>Is anyone aware of any resource information, systems, or tools that will
>help us to identify our unknown learning needs?
>Is anyone aware of any resource information, systems, or tools that will
>help us to prioritize all identified learning needs?
Unknown learning needs suggest that your organization has goals that it
wants to achieve that will require skills and knowledge that have not yet
been identified. Before you can effectively address the learning needs
you will need to understand the objectives that they are to address.
_An Approach_
1) Don't focus on learning needs until you have identified the value that
the learning is to provide. (I hear the pragmatists applauding and the
utopians moaning on this point)
2) Quality Function Deployment would provide a process and tools to drive
1)
_QFD_
Quality Function Deployment(don't be put off by the name, it is a fairly
literal and largely meaningless translation of hinshitsu keino tenkai) or
QFD is a set of tools that is used to identify and prioritize requirements
in product development. Given the engineering focus of your shop, it may
have the advantage of already have some currency among your people.
QFD would take the position that you shouldn,t begin your analysis
looking for requirements (learning needs in your case), but rather that
you should focus on understanding who are your customers and the business
needs that they have (read goals or objectives if you can,t relate to
business). Needs are the problems that the customer seeks to overcome and
the opportunities that they seek to enable. Once customers types have
been identified and their needs surfaced, the needs are structured into a
hierarchy and prioritized.
Requirements(learning needs) are then identified that support meeting the
needs and ultimately the learning needs are then prioritized based upon
their relative support of the underlying business need.
To recap, the process is:
- Identify customer types
- Identify customer's needs
- Create a hierarchy of needs
- Prioritize the hierarchy to the leaf level
- Identify the requirements that support the leaf level needs
- Create a matrix of needs and requirements
- Determine the degree to which requirements support needs
- Derive the relative priority of requirements (your prioritized list of
learning needs)
The beauty of QFD is that it relies on a well defined set of techniques
and a coherent process to provide an objective prioritization of
requirements. In my experience it is especially useful when you have
multiple stakeholders who must be satisfied and who must reach consensus.
_Resources_
Keep in mind that the original audience was very product development
oriented. Your goal is to understand the intent and use the techniques.
Cohen, Lou Quality Function Deployment: How to Make QFD Work for You.
Addison Wesley 1995 ISBN0-201-63330-2
Hauser, John R. & Don Clausing. 1988 "The House of Quality" Harvard
Business Review 66 (3 May-June): 63-73. (HBR Reprints 617_495_6192)
Zultner, Richard 1996 "Blitz QFD: Faster, Better, Cheaper Forms of QFD",
American Programmer 8 (October): 24-36 (Available from author
richard@zultner.com and probably from American Programmer (try
http://www.yourdon.com ))
--"thomas.gorham" <thomas.gorham@ac.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>