Human Performance Load

Human Performance Load – the physical and mental effort it takes for an individual to perform a task.

It goes beyond just straight cognitive load. (I strongly recommend reading Connie Malamud’s post “What Is Cognitive Load?” for background).

Though many tasks in my world are knowledge-based, there is still the physical time it takes to “make it real.” Pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, manipulating various systems to achieve an end-result that is visible and usable to others.

As of this writing, I am still picking through William Lidwell’s Universal Principles of Design tutorials.

His discussion of performance load got me thinking….

Implicit (and often explicit) to any business process improvement project is the desire to make life easier for the people involved in that process.

The easier to operate the process, the more likely it is to be followed.

Unfortunately, I have not yet encountered a situation where I have been able to do that equally across all stakeholders and participants in that process.

Then, it is a matter of choices.

Who gets the performance load?

---

I am currently working on a branding project.

The people within that project are:

• The project manager (me)
• The branding specialist
• The client

Though my branding project has the project manager and client as the same person, I will speak to what I would do if the project manager and the client were different people.

——————————

As the project manager, I need to make decisions around how best to manage that project.

There are decisions to make around which project management tool to use (so the branding specialist and I can keep track of what needs to happen next), expectations to manage around effort reporting (so the client can see the progress being made by the branding specialist), and deliverable file formats to define (one of the requirements is that the client is able to edit anything the branding specialist develops).

My thoughts:

• Project Management Tool
  • Out of all of the tools we have available, we went with the solution that caused the least performance load for the branding specialist. He was familiar with the tool and needed to use it anyway for invoicing.
  • The branding specialist needs to be focused on creating the brand – not updating an unfamiliar project management tool separate from his creative process.
  • Having a project manager around means that the branding specialist can focus on the next thing that needs to happen vs. spending precious working memory figuring out what that next thing is.
  • The maximum performance load goes to the project manager.
• Status reporting to the client
  • The selected tool has some time tracking and file sharing capabilities, but it does a lousy job of defining and tracking tasks.
  • The project manager (not the branding specialist) will take on the responsibility of talking to the client – allowing the branding specialist to focus on creating the brand.
  • We also wanted to minimize the performance load on the client.  The client needs to be able to quickly get updates on the status of the project for their executives.
  • The maximum performance load goes to the project manager.
    • She will take on the task of being the “interface” between the tools used by the branding specialist and any project management tools used between the project manager and the client.
• Deliverables
  • The branding specialist will take on the performance load of creating outputs that the client can edit.
    • The client and project manager based the hire of the branding specialist on this requirement.
    • Fortunately, the client defined this requirement early in the process. Otherwise, this could have gotten expensive as either the branding specialist attempted to learn a new tool OR the client went through the process of hiring a second resource to make the conversion between the branding specialist’s files and a client-editable format.

So far so good.  The branding specialist is able to focus and the client is getting the information they need.  The project manager is busy – but the performance load on the project manager is appropriate for the role.

———————————–

As I put together the project management process for this project and identified the decisions that needed to be made, I asked:

• Who needs least performance load to operate that process for the project to be a success?
  • The people who do the tasks in the project (such as the branding specialist) should have a low project management process performance load.
  • The client (the vast majority of the time) should have a low project management process performance load. Unless the project manger and the client are the same person, then all bets are off 🙂
• Is there anything we can automate with the resources (time, money, materials, skill) we have available?
• Is there a better system or technology available to reduce the performance load of the overall process?
• Can we adjust a process requirement to reduce the performance load?
  • For instance, can we reduce the frequency of project updates?  Does the client really need an on-demand dashboard? etc.
• Where can more performance load be placed, failing automation?

With similar projects, we can look at refining the project management process such that the entire performance load is minimized.

• The cognitive load is minimized because the team has done something similar and aren’t simultaneously creating a project management process on top of the project.
• The lessons learned should identify opportunities for improving the project management process itself – with an eye towards reducing the required performance load of the whole.
  • This could mean changing project management tools, refining templates, automating reporting etc.

Though projects have a start and end + result in a unique solution, we can still work in ways that make getting stuff done much easier for ourselves and the folks working with us.