Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Technography, Knowledge Management and Frontier

Author:Bernie DeKoven
Posted:2/26/1999; 7:15:13 AM
Topic:Technography, Knowledge Management and Frontier
Msg #:3267
Prev/Next:3266 / 3269

Let's say that we are using Frontier to facilitate not just one, but a series of meetings. Let's imagine that we're facilitating a strategic planning meeting.

One process for creating a strategic plan is called the SWOT analysis. You work with a group and ask them to analyze their strategy in terms of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that are facing their organization.

During the first day, your outline will go through several major transformations, from a series of lists itemizing each category, to the beginning of an actual plan. Generally, we hold "Copy Breaks" at critical moments in the meeting, giving everyone a chance to rest, shmooze, and then review the progress. Each outline, though building on the previous, is really a different document. It gets reorganized so thoroughly that by the end of the meeting the top levels reflect strategies, and the subsumed levels tactics.

So here we already have several documents, all from the same outline, but at different times of its evolution. Then there are presentations, spread sheets and other research documents that have been generated, hopefully before the meeting, to substantiate some of the key strategic directions.

Between meetings we have the discussion group interaction, again producing documents. These documents, however, reflect individual opinion rather than consensus, and need to be, at some time, consensually reintroduced to the main planning documents.

Ultimately, the goal of the planning process should be to create a "living" plan. One that can respond to change, to new information and insights. The opportunity to create version after version is apparently endless.

So, here's the question. How can we use the power of Frontier to manage all those documents? To create for people a variety of meeaningful ways to trace the evolution of the plan, to explore the reasoning behind each step, to review alternatives that may have been rejected, etc.? Do we need other tools? Or is Frontier the be all?

I await your collective brilliance....

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:48:08 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.