The core of HPI is humans and their importance. As a consultant for many years, I have met with many mayors or chief executive officers to discuss some information technology process to improve efficiency. In the majority of those cases, the person I was speaking with was taken back when I inform the individual that software cannot improve performance. My mantra, “Software is good, but people make the difference.” I believe that is the essence of human performance technology.
An additional level of shock for this manager is the second concept that it is a total team effort not an IT project. The moral of my story for educational and business institutions is to not believe the salesman hype; IT is about people, not hardware and software (that is the easy part). People are the key to the success of any enterprise software implementation. Software will only be as good as the process that feed it and how much the people believe in those processes. This is the essence of human performance improvement.
Another element of HPI that is important is the concept of data driven decisions for performance improvement. Going back to my example of IT project implementation, many of the administrators I interface with are surprised when I tell them that implementation is a never-ending process that goes on as long as software is being used. Changing processes results in changes to software. One of the elements of HPI is the concept of assessment for process improvement.
EPSS is an interesting concept and over the past 10 years it has been implemented in many different ways. The most common EPSS that most people have experience with is a knowledge base. The problem with EPSS concepts is that it is nearly impossible to keep the most up-to-date information in a system to make it the most efficient. In many cases, the feeding information into the monster can become a much more daunting job than simply not using the EPSS.
Additionally, for an EPSS to be truly effective, it must do a certain amount of “thinking” and “anticipation” for the most effective information to be presented. A true EPSS will not just present the results of a search string; it will begin to anticipate what you mean by the search string. One of the first examples of this concept is the new search engine, Bing. By its definition, “Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.” Until a computer can anticipate what someone “wants”, the EPSS concept will never reach its full potential.
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