staff in general, what the project team thinks these two important audiences want to hear. It is always difficult for people who are well paid project management or subject matter "experts" to admit they are unsure.  With the stage well set for a learning project, the personal/reputational risk is minimized, but the old adage "it is what it is" really must apply.

Gear the project to organizational readiness / capacity for change for both the project and the outcome.
If a documented or implicit planning assumption is that "people will be available when required," challenge it strenuously. Challenge equally any plans that assume that some form of homogeneous common understanding (or even interest) about ECM/IM exists across project governance and target audience, because it's rarely the case. If the plan is based on an assumption of 100% availability for full-time staff, challenge that as well. One of the scarcest resources in any organization is attention. There are so many competitors for attention all the time, and no one can ever be sustainably 100% focused/available for a project.  ECM initiatives constantly compete with other strategic and operational priorities for attention. Employees still have an interest related to their operational roles and responsibilities, and are often drawn into related conversations or meetings.  Even external consultants have responsibilities associated with their home organizations, and are rarely truly 100% focused/dedicated. Lead ECM with organizational change management and communications, and embed these activities throughout the project plan. The very first step should be to ensure that a proper knowledge and awareness foundation is laid for key decision makers and stakeholders before proceeding.

Respectful Practices in Social Media

A few years back, I had some great conversations with The Email Shrink, and a concept that he spoke of often was "respectful practices" in the use of email - one of them I'll paraphrase as don't flood your colleague's business email boxes with unnecessary junk - anything from a pointless "CC" to forwarding those intrnet chain messages containing jokes, photos or videos. The impact of doing this is pretty obvious - additional workload to deal with the unwanted emails. The point I take from this is consider the receiver before pushing Send.

So, I was looking at Facebook last night noticed that over 1/2 of the news feeds are generated from apps like Snowball Fight, Island Paradise, The Warlords, Tartan Treasures, Farmville, etc. etc. etc. which makes it difficult to identify (what for me is) more important updates and information provided by the friends network. I certainly respect and support people having the right to decide what they do (plus, "people will exercise free will as they see fit in all circumstances"), but I also think that social media, in particular as it is used in the workplace, will require additional considerations by everyone to ensure we all don't end up collapsing under the weight of having to deal with all the unwanted information. Plus, many of the min-apps available in social applications require that recipients take specific steps to block / opt-out of receiving information automatically generated. Again, more unnecessary work.

So, to all social media users out there, consider for a moment the impact of your choices on the members of your "network".

For business looking to leverage social media inside the enterprise, it might be advantageous to consider limiting the number of non-work related apps that can be installed on your social media platform. The risk of unnecessary distractions and productivity loss is significant, as is the impact of having this type of content around the organization in scope for any form of legal discovery.

Provacative Thoughts from Managing the Crowd

Thanks to strong recommendations from a number of colleagues, I've been reading Managing the Crowd - rethinking records management for the web 2.0 world by Steve Bailey. In the context of challenging traditional records management perspectives in the context of current / future trends in social collaboration technologies, he raises some very provacative points:

• given that all information regardless of source, format, media or medium is in scope of access to information requests, e-discovery / litigation, why bother identifying and managing a subset of corporate information as records?
• ensuring that documents, emails etc. that that could potentially reflect badly on an organization are disposed of is somewhat analagous to "accessory after the fact", and in contradiction to the traditional value of the records management function
• if no one appears to have effectively managed email records beyond minimum compliance, how can we realistically presume to be able to implement large scale content management systems to manage records and information that users will enthusiastically embrace as a productivity improver?
• is it realistic, or even possible, to effectively manage records that are created in an ever-increasing number of information silos and the exponential proliferation and use of un-connected Web 2.0 applications?
• if organizations are using platforms outside their firewall for social networking, collaboration, and content creation (e.g. Google Docs, Zoho, WetPaint etc.), how can records, let alone information, be managed in them from a corporate perspective?
• is effective records appraisal possible given the increasing complexity of the world around us and the the resulting shifts organizational context, the sheer volume and type of information being created from any number of business and personal contexts, and the inabilty to accurately predict future value?
• does using evidential value as the key criteria for managing records potentially harm an organization by allowing information that has information value to be disposed of?

These and other questions that emerge from the book itself, or from reading and considering it, and the challenges associated with integrating social collaboration platforms inside and outside the organization, would certainly seem to indicate the need to examine the 'traditional' approaches to implementing document and records management.