Scoping Level of Effort and Getting the Right Resources for the Job

Scoping Level of Effort and Getting the Right Resources for the Job

Jason Kaufman

President & CEO, Irrevo

LavaCon Conference

October 18–21, 2015

New Orleans, LA

Knowledge Management Consultancy


Would we work more?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/extra-hour-a-day_n_3697387.html

1 in 20 Americans

said they would do

more office work if

given an extra

hour in

the day…


The business question

Can I get this the project done on time with the staff I already have

or do I need to get some outside help?

To answer this we need two things:

• Determine the Level of Effort (LOE)

• Determine the best resources who can finish the work on time


Content projects take time…

• Standardization (voice, style & quality revisions)

• Consolidation (systems A, B♭, and Cm to system E)

• Migration (automated, manual, or both)

• Parsing Information (aka “Chunking”)

• Validity Audits & Archival

• Conversion (pdf > docx > html > pdf)

…and they aren't easy.


Our average workday

• Working & related activities: 8.7 hours

• Average commute time: 25 minutes (~50 minutes daily)

Puts us around the

8 hours per day

we’d expect.

Travel Time: https://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-33.pdf

http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/

NOTE: Data include employed persons on days they worked, ages 25 to 54, who lived in households with children under 18. Data include non-holiday weekdays and are annual averages for 2013.

Data include related travel for each activity


What we’re working on

Workfront / Harris Poll 10/2014: The State of Enterprise Work

Perception: Full time employees

have 8 hours a day to

perform core job duties.

Reality: We only spend 44.5%

performing our Primary

Job Duties.

Everything else

“Wasteful” meetings

Interruptions for non-essential

tasks

Useful and/or productive

meetings

Administrative tasks

Sending, responding

to, and sorting email

Performing the primary

duties of your job


Job description fine print

Candidate must be comfortable performing tasks that are not listed above

as well as assuming responsibilities of others within and outside of your

immediate department. Further, you may be performing work that is

perceived by your boss and peers as low priority where you are unlikely to

get recognition. These tasks are likely to take time away from other

"mission critical" deliverables but they just need to get done, so…

““


Scoping the Level of Effort (LOE)

Perform a Content Inventory

Perform a Content Analysis

Identify your Subject Matter Experts

Narrow your focus

Create Work streams

Create Workflows

Calculate the Time per Task

Calculate FTE Hours (Level of Effort)

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Understand the depth and breadth of the body of content

• Content Location (Access, Data, and Export)

• File Types (HTML, PDF, Word, PPT, etc)

• Content Topics Areas (Categorization / Taxonomy)

• Prevalence of Links, Graphics, Tables, Templates

• Titles, Tags, and any other metadata

• File paths, hyperlinks, filenames

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Metadata Types

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Collect as much Metadata as you can:

• Filenames are sometimes clues to the titles.

• File folder paths are sometimes clues to which category of

information it falls under, which may provide clues to which Subject

Matter Experts might help.

• URLs will help access the pages more quickly, but also may provide

clues to the Content Topic areas.

• File Extensions can be used to give you a count by file type,

including images and other multimedia.

• Last Accessed, Modified, or Created dates can help discern what

may qualify for Archival.

• File Size may prove useful data as well.



Metadata Data Capture

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Data capture in a pinch:

TreeSize Pro can index file folders and

export meta data to various file types

including an Excel spreadsheet.

SnagIt by TechSmith: Try a Scrolling

Window Text Capture and create a text

file for pasting into Excel.

Viewing the sitemap or search results list in a browser, copy the page into

Excel, then NotePad, back to a new Excel worksheet, and then filter out

the empty rows.


Content Inventory Analysis & Metrics

Generate the following high-level metrics:

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• Total Count of Articles

• Count of Articles by File Types

• Count of Articles by Content Topic Areas

Perform a review of a random sample of articlesNote: In Excel, create a new column, use the “=RAND()” function and then sort the rows by the random

column. Choose a representative sample size for the number of articles you’re working with.

• Average # of Images per Articleo Rough estimate: Divide the number of Images by the Count of Articles

• Average # of Hyperlinks per Article

• General observations on content consistency or inconsistencies


ID your SMEs3

Identify Subject Matter Experts for each Content Area and add

their names and contact information to your Inventory list.

• Providing a list of topic areas to your various SMEs and ask them to let

you know in which areas they are experts.

• Or generate a list to the best of your knowledge and ask them to

validate your assumptions or point you in the right direction.

• There will be gaps and areas of overlapping responsibility, continually

ask who might know the most about a certain topic area.


Narrow your focus4

Determine if there are certain files and folders of information that can be

archived based on given metadata. Example: Unsupported or discontinued products or services. Older versions of the same document.

De-Duplicate: Run a Pivot Table on the File Names and/or TitlesNote: Potentially combined with their File Size to help ensure they are the same.

Decide whether or not your content will need validation prior to editorial or

migration work. Options: Yes/Some/No


Narrow your focus

SME Content Utility Audit

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Provide a list of active hyperlinks or file paths “file:\\...” to your SMEs and ask them to

determine if each document is Valid and Useful.

We use our own proprietary tool to assist in task management and

streamlined workflow.


Create work streams5

Work stream Process Effort

A. Optimal Good to go! Medium

B. Refine Revise & Validate High

C. Refine or Archive Decide whether the item is worth

the effort, otherwise Archive

Low – High

D. Archive Archive Low


Create workflows

• Determine which steps will be necessary for each of your work

streams.

• Determine who will perform each step.

• Anticipate the amount of time each step would take.

• Approximate the number of times certain items such as Images,

Attachments, Hyperlinks will occur.

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Calculate time per task

Given the workflow steps determine the approximate time per step to

get the total time per completed workflow task. Example: Very manual process 6.61 minutes, assuming no system latency.

1. Locate and open source document (20 seconds)

2. Copy source content (3 seconds)

3. Paste into Notepad to remove formatting (3 seconds)

4. Copy from Notepad (3 seconds)

5. Open destination system and locate the new content category (30 seconds)

6. Create a new article (5 seconds)

7. Paste clipboard contents into article template (3 seconds)

8. Parse Title into Title field (5 seconds)

9. Add proper tags and metadata (15 seconds)

10. Re-insert graphics (60 seconds)

11. Recreate tables and formatting (120 seconds)

12. Re-link hyperlinks (120 seconds)

13. Save New Article (5 seconds)

14. Mark task as complete (5 seconds)

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Calculate FTE hours (LOE)

Assume the following: • Average Time to Complete Task: 6.61 minutes

• Original Article Count via Content Inventory: 25,000

• Revised Article Count based on the Utility Audit: 12,500

• No latency or distractions during allocated time.

• System is ready and process works as anticipated.

6.61 min * 12,500 = 82,708 min. (or 1,378 person hrs.)• 4 people @ 100% of their workday: ~8.6 weeks

• 4 people @ 44% of their workday (the productive part): ~20 weeks

• 4 people @ 20% of their workday: ~43 weeks

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Thank you!

Jason KaufmanPresident & CEO

Irrevo

(888) 878-8908 office

(206) 229-1032 direct

@irrevo irrevo.com

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Scoping Level of Effort and Getting the Right Resources for the Job