What is EPSS

In the ground-breaking book Electronic Performance Support Systems published in 1991, Gloria Gery, defined EPSS as:

"an integrated electronic environment that is available to and easily accessible by each employee and is structured to provide immediate, individualized on-line access to the full range of information, software, guidance, advice and assistance, data, images, tools, and assessment and monitoring systems to permit job performance with minimal support and intervention by others."

An electronic performance support system can also be described as any computer software program or component that improves employee performance by

  1. reducing the complexity or number of steps required to perform a task,

  2. providing the performance information an employee needs to perform a task, or

  3. providing a decision support system that enables an employee to identify the action that is appropriate for a particular set of conditions.

Electronic Performance Support Systems can help an organization to reduce the cost of training staff while increasing productivity and performance. It can empower an employee to perform tasks with a minimum amount of external intervention or training. By using this type of system an employee, especially a new employee, will not only be able to complete their work more quickly and accurately, but as a secondary benefit they will also learn more about their job and their employer's business.

Recommended Books

Examples - Learn about EPSS and Performance Centered Design (PCD) by studying award winning systems.

Conferences, Workshops & Presentations

Articles in ISPI Publications - PI and PIQ 

From Abrasion to Waldos:  Connecting the Performance Support Dots
A preview of the special edition of the Performance Improvement Journal. (2001-08-12)

Special Issue:  Performance Support Perspectives and Practice
This site contains the online version of the articles that appeared in the July 2000 edition of the Performance Improvement Journal. The article authors included noted performance centered design experts Gary Dickelman, Barry Raybould, Duane Degler and others. 

Special Issue: Electronic Performance Support System
This site contains the online version of the articles that appeared in the August 1999 edition of the Performance Improvement Journal. The article authors included noted performance centered design experts Gary Dickelman, Stan Malcolm, Barbara Cowley-Durst and others. 

Supporting Human Performance Across Disciplines
Lorraine Sherry & Brent Wilson, Ph.D.; Performance Improvement Quarterly (Vol 9, No. 4, 1996). The article compares and contrasts the similarities, differences and emerging trends in human performance technology, electronic performance support systems, technical communication and instructional design. .

Performance Improvement Quarterly, 1995 - EPSS Edition
This site contains the articles by Gloria Gery,  Barry Raybould, Gary Dickelman, Mark J. Rosenberg and James Laffey that appeared in this PIQ special edition. 

Charts and Illustrations

Attributes and Behavior of Performance Centered Systems Chart
"This chart summarizes the characteristics of performance centered systems and provides descriptive criteria against which to either specify or evaluate requirements. The attributes themselves are listed in the first column. The 1, 3 and 5 point scale indicates the degree to which these attributes are required or implemented. Level 1 indicates a low level of implementation or representation of the attribute; Level 3 an intermediate degree; and Level 5 a high level of implementation."

A Comparison of Large Scale Systems and Consumer Software Development
This comparison chart "..is designed to make these two differing sets of assumptions explicit so they can be compared and contrasted as part of the specification development process. The drivers for consumer software need to be adopted by large scale systems developers to improve the quality and power of software developed for organizational use."

Online Articles

Planning an Electronic Performance Support System Project
Jean Hollis Weber: Electronic performance support systems are software programs that directly support a worker's ability to perform tasks. Such systems go beyond passive task-oriented online help. To be effective, EPS systems should be closely interlocked with the supported product's user interface and its online help. This paper outlines some of the planning considerations and steps involved in an EPSS project, and some of the problems and complications that arose during a specific project. (2001-04-22)

The Performance Support Bridge to Knowledge Management
Learning Circuits, Jim Elsenheimer: Performance support can serve both our information and knowledge needs. It distills information into usable chunks. Rather than sending someone to wade through piles of documentation, an EPSS support tool can send them to concise procedural steps for the task they are to perform. Performance support can also answer the "when" and "how" questions of knowledge seekers by providing materials with which to answer those questions. (2001-04-08)

Cost-Justifying Electronic Performance Support Systems
Communications of the ACM: This is a large PDF file. This articles reports on the potential ROI of an EPSS. The study used a prototype version of a performance support component of a customer service system. They authors calculate only the potential training cost savings based on a 50% (best-case), 30%(expected) and 20% reduction in training time. While novice users where much more successful with the EPSS prototype, the calculated reduction of training costs resulted in break points ranging from 1.1 to 18.2 years. This is a very useful article. It shows the ROI calculations and discusses the difficulty of measuring the other possible benefits of a performance support system.  (2001-03-18)

Beyond Performance Support
The Back Office Performance Support (BOPS) European project is one of the most recent initiatives to investigate this field and develop methodologies and products.  Carried out by a consortium of eight European firms and partially funded by the European Commission, the BOPS project goes beyond the traditional EPSS boundaries and combines netcoaching with knowledge management, training management and decision support. (2001-03-18)

Types of Electronic Performance Support Systems: Their Characteristics and Range of Designs
Deborah Sleight, Michigan State University:  "It is my opinion that these key characteristics are the minimum a program must have in order to called an EPSS. It must be computerized, by definition ("electronic"). It must provide the specific information needed to perform a task, otherwise it would be no different from traditional training, which provides the information needed, but includes irrelevant data as well. It must provide the specific information when it is needed, otherwise there is no difference between it and traditional training, which provides the information, but not when it is needed. It must allow the learner to decide when information is needed, and to access it, otherwise it is no different from teacher-controlled traditional training. And finally, the program must reduce the need for prior training in order to accomplish the task, otherwise why have a performance support system at all?" 

The Application Of Evolutionary Learning Theory In The Transition From Training To Performance Support
This paper contains 1.) a description of a performance support system for capturing, approving and sharing aircraft maintenance tips and 2.) a brief overview of evolutionary theory and its application to knowledge and learning in the theory of memetics. The knowledge and learning structures that exist within a modern company are examined and significant failures within them are identified. It is concluded that harnessing and exploiting evolutionary learning can resolve many of these failures. Evolutionary learning is a natural precursor for the transition from training to performance support.  (2001-03-04)

Do No Harm: Medical Performance Support Systems 
Online Learning Magazine: Not only do such computerized systems keep mistakes from happening, but they may also help doctors learn in the long run, says Teich. "On one hand, clinical decision support prevents errors and changes care plans for the better. That’s its most immediate effect," he says. "But in the process, it also educates the person doing it. In fact, we call this just-in-time education. It gets deep into your memory because it’s happening at a critical moment for you." Some decision-support systems even link doctors to studies that relate to the case they’re handling, allowing them to bookmark the information for future reference. (2001-03-04)

When training doesn't work
Clive Shepherd: There's so much to know and so little time to learn it. Maybe the answer is not training, certainly as we know it, but top quality information and performance support materials, accessible on demand, when required, electronically. In this article, Clive Shepherd argues the case for EPSS (Electronic Performance Support Systems) as an important ingredient in a training and knowledge management strategy, but warns that getting it right is not as easy as it may seem. (2001-02-25)

Granting Three Wishes through Performance-Centered Design
Gloria Gery: There are some very specific things that must be incorporated into software to generate immediate performance by all. It's critical to be able to describe and demonstrate these attributes and behaviors in order to build the requirements into functional specifications and to provide explicit models for design.

Why Don't We Weigh Them?
Gloria Gery: This articles contains a list of employee performance measurements that can be used to assess the usefulness of various types of performance support interventions, including electronic performance support systems (EPSS). 

THINK PERFORMANCE, A Conversation With Gloria Gery
Do you think an electronic performance-support system is just a job aid with a God complex? Think again, says "technochange" guru , Gloria Gery. Electronic performance support is not about then application of technologies it’s about an attitude.

Performance Support on the Shop Floor
ISPI Performance Improvement, Jyrki J.J. Kasvi and Matti Vartiainen: This article is a case study of 4 performance support systems used by assembly line workers. According to the authors: "Once the support has been successfully implemented, there is surprisingly little resistance to change in spite of the fact that most of the end users have had very little experience in computer use. Mouse and keyboard are cumbersome, and in one case they were replaced with a bar code reader that the users were familiar with. In another case a foot pedal or a set of extra function keys was considered. The end users have almost unanimously considered computer-delivered support better than paper-based support arrangements."

Karate Kid Meets the e-Learning Business Machine
LineZine: While this article doesn't use the term "performance support" but it does talk about some of the basic principles of performance centered design. According to the author: "...the real elearning design challenge is to eliminate the need to learn a complex application. The business process deserves some training, but applying intelligent design to the application, itself, offered many solutions that simply eliminated training needs. Most computer and web applications are ripe for better design to support the learning process. We can teach people the easy way by designing applications that greatly reduce the need to teach the application. And it would be wonderful, if while we are at it, we also could teach them the business process behind the application." (2001-02-18)

Putting "Productivity" Back into Software
Janet Cichelli: Organizations realize that their workers ultimately determine the success or failure of new business software. Unfortunately, nearly all computer software is designed around processing data with little or no consideration of how people need to use it to perform their work tasks. As a result, training, software documentation, and end-user support services have flourished as a way to help users figure out how to work around these systems.  (2000-08-27)

Performance Support in Internet Time
Gary Dickelman, PCD-Innovations: The transcript of a roundtable discussion featuring Gloria Gery, Stan Malcolm, Janet Cichelli, Hal Christensen, Barry Raybould, and Marc Rosenberg. The discussions topics included: learning vs. performance support, knowledge management, performance support models, the role of the internet in performance support, enterprise application integration, and intrinsic performance support. (2000-03-26)

Dalton's EPSS Tutorial
Dalton Cote: This web site is intended to provide information on Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS). The concept for this site originated as a project for a class I am taking on performance consulting at the University of Calgary. I thought it might be more interesting and beneficial, for both you and me, if I developed a web site instead of the traditional research paper. 

Designing computer-based cognitive tools
Brian Ferry, John Hedberg and Barry Harper; Australian Journal of Educational Technology 1999, 15(1), 1-19. The article "...reports on the development and evaluation of cognitive tools used to interpret graphs and tables. "Many of the cognitive tools developed (such as the sorting tool and balloon help) were forms of "just in time" support (Gery, 1994) and helped learners to analyse and process information. They were context-specific, simple to use and required little, or no instruction. Because they were unobtrusive and did not distract learner attention from the main task, they did not split attention and cause additional cognitive load." (2000-07-15)

Electronic support cuts training time
Quality Magazine, February 1998: "How long does it take to train a new employee at your company? After he’s been trained, how much longer does it take before he stops making mistakes or asking for help every time a new situation occurs? Wouldn’t it be nice if the people you hire could just start doing their jobs—and doing them well—from the very first day? Electronic performance-support systems (EPSS) are designed to help them do just that."

Performance Support Systems for Education and Training
Instructional Technology Research Online: The key to this new paradigm is to provide a seamless user interface that integrates the components that compose the PSS. PSSs use a wide range of technologies in their components. It is the combination of these technologies that give the PSS advantages over any of the technologies used individually. In a PSS, the limitations of one technology are usually overcome by another technology. The end result is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Articles by Stan Malcolm
This page contains links to articles by Stan Malcolm of Performance Vision. The articles include: EPSS Tomorrow, Knowledge: Bashful Partner or Leader of the Dance? and The 100 Percent Solution  (1999-06-20) 

Designing an Electronic Performance Support Tool for Teachers
Michael Orey, Joi Moore, Janice Hardy and Ricardo Serrano; The University of Georgia: This paper "...documents exactly what tasks a teacher does as she performs her duties throughout the day. From these benchmark data, we suggest a set of computer tools to help teachers more efficiently carry out their task and perhaps, suggest operational changes that might improve teacher performance." 

What is the EPSS Movement, and What Does It Mean to Technical Communicators?
Craig Marion: This online article gives an overview of what EPSSs are, suggests where people can learn more about them on the web, presents a few deconstructions   of what's involved in creating EPSSs, The article argues that the EPSS movement challenges technical communicators to think in terms of integrated user assistance and to create information that is intrinsic to work flow.  It also presents some examples of how this can be done.  (May-03-98)

Articles by Barbara Cowley-Durst
This page contains links to articles and presentations by Barbara Cowley-Durst of the Beacon Knowledge Group. The articles include  "How to Think about Performance", "Change Management" and "Breakthrough Thinking". (Mar-03-98)

First Cousins Once Removed: Knowledge Management and Performance Support
Andy Zolper: " Knowledge management ("KM") and Electronic Performance Support ("EPS") are disciplines separated by outlook but united by objective. Each desires to provide useful knowledge to employees in order to effect business improvement. While many of us have seen the similarities, it is difficult to grasp the relationship between the two. Are they the same thing? Mutually exclusive? Complementary? This paper will seek to describe a framework in which KM and PS act as agents of support to employees faced with the need to complete business tasks." (1999-11-08)

EPSS: Expanding the Perspective
Bill Miller: "An EPSS is not a software system that contains a specific set of features and functions. Rather, it is a matter of modifying and developing software to measurably improve employee performance. These improvements can be achieved with a variety of software development and enhancement strategies. An EPSS can be a simple word processor macro that reduces time and cognitive required to produce a standard business document or a fully integrated custom software program that contains all the performance information and decision support functions that an employee needs to perform their job."

EPSS and Knowledge Management: Merging the Ground
William Lawton: This paper tries to "...demonstrate how the EPSS and knowledge management strategies represent joint spearheads in the struggle to concentrate organizational resources on 'strategic' rather than just potentially useful IT." He concludes "...that though developed independently, both approaches contain important elements that when combined form the greatest opportunity for providing business with IT solutions directly supportive of bottom line business objectives." (1999-11-01)

EPSS:Does My Performance Need Support?
Jim Martin: "We all need support from time to time. How many times do you wish some guru would look over your shoulder when you are doing something new on your computer? Think of a performance support system as an expert helping you to do your job better."

When Humans and Computers meet (performance hits the fan!…)
Jacques Hugo: "Supporting the performance of an employee cannot be achieved reliably by dealing with training or software issues only". He concludes that "Typical interventions will be in the form of improved work procedures, elimination of task errors, identification of training and support requirements, effective knowledge management, improved system usability and effective performance support systems."  (Jan-01-99)

Computer-based Performance Support
This white paper by InWorks Technologies describes performance-centered systems and describes Inworks own software for developing electronic performance support systems. (2000-10-22)

Training's New Guard
ASTD Training & Development Magazine :The article highlights the innovative work of people working in the area of training and performance support. Of particular interest are the stories about Debbie Cone and Gary Elsbernd. The article also includes a self assessment questionnaire for evaluating your understanding and acceptance of the new ideas in training and performance support. (1999-07-11)

Guidelines for WWW-Based Support Environments for Education Professionals
Elka Remmers:  This article summarizes a number of studies and articles on electronic performance support systems and web-based systems that support the work of educators.