First let me tell you where I’m coming from before we get right into the 3 biggies. 

We’ve seen these mistakes happen a few times, and they always lead to BIG problems with clients.  They end up frustrated, confused, stuck, and royally ticked off at the entire exercise.  These mistakes are symptoms of a lack of the basic understanding of and experience with the requirements for designing and implementing any information system project or program.  Follow along and you’ll see what I mean. 

BIG MISTAKE # 3:

Agreeing to a file plan as the first deliverable.

This can be a tough one.  The client wants a file plan, so you agree to it.  You take a copy of Keyword AAA and add a few functions here, and a few activities there… A big chunk of paper with several thousand meaningless function and activity combinations is delivered to the eager client.   

Next question is… OK, what next? 

The client is now in the position of mapping this impressive file plan to the mountain of records waiting to be classified and managed.   Now you scramble to do what should have been done WAY before any file plan should have appeared.   This is when you hear the client ask questions like…

BIG MISTAKE # 2:

Not developing a Business Classification Scheme.

In real estate it’s location-location-location. In activity-based records management, its context-context-context. The ONLY way to nail your records to the respective activities (context – get it?) is to develop a Business Classification Scheme, or a “BCS”.

If you can’t CLEARLY manage your records in the context within which they were captured or created, then you will end up with a convoluted classification system that will never meet the needs of your business or users, let alone the ISO standard!

The BCS is a model that clearly shows what your organization does (the WHAT), and the activities you and your fellow employees perform (the HOW). Now the BCS shouldn’t be some incredibly detailed diagram spanning page after page. In fact, the simpler it is, the more useful it will be.

You know you’ve got a good BCS when the client says one of three things when you show it to him or her:

Smile when you here this, because you can rest assured it’s pretty much down hill from here.

In my experience, the BCS is THE MOST IMPORTANT building block in the entire project. Without a good, useful BCS, the project will succeed only by divine intervention!

BIG MISTAKE # 1:

Not using actual business processes to develop your Business Classification Scheme.

What’s worse than not having a BCS? Having a BCS that was not developed using actual business activities. Hey - how can you model business processes without going one-on-one with the people and systems that actually do the work? Well, you can’t.

A BCS is the Rosetta Stone for the project. It is the only thing that will allow you to match records with activities. Using anything but real, live business activities to build an BCS is dangerous. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the project analysts, and whomever is driving the show. Acts, legislations, regulations, mission statements, are useful to understand the boundaries and parameters of the project, but you won’t find any activities there! Especially in Canada.

That’s like trying to determine how Canadians act by reviewing the Canada’s Constitution.

So What?

I see ISO 15489 as a VERY important factor in the health of the records management industry. (Wait until XML-based technologies get a little closer!) If you’re implementing an activity-based records management project, you need a BCS. You need a good BCS. You need a good BCS developed from actual activities. Be very leery of doing anything but!

John Purchase, October 2003