STANDARDS

COGNITIVE

• Analyze, synthesize, use inductive and deductive reasoning, and solve problems effectively and creatively.

ARTIFACT

EDTEC 685: Information and Instructional Technology for Organizations
Project: Performance Technology Makeover: A New Website Rollout (PDF)

Context and Project Description

One of the assignments in this class was to find a past performance problem and give it a “do over” from a human performance perspective. The project I chose is a failed rollout of a new website for the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA), a nonprofit organization for virtual professionals. The purpose of replacing the old website with a new one is to ease the workload of the website committee by allowing other committees to add and edit their own content. A few months after the rollout, the website committee’s workload has not decreased and there was a marked increase in membership complaints about the new website.

In this artifact, I briefly describe the approach I would have taken differently and some of the performance technology interventions I would have applied prior to the rollout of the new site.

How The Artifact Demonstrates The Standard

For my proposed makeover, I conducted a front end analysis to determine if it is a training, incentive or organizational problem. I outlined the drivers and possible obstacles, identified who has the performance problem (Board, general membership, website committee) and determined the causes.  Armed with the results and a new understanding of how the drivers and barriers interact and relate to each other, I synthesized and reconstituted the information into a new set of solution systems.

Challenges and Opportunities

I was a volunteer for the organization during to the new website rollout. By the time I started working on this project for the class, I already left the organization. I had limited access to resources for my analysis. It was a challenge to obtain data from some of the stakeholders since I do not have as much interaction with them as I had before. In spite of these limitations, I was able to put together a decent set of new solutions by relying on memory, past emails and whatever social capital I have left with the other volunteers.

What I Learned

Until you know what you are trying to accomplish, you cannot decide what actions to take. Whatever initial solution I had on my mind prior to my analysis immediately changed as soon as I started analyzing the information I collected. My knowledge of performance technology was nil when I was intimately involved with the project. Knowing what I know now and working on it from a different viewpoint (as a pretend consultant), I learned that it is important to break down the whole into different parts in order to look at it in a new light and be able to come up with a new whole.

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