Learning from a project “Post-Mortem”

A project from my work experience that is worth examining is a project that was developed for specialists to follow a new evaluation process for applicants who wanted to achieve offered certificates.  The certificate applicants had to have a certain amount of experience within their respective fields.  The specialists then had to review that experience from the applicant’s resume or other submitted documentation and determine if they were qualified to enter the certificate program.  It was the purpose of the project to create documentation on what the experience requirements were for applicants to qualify them for the certificate programs and to post those resource documents on a SharePoint site for all of the specialists to access as they were reviewing applicant’s files.

What training/ID did well in the project was collecting input from the specialists on their understanding of the certificate programs and requirements as well as working closely with all stakeholders to ensure the resources could be supported by technology and that they were approved by leadership and regulatory advisors prior to implementation.  What training/ID did not do well in the project was that they failed to fully understand the role of the specialist when they were reviewing these applicants.  The specialists had a very high volume of applicant files to review, and thus, they needed to access the resource documents quickly.  Training/ID had placed all resource documents for all certificates in one PDF Portfolio on the SharePoint site; not thinking about how long it would take to sift through all of the different folders to find the right certificate PDF resource.  They thought they were being helpful in organizing the documents in a visual and creative way, but really, it ended up frustrating the specialists immensely as they had to search and wait for PDF’s to load in subfolders, within folders, within the portfolio.  Ultimately, this slowed down productivity for the specialists instead of making the process more consistent and clear.  Training/ID should have sat with the specialists and observed their work flow in order to better understand their needs and workflow prior to deciding on the format in which to house the final documents.