How to Build a Playbook Part 6 - Drafting the Individual Plays

Now it's time to use the tool(s) we identified to start drafting the individual plays. As you get started, you'll need to make some decisions regarding the granularity of your plays. For example, do you have separate plays for sending boxes to offsite storage and retrieving them, or do you have one single play for "manage records stored offsite"? My recommendation is to err on the side of more granularity - two separate plays in this instance - because the different "sub-plays" may have different cadences and be executed by different roles. 

Each play should contain the following elements. Most of these elements will come directly from the resources and references for each play; if not, check with the people you think are involved in a particular play, especially the ones you think would be responsible or accountable. 

I find that the average play, including all of the listed elements and using the high-level description + links to references approach, is one to two pages long. 

Title. This is the name of the play, and should be phrased as a task, e.g., "Review and update the retention schedule" or "Send boxes to offsite storage." 

Purpose. Why are you executing this play? What is the benefit to the program (and ultimately to the organization)?  

Description. Depending on which tool(s) you're using, this could be either a high-level description, with links to the actual procedure, flowcharts, etc., or it could be the procedure itself. I generally recommend the former approach to my clients since most of them use Microsoft Word for their playbooks, but a LMS, knowledge base, or intranet platform could conceivably support the latter. 

Roles & responsibilities. I use a RACI (responsible, accountable, consult, inform) chart to list the key players at a glance. Details about the roles involved with a particular play and their responsibilities are included in the Description narrative. 

Cadence. This should address frequency - and schedule where applicable. Some plays are monthly, others are annual, and each might take place at a certain time during the month or year to leverage, or avoid, other things going on in the organization. For example, while reviewing and updating the records retention schedule is important, it's probably better to schedule it when it won't conflict with month, quarter, or year-end, or tax season. 

Plays that are run on an as-needed basis, such as placing or lifting a legal hold, can be listed as just that, "as-needed" or "upon request". 

As a reminder, if a task or activity is only conducted every few years - for example, defining business requirements for a replacement recordkeeping solution - I'd argue that's not a play, it's a project. It's still important to document somewhere, but the playbook should focus on the plays that are routinely executed. 

Resources and references. These should include all of the things required to complete a particular play, including but not limited to policies; flowcharts; procedures; job aids; glossaries; lists of acronyms or abbreviations; templates; style guides; and more. Resources should be hyperlinks, and should include a version, date, or both. 

Throughout this series I've tried to make the case that one of the most valuable outcomes from developing a playbook is consolidating all the references into a single location or access point; the more time spent on this aspect of each play, the more useful the playbook will be. 

At the same time, we noted in Part 4 that some of these references may be out of date. The question then becomes, is it better to list them, knowing that they are out of date, or not, leaving gaps in the documentation? There's a third way, which is to quickly capture what *is* being done at present, and include that in the list of resources and references. Once you have the chance to flesh out the new procedure, reference, etc. and get it approved and published, you can update the playbook to reflect that. It might also be helpful to make a reference to the outdated resource and the status of the draft replacement, perhaps as a footnote. 

Metrics. You can't manage what you don't measure. At the same time, just because something is measurable and measured doesn't mean that that's a good metric to track. It's important to ensure that the metrics tell a story that aligns to the overall goals of the program. 

Metrics can also indicate that a particular play has been executed and indicate volumes, times, etc. 

Contact information. For most playbooks, the contact information for a given play will be the same person, role, or service account, e.g., recordsmgmt@somecompany.com. But there may be some plays that have a different primary point of contact; this is especially true for playbooks with a broader scope. 

Here's an example of an actual play. 

In the next installment, we'll talk about the process for reviewing the draft plays, particularly with those roles responsible and accountable for their execution. 

I teach a workshop on how to build playbooks. You can find more details about the course and approach at https://athroconsulting.com/?page_id=981. 

I also build RIM and IG playbooks for organizations - drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk about what that could look like. 

How to Build a Playbook Part 5 - Determining the Technical Approach and the Tool

The next step, and really the last one before you can start building the actual playbook and plays, is to determine the technical approach and tool you'll use to do so. The key here is to determine which tool will be easiest for your audience to use, and then which tool is easiest for you and your key contacts in other teams to maintain over time. There are probably other ways to build them, but I have built playbooks using almost all of the options listed below. 

Document. Whether you use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or something else, and whether you maintain your documents in native format or convert to Adobe PDF, this is a very straightforward approach that will be readily familiar to you and your audience. These can be even more useful when you leverage built-in content structuring capabilities like sections, headers, tables of content, indexes, etc. 

Presentation. Similar to documents, you can use Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or whatever similar tool you want. This takes a little more planning due to the limited space for text on each slide. I’ve approached this by having the play title and description on the slide and everything else in the slide notes. You should also take advantage of these tools’ ability to hyperlink to individual slides to build a table of contents, but again you’ll need to plan this out. 

Spreadsheets. I would not encourage using these for a final playbook, because I don't find them as easy to navigate as documents or presentations. But I leverage them to gather resources and RACI charts, and I keep my master list of plays as a spreadsheet that I can then edit down and save for a particular project. 

Wiki. Wikis are very easy to edit, which is a good thing, but they tend to be harder to keep organized over time, and organizations don’t use them nearly as much today as they did 15-20 years ago so there may be a bit more learning curve involved.

Playbook tools. There are a few tools in the market that are built to develop and maintain playbooks. I won't include any in this article because the market is pretty fluid, and because I haven't used any of them. 

The primary question to consider is whether the sophistication of the tool offsets the additional cost, and perhaps more importantly, the need to switch focus and context to yet another tool. 

Learning management system. There are many learning management systems available, and they are often optimized for managing and delivering content relevant to a particular topic or lesson. They also generally include links to additional resources, further reading, etc. Most of them are also inherently multimodal - that is, they leverage video, images, and other rich media and can often display things like flowcharts and other types of content. 

The challenge here is similar to the bespoke playbook tools – whether the additional sophistication is worth the additional cost and complexity to build and maintain the plays. 

Knowledge base. Similarly, many organizations have some sort of a knowledge base or knowledge management tool that manages all the information about a particular topic or task. And the challenges are the same as those with playbook tools and learning management systems. 

Intranet. Some intranet platforms make the process of creating and updating individual pages and topics very simple. Many of these also offer support for rich media such as videos or flowcharts. This is a great way to build a highly useful and engaging playbook – if your intranet platform supports it. 

My most recent playbook project involved building one in Microsoft SharePoint Online. The playbook was its own site; the table of contents was the landing page. Each section of the playbook was given its own section on the landing page with a list of the plays in each section, and each play was its own page complete with flowcharts, links to resources, etc. 

Again, what tool and approach you use should be whatever your users find easiest to access, and whatever you find easiest to maintain. 

In the next installment, we'll talk about the process for drafting the individual plays, including an exploration of each of the elements included in a play. 

I teach a workshop on how to build playbooks. You can find more details about the course and approach at https://athroconsulting.com/?page_id=981. 

I also build RIM and IG playbooks for organizations - drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk about what that could look like. 

Upcoming Industry Meetings and Webinars - June 16 - July 15, 2024

Here are the industry webinars and events I'm aware of for June 16 - July 15, 2024. Conferences and bigger events are listed through September 30, 2024 because they have longer lead times. I don't have anything to do with any of these from a planning perspective, so please reach out to the individual event producers with any questions.

Note also that I generally don't include training courses in this list. For a list of training courses through August 30, visit https://informata.blogspot.com/2024/05/training-courses-june-1-august-31-2024.html.

If you know of a webinar or other event during this period that is focused on IM, IG, RM, etc. that's not listed, let me know here or at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com. Vendors, associations, consultants, etc. all welcome as long as the event is educational, live, and not completely self-serving, e.g., no demos. No charge to list your event or to access the list. 

June 17 - IRMS South West, Records Keepers Unite - IRMS Meets ARA

June 18 - ARMA New England, End of Year Appreciation Event

June 18 - ARMA Edmonton, Annual General Meeting

June 18 - Austin ARMA, Member Appreciation Luncheon

June 18 - ARMA San Antonio, Archiving Doesn't Cut It: Future of Information Governance

June 18 - AIIM+ Pro, What is Information Governance? (members only)

June 18 - ARMA Legal Industry Group, 2024 Retention Series: Navigating the Citation Jungle (members only)

June 18 - ARMA, The Human Impact of Ethics, Records, and Information Governance

June 18 - RIMPA Global, Data Management the Future of Storing Large Amounts of Data

June 18 - Gartner, AI and GenAI Practical Demands: Quantifying Cost, Risk and ROI

June 18 - Leadership Through Data and IQBG, Exploring Microsoft compliance: Essential tools for information leadership

June 18 - Future of Privacy Forum, Building a Responsible AI Program

June 20 - ARMA St. Louis, The Practical Road to Digital Transformation: Retain, Digitize and Destroy

June 20 - ARMA Oklahoma, Chapter Member Appreciation Lunch

June 20 - ARMA Utah, Summer Social

June 20 - ACMP Texas, Unlocking Change: Harnessing AI Tools for Transformation

June 20 - Leadership Through Data, Value of Records - Unpacking the Significance of Vegetables vs. Flowers (Panel Discussion)

June 20 - IRPAAI, Automations That Deliver On Time, Every Time

June 20 - Digital Government Institute, AI and ML in Records Management

June 20 - RIMPA Global, Data Privacy Regulations Demystified: Compliance and Best Practices

June 20 - DAMA NY, DAMA Day 2024

June 21 - ARMA Central Missouri, Year-End Meeting

June 21 - ARMA Palm Beach Treasure Coast, The Practice of Leadership

June 21 - Upstate New York ARMA, A Glass from the Past

June 25 - ARMA Northeast Ohio, End of Year Celebration and Networking Event

June 26 - ARMA Michigan, Tour of Kellanova and W.K. Kellogg Foundation Archives

June 26 - ARMA Houston, Year-End Meeting

June 26 - Meru Data, Unpacking the Colorado AI Law and Its Impact

June 27 - Atlanta ARMA, State of the Chapter

June 27 - ARMA Toronto, Annual General Meeting

June 27 - IRPAAI, Evolution of RPA to Intelligent Automation and AI

June 27 - RIMPA Global, Sydney | Roadshow

June 27 - ACMP Arizona, Collaborative Exchange: Connecting Through Learning

June 27 - ACMP, Data-driven? Data-informed? Just help me use my data! (members only)

June 27 - IOPD, Design Process Standard Deep Dive | Privacy Engineering & Technology Education Discussion (PETed)

June 27 - Future of Privacy Forum, The AI Regulatory Landscape in the U.S. 

June 28 - ACMP South Africa, Strategic Change Marketing to Drive Transformational Organizational Change

July 9 - AIIM+, Unveiling Insights from Our "State of Information Practice" Survey (members only)

July 9 - ARMA InfoNEXT, Archiving Doesn't Cut It: Future of Information Governance

July 10 - IRMS, MMU's journey from shared drives to M365 - an update

July 10 - AIAI, Generative AI Summit, Austin, TX

July 11 - NAGARA, Standing Up Info Governance in State Government

July 16-18 - CDOIQ Symposium, Cambridge, MA

July 16-19 - NAGARA 2024, Atlanta, GA

July 25-26 - Zaria 2024 Annual Records Management Conference, Thohoyandou, ZAF

July 26 - M365 Community Days NYC, New York City, NY

July 31 - August 1 - Australian Digital Workplace Conference, Sydney, AUS

August 5-7 - NIRMA 2024, Summerlin, NV

August 11-15 - ILTACON 2024, Nashville, TN

August 12-14 - ISACA and IIA, GRC Conference 2024, Austin, TX

August 12-14 - Ai4, Las Vegas, NV

August 28-30 - ARA 2024, Birmingham, UK

September 3-5 - RIMPA Live 2024, Adelaide, SA, AUS

September 10-11 - The AI Conference, San Francisco, CA

September 15-18 - Georgia Records Association 2024 Conference, St. Simons Island, GA

September 17-19 - Info-Tech Live 2024, Las Vegas, NV

September 18-20 - InfoGovWorld Expo 2024, San Diego, CA

September 21-24 - IAPP Privacy.Security.Risk, Los Angeles, CA

September 22-26 - Hyland CommunityLive, National Harbor, MD

September 24-26 - Xplor 2024 Summit, Lake Buena Vista, FL

September 30 - October 1 - Business Transformation Exchange USA, Fort Lauderdale, FL

If you're looking for a speaker, I'm available to speak at your chapter or event. For more details, see https://informata.blogspot.com/2024/05/im-available-to-speak-at-your-event-may.html.

How to Build a Playbook Part 4 - Confirm the Plays to Include in the Playbook

This step is important because there may be activities identified during the review with the key players which are being executed, but for which little or no formal documentation is found during the documentation review. It will be difficult to develop plays for tasks or activities where there is no documentation at all. 

This next step, then, should be to review the initial draft list of plays to determine which ones should be removed because there is no documentation. That said, if an activity is being done regularly, an interview with the Responsible individual(s) may provide enough information to at least sketch out the play. That can then be refined and ultimately turned into formal documentation. If such an activity is being done by multiple people, each of them should be interviewed to determine what the best path of execution is. 

As you review the documentation, you will also likely determine that there are documents or sections that are significantly out of date. This is often the case where there is a formal SOP or RIM manual that hasn’t been updated in years. Ultimately, the playbook should describe how the play is being executed today, not what the outdated documents say. 

You may also identify plays that sound good, and that you should be doing, but which you’re actually not doing at present. Those should be removed as well. 

It may be helpful to create a running list of resources that should be reviewed and either updated or retired – after the playbook development process is complete. That is, don’t squander the buy-in and attention you got to build the playbook by getting distracted by the need for updates. Similarly, it may be helpful to create a list of plays that you think are worth adding once you start doing them (and assuming there is or will be documentation for them).  

Update 6/17/2024: I'm moving the schedule and timeline discussion to the final post in the series. 

Next up: Part 5 - determining the technical approach and the tool. 

I teach a workshop on how to build playbooks. You can find more details about the course and approach at https://athroconsulting.com/?page_id=981. 

I also build RIM and IG playbooks for organizations - drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk about what that could look like. 

Why I Left the AIIM CIP Ambassador Program

TL;DR: AIIM is fantastic and I still support the CIP program - as one of many certifications in the industry. 

In early January I announced that I'd become AIIM's first CIP Ambassador. Today I'm announcing that I'm no longer a CIP Ambassador, and I thought I'd explain why. 

As a CIP Ambassador, I was eligible to get commissions from AIIM for people who signed up for the CIP exam. It was in my personal financial interests, then, to promote CIP as much as possible. I only used the referral code a couple of times, and did not get a single dollar from AIIM in commissions, but the possibility was there, and I certainly posted about exam prep resources, etc. that I didn't do for other certifications. 

That possibility caused some concern in the industry as to my impartiality. While I firmly believe that I've been fair and neutral with respect to other industry certifications and designations, insofar as I follow my approach outlined in this blog post, perception can become reality. So I decided that I would end my CIP Ambassadorship to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. 

What does this mean going forward? First, I still support AIIM and the CIP program. I will continue to recommend it, and I will continue to answer any and all questions about it that I can. I will also continue to do the same for all my other credentials and credentialing bodies. And as I did in 2022, I will call AIIM out if I think they are moving away from having a proper, valid, defensible certification and program. 

Second, I am still an AIIM training partner. I currently teach the AIIM CIP Preparatory Workshop and I may add other AIIM courses in the future. I don't see this as a conflict of interest because, as I noted in another blog post last year, I love teaching and I am willing to teach *any* provider's courses, if it's in my wheelhouse and if we can figure out a way to do so that works for everyone involved. Training companies and certifying bodies, where y'all are? 

If you have questions about CIP, please feel free to reach out. If you have questions about any of my other certifications or designations, or certifications broadly, likewise, please reach out. 

How to Build a Playbook Part 3 - Gather and Review Documentation

Step 3 in the process to build a RIM playbook is to gather and review any existing documentation related to a given RIM-related activity. The existence of documentation strongly suggests that the activity documented is a play that should be included. Some of this documentation might be outdated; some processes may have very little in the way of actual documentation. We'll discuss how to address both of these issues in part 4. 

This gathering and reviewing exercise is arguably the core of, and the most valuable time spent on, building a playbook. Even if your playbook is just a simple spreadsheet, with links to the most current documentation for each of your processes listed in that one file, you'd still be significantly ahead of the game. 

This also means that this exercise is worthy of some time and effort. It's not just amassing the documentation and skimming through it - you need to review each document in depth to understand how they flow and interact. Process-related documentation in particular often makes references to other documentation that can be of value in building the playbook. 

There are three main types of documentation to gather and review.

Process documentation. These documents will drive the development of the plays themselves, including the title, description, purpose, and schedule/frequency. They may also help to identify the roles involved for a particular play. And they are the actual resources that are included, and used, to execute the individual plays.

Process documentation includes: 

• Existing procedures
• Flowcharts and process maps
• Checklists and guidelines
• Troubleshooting guides
• Templates
• "Cheat sheets"
• Quick start guides
• Training materials
• Lists of frequently asked questions 

The records retention schedule can also be valuable here, as many of the RIM-related tasks will generate records which are included in the retention schedule.

If you have a formalized help desk or support function for the records program, or even just for the recordkeeping system, it may be helpful to look through the trouble tickets as some of these may relate to plays. 

Roles & responsibilities. These documents will help to identify the roles involved for a particular play. Responsibilities are more than just “who does what” – I suggest using a RACI matrix or something similar to identify the roles that are:

• Responsible – the one(s) actually performing the task. This is often the person generating the metrics listed below. More than one role may have responsibility; the responsible role may also be the accountable role in some cases.
• Accountable – the one who ensures that the task is completed to standard. This is often also the initial audience for the metrics listed below. There should only be one role that is accountable.
• Consult – generally subject matter experts who provide specific advice. This is a two-way or multidirectional communication, and can be from the Responsible, Accountable, or other Consult roles.  More than one role may be Consulted for a particular task.
• Inform – anyone who needs to be kept up to date on the status of a process, progress, roadblocks, etc. This is a one-way communication, typically from the Accountable role. More than one role may be Informed about a particular task.

Relevant documents will include things like job descriptions, organizational charts, and other program documentation that identifies areas of responsibility, including those previously listed. In other words, it's not uncommon for a procedure to identify the roles involved. Similarly, a flowchart might include swim lanes to indicate responsibility for specific tasks. 

Reports, scorecards, and dashboards. Reports include metrics, and one or more recipients or audiences, which will help to determine both the RACI and the metrics for each play.

Reports would include things like weekly/monthly status reports; regular metrics; and dashboards, scorecards, and other aggregators of qualitative and quantitative data relevant to a particular task or activity. At a minimum, anyone receiving the reports should be considered an Inform role, and may be a Consult or even an Accountable one. 

Next up: Part 4 - confirming the final lists of plays based on the information gathered to this point. 

I teach a workshop on how to build playbooks. You can find more details about the course and approach at https://athroconsulting.com/?page_id=981. 

I also build RIM and IG playbooks for organizations - drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk about what that could look like.