SOme of my colleagues work on re-engineering projects. One of the things
they do early on in our "co-development" work is to set up learning
opportunities, somewhat removed from the "doing" part of the project. For
example, they will provide reading material ---say, about re-engineering
benchmarking, or activity-based costing, or supply-chain management, etc. ---
and then have sessions in which the team talks about what they are reading
and whether any of the material might be applied to the re-engineering
effort. The process is a way for the team to look at its own actions and
compare these to what the members read about.
I've been asked to do a case study of a re-engineering project at a Silicon
Valley high-tech firm. ( I had done a case study a couple of years ago for
this company.) The purpose is to capture the learning from the project to
pass on to teams involved in subseuqnet projects. While last time, I did the
interviews and made an assessment of the learnings as an observer, I think
I'll do this one differently. I want to get the re-engineering team involved
in assessing its own learning. I'm thinking of facilitating them doing their
own case study. I think they can do their own personal reflections (and
share these) and then interview each other (and document this) and then
interview their "customers." I suspect that an even more ideal situation
would be to be doing this all along, rather than after the project is over.
Alexia (Lexy) Martin
AlexiaM@aol.com