Regardless of your title – if you are responsible for meeting the Instructional and Information needs of certain target audiences – you are a Curriculum Manager. Then depending on how you are organized you may or may not have full responsibility for certain aspects of your operations.

My new book walks you through defining your job – getting aligned to your Customers and Stakeholders formally, and determining where improvements need to be made to your operations in order for you to be a better steward of shareholder equity – in the Training, Learning and Knowledge Management spaces – in an Enterprise Learning Context.

Please go here for the Table of Contents and ordering information.

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This is number 5 of 6 new books coming out from me this summer – with number 6 due out sometime in mid-to-late July 2011.

This new book is on the ADDIE-like methodologies of The PACT Processes for MCD…

For the table of contents and ordering information – please go here.

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Learning Objects Levels

I dislike the “Learning Object” being at the Lesson level in most Object Oriented Design methods for Instruction. I always have. I had been “doing differently” for years by the time this popular notion came about. I had been doing Content Reuse for over a decade when intact Lessons as “the object” in object oriented design came to the forefront in Training/Learning and Knowledge Management.

But that’s exactly where most of the “adaptations for authenticity’s-sake” need to happen in an Enterprise Learning Context. That’s why most Object Oriented ISD methodologies have not been all that successful. In an Educational Learning Context – or perhaps even in a Personal Learning Context – that generic nature of the Content is the way it is for them and always has been. They cannot, in those Contexts, describe the specific application of these new awareness, knowledge or skill. They cannot describe the job tasks and outputs because that is too big a variable. So they generalize. It’s better than nothing – although some disagree with that too.

So generic Content is as close as they can get. It may even have face validity in title. But still general and not specific.

In an Enterprise Learning Context it – performance – can be described at the point of application on-the-job – in the moment of need. But often it is not. Too often L&D organizations default to generic educational pieces that don’t transfer (it’s too costly to measure so we cannot – and do not want to either as we know what that result will be). No transfer = a very poor investment, with probably a negative ROI.

No analysis of the performance – no translation of Topic to Task with the Client before Rapid Development of Content sans Context was launched. It happens all too often.

If your system isn’t set up to encourage and enable “Content Derivatives” at the Lesson level – then you’ll get generic reuse and that’s a waste of effort and money. That’s not good stewardship.

If your system isn’t set up to encourage and enable “Content Derivatives” at the Event, Lesson and Instructional Activity” levels – then you’ll never begin the Mastery of Content Reuse – which is what Curriculum Architecture is really “all about.”

It – Curriculum Architecture – is about producing those T&D Paths, those Learning Paths, based on performance – but also addressing that in a modular design (not a collection of modules) that intends to “engineer performance” in a cost effective manner – through a Reuse strategy with Plug-n-Play tactics enabled across the entire L&D function. That’s good stewardship.

It happens at these levels – reuse of the earlier outputs as templates for reuse by the next project:

• Path Map
• Event Spec and Map
• Module Spec/Lesson Map
• Instructional Activity Spec – and actual Content used in a Plug-n-Play approach
• Items in The WELL (stock photos, graphics, video, audio, architected text, etc.) – components of Content

The first Lesson Map was built based on Analysis data that can be searched backwards to locate – and use as the template for analysis for the next group of target audiences – so that their Performance Contexts can be factored in – to get their Content to be “authentic enough” for transfer to occur.

One shouldn’t change Content in derivatives just because one can – the goal is to create Content Derivatives with minimal changes one to the next. If there was a prize, it’d be for that: the Smallest Tweaks Award!

Authentic Content starts with the data from both a Performance Model and a K/S Matrices set of systematically derived awareness, knowledge and skills needed to perform the tasks to produce the outputs to Stakeholder Requirements – in an Analysis effort/phase. The Design effort processes that data into design templates that give the right amount at the right time the infos, demos and appos (application exercises) needed to crate awareness, knowledge and skills in Performance Competence.

The MCD effort follows this process framework – the phases can be combined as needed – and the number of Project Steering Team gate Review Meetings can be re-configured as well.

This is my version of ADDIE – and is truly a Process Framework that can be used to frame Process Maps and Models, Performance Models, all enabling human asset requirements and environmental support requirements, ABC’s Activity-based Costing (and all time and cost tracking against this framework by Project), all milestones named after this framework.

Following this framework for planning also does not guarantee good results – just as following ADDIE cannot.

Good Practices exist inside Good Processes (those that are sane-enough, lean-enough, effective-enough and  efficient-enough) and are what makes good ISD/ID/SAT/Learning, Social or not. You’ve gotta have Good ISD Practices inside your Good ISD Processes – or it just doesn’t work well – and impact the Learner’s Performance Competence on the job.

Practices are the Nuances of Processes

They are the secret sauce so to speak.

Do you have Standard Practices within your Standard Processes – or do you first have to check and see what day of the week it is?

These Processes and Practices are topics covered in several of my new in 2011 books:

• The Curriculum Manager’s Handbook
• Performance-based Curriculum Architecture Design (CAD)
• Performance-based Modular Curriculum Development (MCD) (soon to be available – very soon)

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MCD – Modular Curriculum Development – is the ADDIE-like Process in the PACT Processes. From start to finish.

This is the subject of my next book – to be made available in just a few days.

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Top Down Versus Bottom Up – For Instructional Content Design

Top Down Instructional Design is so much better than Bottom Up design when it comes to managing Redundancy.

The former is proactive, the latter, reactive. The former enabled blending by design, the latter is blended by chance.  The former enables content redundancy by design for reinforcement needs, refresher needs, and helps find it when the need is remedial.

Redundant content is costly in first costs and in life cycle costs – and should only be done for reinforcement for learning and skills applications and development purposes; for refreshers for legal/regulatory compliance requirements – whether the Learner needed it or not; and for remedial situations because Guy didn’t seem to learn this earlier and now he needs to know this.

Supporting “in the moment of need” and/or prior to that “moment of need” and doing it logically – and because that is what the target audience will actually use and appreciate – are things best decided by a Design Team of Master Performers – not Learning Professionals.

When you are looking to impact/ improve key “Performance Competence” areas – in key, critical jobs within the enterprise – and you wish your Learning System to accomplish that – they can do that better by conducting Performance Analysis and then Curriculum Architecture Design – and produce a Path and Planning Guide – in a suggested sequence of learning.

Not millions of ways to slough through some listings of curricula offerings to try to determine what to take first, second, third, fourth….

But a visual, suggested sequence of learning, with just enough information to enable a sniff test before a taste test.

A sequence suggested by a Design Team made up of Master Performers from that “world of work” that the Path and Planning Guide address. A set of products from a defined Process employing many Practices, honed over the decades and projects conducted and Practitioners taught.

Key to any Design Process is the Analysis Data that feeds it. In my methods the Design Process dictated what Analysis outputs I would need (and to what level of depth is it needed at right now in the process) in Design, so I was able to narrow my Analysis methods and output-sets to 4:

1. Target Audience data
2. Performance data
3. Enabling Knowledge/Skills data
4. Existing T&D Assessment data

Being organized for reuse, as well as Performance, I need to share a common tool box/filing system for my design outputs, the actual content from development (build) and acquisition (buy) . I’ve been using this “5-Tier Inventory” scheme/ framework/ structure as figurative and literal organizing method for my design objects and their home rooms.

Robustness – in design – requires the Product to stand up to normal use and abuse. To roll with the punches. Too adapt quicker, cheaper and better as needed. To impact Performance Competence and do it at reduced costs – life cycle costs. To allow redundancy by design and eliminate/minimize redundancy by chance.

4 New Books Address This

I have recently published three of four new books addressing this from different perspectives.

For the Curriculum Manager, L&D Director and the CLO…

For the Instructional Analysts and the Performance Improvement Analyst…

For the Project Manager and the Designer of performance-based Curriculum Architecture Design efforts…

Coming out soon – for the Project Manager and the Designer of performance-based Modular Curriculum Development (the ADDIE-like) efforts to build/buy instructional/ informational content…

These new books are excerpts and updates from sections of this 1999 book: lean-ISD

lean-ISD cover by the late Geary A. Rummler, a friend and mentor who wrote this in his 1999 review of this book:

“If you want to ground your fantasy of a ‘corporate university’ with the reality of a sound ‘engineering’ approach to instructional systems that will provide results, you should learn about the PACT Processes. If you are the leader of, or a serious participant in, the design and implementation of a large-scale corporate curriculum, then this book is for you. This system could be the difference between achieving bottom-line results with your training or being just another ‘little red school house.’ ”

Miki Lane also wrote a review of lean-ISD in 1999…

“lean-ISD takes all of the theory, books, courses, and pseudo job aids that are currently on the market about Instructional Systems Design and blows them out of the water. Previous ‘systems’ approach books showed a lot of big boxes and diagrams, which were supposed to help the reader become proficient in the design process. Here is a book that actually includes all of the information that fell through the cracks of other ISD training materials and shows you the way to actually get from one step to another. Guy adds all of the caveats and tips he has learned in more than 20 years of ISD practice and sprinkles them as job aids and stories throughout the book. However, the most critical part of the book for me was that Guy included the project and people management elements of ISD in the book. Too often, ISD models and materials forget that we are working with real people in getting the work done. This book helps explain and illustrate best practices in ensuring success in ISD projects.”

I hope the 4 updated books live up to those early reviews!

Blending From the Top

Placing content on a Learning Path, or Training & Development Roadmap for the first time – and then again for reinforcement purposes to build skills through additional practice (with reinforcing and corrective feedback) needs to be done carefully – and driven by the Performance Competency goals of the Customer and other key Stakeholders.

The Customers and Stakeholders live with the consequences of the design and what is put in place (or not put in place). Structure your processes for more collaboration and engagement with your Customers and Stakeholders.

Design seems to be a bit of a lost art/science in too many Rapid Development environments. Too often they are sans Analysis and Design. And you know where that leaves ADDIE!

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One of over 50 in Guy’s HPT Practitioner and HPT Legacy Series here.

44 minutes

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My Commentary About “Four Questions: Talking Quality with Ford Motor Company”

A few weeks ago ASQ CEO Paul Borawski posted a few short videos of him talking with Bennie Fowler, group vice president of quality and new model launch at Ford Motor Company. Bernie commented on “Quality is still Job 1″ 30 years later – and that quality of the Product is the “price of entry” into a market. Quality must go beyond the Product to the Customer Experience. And Innovation should not be simply for the sake of Innovation.

Me: I agree.

But this isn’t new, this thinking beyond the product and looking at the entire customer experience.

And it isn’t new at Ford – I recall working on a Curriculum Architecture Design for “Robust Engineering” back in the early 1990s when this was part of the discussion – the need for a QFD type tool for the entire experience – beyond the sound and feel of how the door closed. QFD was always such a cool tool in my view. It helps make things visible – and that is usually helpful. My project:

Engineering Curriculum Design. Guy’s 41st performance-based CAD project, where “robustness” of automotive designs was the focus. In this project, he worked with an Analysis Team composed of a number of Ford engineering upper-level managers, plus deans and professors from several universities to first build the Performance Models and Knowledge/Skill Matrices and then rationalize and detail an existing ten-course design. 1992.

And large-scale improvement efforts - and innovation efforts –  shouldn’t be everywhere, anywhere. They should be targeted. But at what?

From Wikipedia

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a “method to transform user demands into design quality, to deploy the functions forming quality, and to deploy methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts, and ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing process.”,^[1] as described by Dr. Yoji Akao, who originally developed QFD in Japan in 1966, when the author combined his work in quality assurance and quality control points with function deployment used in value engineering.

QFD is designed to help planners focus on characteristics of a new or existing product or service from the viewpoints of market segments, company, or technology-development needs. The technique yields graphs and matrices.

QFD helps transform customer needs (the voice of the customer [VOC]) into engineering characteristics (and appropriate test methods) for a product or service, prioritizing each product or service characteristic while simultaneously setting development targets for product or service.

Processes produce “Outputs-that are Inputs” – and QFD can define the characteristic of the product and it’s process. But can it be used to define the characteristics of the Customer Experience – and their interactions with the Product – and before the Product and perhaps even after the Product?

Looking at the Customer Experience Life Cycle and identifying those characteristics that are desired and those that are not – and engineering the Processes and the human Practices and the non-human Resources to accomplish that – can be done. It’s a logical extension – and something I’ve been involved with for decades.

In 1994 I co-authored The Quality Road Map book (out of print) – and we presented a Business Architecture – presented in the next graphic from a company brochure back then – note the elements of the Business Architecture – and re-look at the book’s cover graphic.

Click on to enlarge and to see the right side (which is missing).

Determining the characteristics of the Product and it’s enabling Processes – and then determining the characteristics of the entire Customer and Stakeholder Experience – of the entire Context – and then use that to determine the enablers. And then target your innovation efforts.

Determine which Resources and which Practices you’ll need to enable THAT ideal Process some team has put down on paper. How to bring a paper process to life…

Process Resources

Those Resources can be viewed using this category scheme:

1. Data & Information
2. Materials & Supplies
3. Tools & Equipment
4. Facilities & Grounds
5. Budget & Headcount

And then once the Resourcing of the Process have been both systematically and systemically determined – you need to determine what human Practices you’ll need.

Processes Practices

Practices are the Nuances of Processes.

“Smile when you say that” is a Practice when answering the phone – and whenever talking with the Customer in some Call Centers.

Practice categories include:

1. Role & Expectations Clarity
2. Recruiting & Selection
3. Initial Orientation & Skills Development
4. Ongoing Communications & Feedback
5. Development Planning
6. Empowerment & Engagement
7. Culture & Consequences

What are the performance Practices that make business sense within your Processes? What are the Resources? What creates the ideal Context for all parties?

The Customer Experience Context is the new King in town.

Understand the requirements of The Context. And think about dusting off your QFD tool-set.

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Judy Hale in 2009

10 minutes.

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Timm Esque recorded in 2011…

6:30 minutes.

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Video of Rob Foshay at ISPI in 2008…

4 minutes. One of over 50 HPT Practitioner and HPT Legacy Video Podcasts – available here.

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