Performance support: worker information systems - includes related article on performance support example

RELease 1.0, August 24, 1993

What's a company's greatest asset, according to many annual reports? People, of course, not computers or even reusable code. This issue is about how to invest in people -- albeit through the medium of reusable code and content, or electronic performance support. Performance support is the obverse of workflow: Workflow automates the flow of work from one person to another; performance support helps the person at each workflow node to do what cannot be automated. Many workers' tasks may seem to be routine and limited, but electronic help enables them to handle routine work more efficiently -- and unexpected situations more effectively. Otherwise, if you can't leverage the people, maybe the tasks should be fully automated: Why involve a person at all?

Conventional business wisdom is switching from the capital equipment model of investing to the continuous improvement model. In the past, you did a needs analysis, bought some equipment, used it until it wore out and started over again; now you continually assess your needs, buy stuff, improve it and change as you go. Likewise, in the systems world, in theory, re-engineering never stops.

But with people, we're still in the capital-equipment mode. You draw up a job requisition, hire someone, train him, and let him grow on the Job.

When he leaves or retires or your business expands, you start over with more requisitions .... Of course, this picture is exaggerated, but generally training is considered a costly event rather than a continuing investment process. We separate it from work and focus on the time it takes from work, even though its goal ts to save time in the long run.

With this as background, let's take a look at the notion of performance support. The idea is simple: Online support for the performance of work, instead of for the use of software. The difference is subtle but the impact can be huge. Online performance support encourages people to think about their work, rather than fuss with computer tasks. Moreover, since it's online like regular help, users can keep on learning as they perform their jobs, rather than in discrete training sessions or software.

What is performance support? That depends on who is selling it. Many vendors come out of the training world, and consider it Just-in-time training, applied as needed instead of beforehand (which makes sense except for airline pilots!). The politically correct word for a user is "performer."

Worker information system

Others, from the computer world, call it online help for tasks instead of for the system itself. In a broad sense, performance support should be part of every application for end-users, with a focus on the performer's task rather than the tools or the corporation's data.

For example, a sales support system such as Intel's iKNOW (page 8) assists a salesperson in eliciting and analyzing client needs, and matching those needs to the company's offerings or comparing them to a competitor's. Avis's TAFT (page 10) was designed so that the performer can enter data in any order, Just as the car-rental customer delivers it. An analyst's support system such as Hartford Insurance's (page 11) helps to collect the relevant data and lead the performer through the proper steps. A tax system such as RUI's (page 12) will guide Russian workers with what they need to know about business as well as the intricacies of the computer itself.

Performance support is also a kind of content software; the content is the specifics of the information and the process required to perform a specific set of tasks. Thus, for example, it combines the data a worker needs with guidance on how to assess the data or present it to a customer. The quality of performance support depends not so much on the technology as on the content it embodies and its relevance to the performer's tasks (see Release 1.0, 11-92 and 2-93).

From yet another perspective, performance support can be a groupware application: Performance support content can come from other workers as well as from management. Performance support spreads best practice as well as new procedures and insights throughout an organization. It need not -- should not -- be rigid and fixed (although there should be someone to vet it so that misinformation is not spread).

Technically, performance support frequently looks like database access and navigation tools plus context-sensitive online documentation. It can be built with hypertext tools or expert systems; it needs to know what the user is doing; it should be kept in neat modular fashion so that it's easily changeable as the underlying system changes.

This issue discusses some of the technology issues in performance support, the marketplace, and a few case histories.

New bottles fundamentally improve old wine

What makes performance support different from plain old help on the one hand, or decision-making expert systems on the other?

As noted, performance support is different from help because it focuses on a task, not on the tools used for the task. This is a fine line in practice, and a good solution, as opposed to an application or a piece of performance support, should comprise both. But in principle the distinction is clear. Help helps the user to use the software; performance support guides and assists the user in accomplishing a task, with or without software.