Frank Michael Kraft's Blog

A good part of knowlege work is thinking about which next steps need to be done anyway.

For example someone has an internet site. However the provider is raising the fees. You have do decide between different options, but all are worse than today. There is another provider, that is cheaper. But you are not sure with the new options – how long the cancellation period is there. Also you don’t want to pay twice for too long. Furthermore it turned out, that you don’t like your domain name. But of course there is traffic on your current domain name. And you currently have difficulties finding one, because all good ideas you have are already occupied and the free ones you don’t like.

You have to perform some steps like

• Create e new domain name that you like and is free.
• Order the new domain name.
• Decide about the new conditions with your current provider.
• Cancel your current provider.
• Engage with the new provider.
• Migrate the data from the old provider to the new.
• Redirect your current visitors to the new domain.

So when to do what? There are some natural constraints. You can’t order a new domain before you have made up your mind for the new domain name. You can’t migrate the data, if you don’t have the old site as well as the new site. If you don’t decide about one new option with your current provider you loose the data and the traffic.

Others are not so clear. Will you move from the old provider to the new one still using your current domain name to get more time to think for a better name? Will you want to avoid taking one of the options of your current provider, and move quickly? Or do you first want to create the new domain name and apply to the new provider only after you have created one. Then you would need to choose one of the options with your old provider.

This is a relatively simple case. So your job is to find out more information, more details about the conditions, the technical capabilities of changing the domain name later, the cancellation period. And you have to make up your mind as of how long you will want the time to think about a new domain name. After you have made those decisions, you can order the activities into a definite order. But after you have made these decisions, the difficult part of the work is done. The technical migration is business as usual, because you have done this already earlier.

So the workstream starts with

1. Find out information about provider options
2. Find out information about cancellation period
3. Find out information technical possibilities of late domain change.
4. Decide
5. Order the remaining steps
6. Do the rest in an yet unknown order

Later, when step 1-4 are completed, “Do the rest in an yet unkown order” can be broken down into a definite order of the steps mentioned earlier.

So in essence there is no “Process Design Time” and “Process Run Time”. Because the Workstream is already running, while it is still being designed, if you will. That is a characteristic of Knowledge Work.