Hello! Please check out my most popular post Social Media Policies and Procedures and let me know what you think. More updates to come. Thanks for visiting.
While issue management is not specifically addressed by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), it is a key process necessary for effective project management. An issue is something that requires a decision made and associated actions performed. It is a situation that has occurred or will occur, as oppose to a risk that is a potential of a situation to occur. Typically, issues are tracked from a simple whiteboard, to a spreadsheet, to a full scale issue tracking and management system.
Issue management systems serves its purpose. However, it requires issues to be categorized and classified by the project management team. Feedback by the project team or end users require each issue to be assigned and prioritized. Often, team members and end users complain about the lack of transparency on the prioritization process. What gets ranked critical vs. high vs. low priority. In a previous post, I introduced you to using IdeaScale as a tool to solicit customer feedback and ideas. An alternative use of the tool is to implement it as an issue management system. Rather than priorities defined and assigned in a top down approach, using IdeaScale allows you to “crowd source” a bottom up approach.
Here are the conceptual steps to process from issue submission to closing.
- Team member (and end user) identifies an issue or or problem that requires attention or decision.
- The team member logs onto the IdeaScale portal and submits the issue.
- All team members (and end users) access the portal to review the issues list, and vote up or down, the priorities of each issue.
- Over time, and with critical mass usage of the portal, priority issues will rise to the top while less important issues will remain at the bottom. Ideas that reach a critical threshold (through the voting mechanism) will be assigned to an owner and tracked as part of the project management process.
- After the issue is addressed and resolved, the “idea” is closed by the site administrator.
Develop Issue Management and Escalation Procedures
The first step to building an issue management process is to document the associated procedures. The State of California Office of System Integration defines the issue and escalation process as follows:
The Issue and Escalation Process describes how the project identifies, tracks and manages issues and action items that are generated throughout the project life cycle. The process also defines how to escalate an issue to a higher-level of management for resolution and how resolutions are documented.
Since the focus of this article is to crowd source the tracking of issues, here is a great example by the State of California, Office of System Integration – Issue and Escalation Process.
Implement IdeaScale to Capture and Monitor Issues
As shown below, the IdeaScale entry page can be customized to collect the information you need to properly manage the issues submitted. By default, the required fields include title/subject and description. In this example, I included stakeholders affected, due date, decision required, and suggested action. A category field is used to segregate issues vs. suggestions. As team members and end users submit their ideas, it gets included in the issues list. Other end users and team members can log into the portal and vote up, and down, the issues that are relevant to them.
For the IdeaScale method of issue tracking and management to work, it requires a critical mass of users. Crowd sourcing a task requires active participation in the community. If only a handful of users actual log in and submit issues and vote, then it emulates the traditional form of issue management. However, if a large enough group of users consistently log in and participate actively, then the concept of crowd sourcing issue management will work.
The bottom up approach of issue management increases transparency in the process. Users are part of the discussion and actually have input through the voting mechanism. The community polices itself and prevents abusers from rigging the system. Through IdeaScales API’s, the issue management system can be integrated to the project portals such as SharePoint, or other project management tools.
Bottom Line
As with any tool, whether it be a simply paper list, Excel spreadsheet, or a crowd sourced IdeaScale issue tracking system, it does not replace good project management and communication with the team. Before attempting to implement the described process, determine if the readiness of the project team and willingness to participate in the process.
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This is my first screencast and is an experiment on the viability and demand of reviews and tutorials of web products. This week, I demoed IdeaScale, a Seattle-based company whose product line includes QuestionPro, the popular online survey tool. Their latest product is IdeaScale, a powerful feedback application similar to Digg. Users can log in, submit ideas and vote up and down other ideas. Overtime, the most popularly voted ideas percolate up the chain while less than popular ideas remain at the bottom. Companies like Starbucks use similar technology (albeit with different software) to gather customer feedback.
Let me know what you think of the video, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. For future projects, I plan on developing a series of three videos.
- High-level overview
- Walk through key settings and customizations
- Examples of implementation
The post will also include a thorough narrative review of the product, as well as examples of quality implementation. It will also include approaches for implementation.
If your company has a web, or software product that you’d like to to review, please contact me.
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Periodically during the weekends, I’ll recap a few posts that were long forgotten in the archives. Today, the theme is social media:
photo credit: claudia vieira
- Social Media Policies and Procedures
This was one of my best posts that was tweeted by @chrisbrogan and drove in a lot of traffic. There’s a strong business interest from companies and organizations to develop their own policies regarding the usage of social media at work and off work. - Social Media Strategic Plan
This post is the follow up to the policies and procedures post. A quick Google search doesn’t reveal very many viable social media strategic plans and therefore lead to a strong demand by my commenters for me to expand further on this post. More to come. - What is Twitter and Twitter Resources
Although this post is getting old, I found myself often referring back to it and using some of the resources I pointed out. - What is Social Media
This is a series of Common Craft videos on what is Social Media and what is Twitter.
In addition, here are a few highlights of some great individuals I’ve recently communicated with:
- Jun Loayza
Jun is an amazing and energetic entrepreneur and specializes in developing web 2.0 social media interactive sites. He is in a class of his own and shares invaluable knowledge regarding social media. - Cody McKibben
Cody is a Location Independent consultant that specializes in WordPress and blogging design, operations, and maintenance. I referenced a post I wrote regarding our one-hour consultation recently. - Natasha Wescoat & David Hoang
I added Natasha and David to this list because they are unique, and different users of social media to promote their art.
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A short report, presentation, letter, memo, or document is often many times as hard to write than its long counterpart. Anyone can write a 20 page report, it takes talent to condense all that information in to a one page briefing. So why do you see such poorly written documents both online and offline?
The amount of effort required to draft, edit, and produce any type of document increases exponentially as you approach one page. However, short documents are many times more effective at conveying the message and initiating action.
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – Mark Twain
An example of a writing program
Washington State Governor Gregoire issued Executive Order 05-03 which requires all Washington State public agencies to use simple and clear language when communicating with the public and businesses. The “plain talk” guidelines include:
- Understand customer needs
- Include only relevant information
- Use words your customers use
- Use the “active voice”
- Use personal pronouns
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short
- Design clear pages
photo credit: geishaboy500
Simplify your writing to effectively communicate your ideas
Writing is a life long learning process. It takes years to develop an effective style and voice. I’ve found that my best work often is the shortest documents but also took the most of my time to develop. All my writing is customized based on need, audience, and subject matter. In all cases, it’s written so a layperson can understand it without needing to know background context and technical jargon.
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” – Another Mark Twain quote
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