Human performance technology

Human performance technology (HPT), also known as human performance improvement (HPI), or human performance assessment (HPA), is a field of study related to process improvement methodologies such as lean management, Six Sigma, lean Six Sigma, organization development, motivation, instructional technology, human factors, learning, performance support systems, knowledge management, and training. It is focused on improving performance at the societal, organizational, process, and individual performer levels.

HPT "uses a wide range of interventions that are drawn from many other disciplines, including total quality management, process improvement, behavioral psychology, instructional systems design, organizational development, and human resources management" (ISPI, 2007). It stresses a rigorous analysis of requirements at the societal, organizational process and individual levels as appropriate to identify the causes for performance gaps, provide appropriate interventions to improve and sustain performance, and finally to evaluate the results against the requirements.

The field of HPT, also referred to as Performance Improvement, emerged from the fields of educational technology and instructional technology in the 1950s and 1960s. In the post war period, application of the Instructional Systems Design (ISD) model was not consistently returning the desired improvements to organizational performance. This led the emergence of HPT as a separate field from ISD in the late 1960s to early 1970s when the National Society for Programmed Instruction was renamed the National Society for Performance and Instruction (NSPI) and then again to the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) in 1995. (Chyung, 2008) HPT evolved as a systemic and systematic approach to address complex types of performance issues and to assist in the proper diagnosis and implementation of solutions to close performance gaps among individuals.

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