Think of it as organizational ecology.
More than Writing
The first step in any documentation project is understanding the practices to be documented:
- who does which task,
- where information comes from and where it goes,
- what applications are used to complete tasks,
- what events and circumstances affect how a task is performed,
- and how you check the quality of a task’s outcome.
Opportunities for Improvement
My experience and skills in methods analysis enables me to find and document this information. Such information, with or without formal documentation, offers a valuable opportunity to improve current practices.
Laws of Organizational Ecology
Like the four laws of ecology, my practice of organizational ecology follows four laws.
- Everything is connected to everything else.
- Everything has to go somewhere.
- There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
- (Human) nature bats last.