A trip around the organisation in many small steps

 

Submitted by Alex Visser, AIIM Industry Advisor

 

 

 

 

This week I was working on an information strategy for a UK based organisation and in the same week a professor defended his dissertation.  At first glance one would wonder what a dissertation has to do with an information management strategy. Well as it turns out it has rather a lot to do with it. The dissertation was based on an evaluation of a large number of ECM implementations. One of the main conclusions was that we apparently find it hard to learn from our previous experiences. The writer referred to a book that was written almost 20 years ago and in his words it would be just as valuable if it was printed again today as it was when it was first printed.

 

Part of this has to do with the fact that we do not really feedback lessons learned very well into our project teams and organisation. This is of course one more reason to make certain that the team members for an ECM implementation are well trained in both project management and in the best practises of ECM implementations. The other reason why we still often fail in the intent of the ECM programme is the size of the project. ECM has the potential to cover all areas in an organisation. The information strategy I was working on was once again a clear example of this. It would filter through every level of the organisation and every department of it too. The size of such programmes means that many people will have to be part of the programme and that many egos’ and political agenda get through in the mix as well.  These elements are the ones the professor was referring to as one of the biggest mistakes we still make and one of the biggest reasons the ECM project fail.

 

For those of you who have followed the AIIM survey this will not come as a big surprise. Underestimating the effort needed for an ECM Project, the internal politics and the lack of training are the steady top 3 for reasons why ECM project fail. The information Strategy I was working on had the same potential pitfalls as initially. First of all let me say that it was a pleasure to work on this strategy since so many organisations try to skip this important step. This is a danger in itself since it could lead to trying to implement a programme that does not have a clear goal. Seeing the effort that went into the strategy, this was clearly an organization that wanted to things right. The revision of the strategy was also taking into consideration the potential problems of wanting too much too fast. It was almost heading into the professor's main dissertation conclusion, but this was stopped short.

 

The method for this was a simple one. Keep the long term vision but instead of trying to go for one big project make it many small once that will ultimately cumulate into that big vision, while at the same time keeping it all at a manageable scale. Do you also agree with the dissertation that we have not learned enough in the last 20 years, while we easily could have? Let me know.

 

If you feel that maybe some of AIIM training course can help you or your organisation prevent some of those mistakes, feel free to attend one of the training courses or look for more information on the AIIM website.

 

The upcoming ECM courses are:

Kirkland 04/13/10 - 04/16/10

Dallas 04/27/10 - 04/30/10

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

London 05/04/10 – 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Utrecht  05/18/10 – 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

Alex Visser – AIIM   alex.visser@aiim.eu

Follow me on Twitter @AlexVisser

 

Comments

[Atle Iversen]

"Mistakes ? We don't make mistakes - that's what *others* do !" ;-)

Important article - use small steps !

"Think Big. Start Small. Scale Smart"

I absolutely agree that we have not learned enough in the last 20 years - but I can't agree that we "easily" could have ;-)

My 2 cents on KM 3.0
- http://www.ppcsoft.com/blog/km-3.asp