Matrix of Work Management

©1996 by Charles A. Plesums, Austin, Texas

Type or Categories

Over the last several years a number of people and organizations (including myself) have independently classified work management systems into three categories. The designations vary, but the definitions are very similar.

• Production - the high volume work management normally associated with customer service, processing new business (orders), and so forth. Typically the workflow is defined in advance, not by the person classifying or performing the work
• Procedural - routine office procedures including administrative functions. This often consists of filling out and routing forms. It may be appropriate to allow the user to examine the workflow - for example, to see that the expense report exceeded a limit, so must be approved by a higher authority, thus making it prudent to present the trip report before submitting the expense report.
• Collaborative - working together on a task, such as preparing a document. This is often called ad-hoc work management, and is often associated with office automation systems. The workflow is often custom built, such as arranging for several peers to review a document before it is sent to a supervisor, then to legal for approval.

Components

In addition to the three types of work management, I like to further classify work management tools into four components, based on the function performed. Most work managers have all the components, but few are equally strong across all the parts.

Work Group Component

• Optimizing the assignment of work to individuals, including enforcing the qualifications and authority of the people working on it. Balancing the work among the staff, and perhaps reporting on individual productivity.
• Performing the business rules - if the amount is greater than ... additional approval is required by...
• Prioritization of work, and tracking to be sure service levels and deadlines are met.
• This portion of the work is often performed within a single department or work group, perhaps independent of other work groups. Therefore it is often run on a departmental server.

Individual (person or processor) Component

Select the item of work to be performed,

• Push, allow the system to automatically distribute work to the individual. This is most appropriate for high volume, short duration transaction type work.
• Pull, allow the user to select the work from the system, perhaps from a subset of work that has been assigned to them, or to find pending work for a customer that is on the telephone. This is most appropriate for complex work performed by knowledge workers, such as negotiation.
• Time driven work. If a worker promises to call someone at 11 o'clock, then that work should present itself at that hour. Something more important may have come up, so the work cannot be automatically delivered, but the user should at least be aware of the work.

Task Component

Initially I thought this component wasn't required - if we are processing an application, the application processing program would be used. If we were processing an order, the order entry program would be invoked. And so forth. However, many components can be reused. The customer needs to be identified for both the application and the order, so perhaps a common identification routine can be used. And a common address formatter. And a common sales tax calculator. A work manager can pull those components together.

Enterprise Component

Most systems today are really departmental image and work management systems. If a system were built for the enterprise, there are several components that need to be performed at the enterprise level

• Identify the work and get it to the right "work group" or "department." Often a letter needs to be routed to multiple departments - e.g. "I've moved, change my address for all the products..."
• Track the work. If someone calls, "Did you get my letter?" there needs to be a common point to find out who is working on it and where it is. If there are separate departmental systems, there still needs to be a common log of who has the document.
• Determine, at least generally, the type of work to be performed, so that it can be prioritized and delivered to the right work group.

Table

The three types of work manager become rows in the following table, while the four components become the columns. To use the table, determine the requirements for the work manager, and the relative importance of each feature. For example, in a very small organization, everything could be considered a single workgroup, with little value for the enterprise portion. Then identify the features in the table. When considering work manager products, consider their strengths and weaknesses. For example, one major vendor has a work manager that is very good at automatic assignment of tasks. That makes it strong in the upper right box. That same work manager is very weak in the selection of the person to perform that work. No credit in the work group column! Another highly rated work manager is excellent in negotiating how the work will be performed - great for ad-hoc or collaborative work, but it is not reasonable to expect the clerk in the mail room to negotiate the processing of thousands of production documents received each day.

	Enterprise	Work Group	Personal	Task
Production New Business Customer Service (Mail, Voice)	Identification Status Tracking Workplan from Templates To Work Group	Balance Load (assignments) To Person direct by Supervisor from Queue	Select work - Manual (pull) - Automatic (push) Time Alarms	Run Programs Update Status
Procedural Administration (Internal Forms)	Workplan from process maps (graphical) To Work Group	Balance Load (Optional) To Person	Select work Time Alarms	Run Programs Update Status
Collaboration Office Automation, ad Hoc	Create custom workplan for each case To Work Group	Balance Load (Optional) To Person	Select work Time Alarms	Optional - Run Programs Update Status

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©1996 by Charles A. Plesums, Austin, Texas USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may license additional copies of this document through a nominal royalty payment as specified on www.plesums.com.