Abstract
In the 1970s, Joe Harless coined the term front-end analysis, now known as needs assessment. Front-end analysis refers to the activities done before addressing a solution to a human performance problem. Analysis of needs comes before everything else, including the establishment of objectives. That idea sums up the essence of human performance improvement (also known as, human performance technology, or performance engineering) generally and performance consulting specifically.
An ounce of analysis is worth a pound of objectives.
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Notes
- 1.
J. Harless, An Ounce of Analysis Is Worth a Pound of Objectives (Newnan, GA: Harless Performance Guild, 1975).
- 2.
William Coscarelli, “Harless, Mom, and ISPI,” Performance Improvement, vol. 51, no. 6, July 2012; doi: 10.1002/pfi.21270.
- 3.
Training course feedback forms are referred to as “smile sheets,” because people generally give high marks about the classroom training that they attend.
- 4.
- 5.
When I first entered this industry in the 1990s, one still heard the term ISD quite a bit. That term has since been replaced by the term instructional design, although it is not perfectly synonymous inasmuch as it specifically refers to the creation of training solutions.
- 6.
A book that I never wrote was going to be called something like So You Want to Be an Inner-City School Teacher? If you get me in the mood, I have many stories from that one year in Jersey City, New Jersey. Those tales are variously funny, poignant, and troubling. Bottom line: God bless the teachers, especially those who try to help the kids in the inner city.
- 7.
International Society for Performance Improvement, “What Is HPT?” (2014), retrieved from http://www.ispi.org/content.aspx?id=54. The terms analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation in the second sentence of the definition are the key words for the ADDIE model, about which you will hear more later in this chapter.
- 8.
https://www.td.org/∼/media/Files/Certification/Competency%20Model/031271-ASTDCompModel.pdf.
- 9.
- 10.
CPT Standards 5–10 map to the ADDIE Model as follow: Analysis (Standards 5, 6), Design (Standard 7), Develop (Standard 8), Implement (Standard 9), and Evaluate (Standard 10).
- 11.
T. F. Gilbert, Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance (Tribute Edition) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 73.
- 12.
Worthy accomplishment is very similar to the more modern term, return on investment (ROI).
- 13.
Gilbert, ibid., p. 307. I struggled to restrain my use of Gilbert quotes in this chapter. Every time I open up Human Competence or Human Incompetence, I find new words of wisdom. Finish reading this book, and then start reading Gilbert.
- 14.
- 15.
ADDIE is sometimes presented as a cyclical (not linear) process, where the E loops back to the A. There is no consensus on how the model is presented. The stair-step model I created for Figure 2-6 highlights the notion that ADDIE can reinforce a tendency for folks to make projects too big and too linear.
- 16.
Kirkpatrick Partners, “The Kirkpatrick Model” (2014), retrieved December 9, 2014, from http://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/OurPhilosophy/TheKirkpatrickModel/tabid/302/Default.aspx .
- 17.
W. W. Royce, “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems,” Proceedings, WESCON, August 1970, retrieved from http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/original_waterfall_paper_winston_royce.pdf .
- 18.
City of Ann Arbor, “Skatepark,” September 28, 2014, retrieved from http://www.a2gov.org/departments/Parks-Recreation/play/Pages/Skatepark.aspx .
- 19.
T. F. Gilbert, Human Incompetence: Confessions of a Psychologist (Atlanta: Performance Management Publications, 2011).
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Winter, B. (2015). The Basics of Human Performance Improvement. In: Agile Performance Improvement. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-0892-2_2
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