Why Corvus releases documents under a Creative Commons license
For a few months now, we have been marking the documents that we commonly hand with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The concept is simple, that we freely offer these documents and tools to anyone for any purpose, so long as they attribute the original authors and share any derived work in the same way. It's based upon the principles of "open source" popularized by software, and the broader movement towards Open Knowledge. Most importantly, the knowledge that we have gained over the (many!) years has often been shared generously and openly with us by our peers and mentors; we should do no less.
Our approach to work always begins with collaboration: Who else can bring or receive benefit in a given situation? What do the parties already know or possess? What an we ourselves learn from this? What have we discovered that will be useful to others in the same situation?
Further, we will benefit from sharing and making accessible the tools we commonly use: in software development there's a common expression (Linus's Law) "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Our sincere hope is that others will not only find these things useful, but help make them better - or at least point out our errors.
We choose a documents or tools (e.g., a spreadsheet template) to share in this manner based on the following criteria:
- it represents actionable information that we ourselves use
- it is knowledge we have gained through experience and tested in practice
- knowledge from other published or licensed sources is properly cited/attributed
- it could be useful to others
- it is not simply an advertisement
Now we are committing to making these documents easily accessible in a digital format, and in editable formats for download. We're starting with three of our most-often used handout that outlines the framework we teach for Management and Decision-Making, and the documents that form the foundation for understanding and documenting an organizations Workflow, or Business Process.
If you don't need an editable document, and just want to browse or download the PDF versions, you can open this folder in your web browser, and select from the documents available.
The following are links to Google Docs versions which can be downloaded or copied, then edited (the documents at these links are not publicly editable, but please let us know if you find an error, or would like to suggest an edit).
A Business Management and Decision Framework, which describes the range of disciplines and tools necessary for all businesses of any size.
Workflow for Small Business, our brief guide to defining and documenting your business processes. This could be used for mid-size business as well - it just happens to be the format we use to
An "Inventory of Responsibilities," the worksheet and instructions we use to begin the process of Workflow analysis and documentation.
In the coming months we'll be publishing a financial modelling tool and hopefully a short video introduction to Workflow and Business Process as described by the "Pool and Swimlane" metaphor. Please reach out to us if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on these documents!