During a terrific story on NPR the other morning, reporter Christopher Joyce interviewed Ian Tattersall, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History who uttered the phrase, “Novelties happen randomly.”  Tattersall was referring to natural selection – the Darwinian principal behind evolution – but the concept got me thinking about software development.

Before I get started, I assure you, the SiteExecutive development team has a product roadmap that outlines dozens of new features and capabilities. These are mapped to target release dates – the whole thing is very ordered and logical. And, contrary to natural selection, we can and do call things into existence because they are desirable.

On the other hand, we run into situations where clients get ideas for doing things with SiteExecutive which are outside of our frame of reference. A case in point is Geisinger Health System using SiteExecutive to manage policies, procedures and guidelines – all manner of clinical content. Geisinger’s project is outlined in a case study – it was also a finalist for a 2009 KMWorld Reality Award.

To address the clinical content challenge, Geisinger designed and built a custom SiteExecutive module. They could have purchased an off-the-shelf application for this purpose, but they wanted something better. To make it happen, Geisinger developers took SiteExecutive developer and API training. They also had a team of very smart people from across their organization focused on making this project a success.

The policies, procedures and guidelines at Geisinger cover all aspects of their operations – from life-saving procedures to sanitizing floors. As with so many aspects of healthcare, the way Geisinger manages this clinical content is regulated by the state of Pennsylvania and Joint Commission.

 It turns out – no surprise – that other clients, in other industries have similar challenges. Substitute “standard operating procedures” for policies, procedures and guidelines and voila, we have new workflow requirements driven by a client’s “novel” request.

More details about the new SiteExecutive workflow functionality will be disclosed in the near future. BTW, we’ll be sharing a detailed product roadmap with clients at our SiteExecutive user conference – formal save the date announcement coming soon.