In enterprise IT and groups away from IT that have lots of data – engineering, “the lab”, quality management, customer support, manufacturing/product test, and more – there is going to be lost data now, and more lost soon. The problems of retiring staff (“boomer and gone”) are getting bad and furloughs and departures now will make it worse. The problem for the enterprise isn’t complex – it’s too easy in fact – the documentation and understanding (“wisdom”) that’s contained in all those heaps of data is too easy to lose.
What to do today:
Engage "extra" staff time to build an inventory of all the places and people that have data ‘tucked away’ in storage that never got put into enterprise records. That’s a project – an easy one to start if a little harder to get results collected.
Access memories – do very active debriefs of people departing groups and taking new opportunities, those departing, and those long-time contractors you may not see for a period. They have the information about past projects, past research, past tests, and past data collections that are stored in archives, boxed up in the spare cubicle, and on external DVD backups. Having done this “walking around” the important data about “why” a process includes certain steps, or “why a test outlier doesn’t need repeating”, or “what” feature was added for a certain huge customer – the data was volunteered eagerly and helpfully if people were just asked. That’s a project – for each group with experience and data that can be formalized now, or simply lost and having to be repeated. As many processes have gone to outsource or other locations it’s important to store these on a central space – even if just a huge share drive on a central file store.
Cross-train starting today. The current situation reminds all management that people depart for all reasons – even tragic ones. Even a few days of downtime can be used to cross-train. Start informally if you must, and let your in-house training team build you a program quickly as you can – but start the cross-training and knowledge swapping today.
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