Keep Process Improvement simple

The drive for efficiency has never been more important in todays challenging business environment. That drive will often lead to a review of the business processes to identify and take out inefficiencies. These reviews have, in many cases, grown into major projects which can become expensive and difficult to handle successfully, often ending up failing or achieving a compromise which doesn’t meet the original goal. The Business Process Reengineering days of the early 1990’s tarnished its reputation because in those days, although there was some success, it was not fully understood and therefore often poorly planned and executed.

Despite those difficulties redesigning business processes is more popular today than ever but the risks remain, particularly if the project gets too large to handle and therefore difficult to control.

I would like to suggest a simpler way to achieve efficiencies by taking smaller bites in a more agile way. This doesn’t mean that there are not situations when a larger reengineering project is still required but if there isn’t an urgent need for a major restructure and the company’s skills in this area are limited then tackling a series of small projects is much more likely to be successful and builds up knowledge and confidence before moving into larger projects when and if that becomes necessary.

The approach
This ‘small bite’ approach is based around a number of key requirements/deliverables

• A small team to be created headed by a champion who is a respected senior director/manager of the company
• The team is trained in the technique being used and effectively become facilitators. The team are available to all areas of the business subject to approval of the business drivers
• Any project that is selected must have a least 2 defined and relevant reasons (business drivers for change). These will also determine the priority if more than one project is competing for the teams attention
• The head of the business area involved in the review must be fully supportive and willing to implement the findings
• A facilitated review session lasting 1 or 2 days maximum with a small number of people who have a spread of knowledge of the process being reviewed
• An outcome from the review sessions that will identify improvements that can be implemented quickly plus an ideas bank that will form the basis for on-going improvements
• An action plan to implement the improvements

The method is that the senior champion promotes the process with his colleagues. The setting up of a project is by request from a business area which must justify the need by having at least 2 business drivers for change, such as Client requirements not being met, declining orders, lack of consistency in product delivery, profitability targets not being met etc., the project must be put forward by a senior manager who is willing to commit up to 2 days time and resource and is committed to implementing the recommendations.

The technique is to look at one area and break it down into smaller pieces identifying the inputs and outputs, the controls and constraints and the mechanisms to deliver the product or service. This technique is using the ICOM (Input-Control-Output-Mechanism) or IDEF process modelling method which is mainly a top down approach, as its basis and a good way to decompose processes under review. The review is done in a 1 to 2 day workshop which is attended by a small group of people from the business who have knowledge of the various processes involved. During this workshop and with the drivers for change in mind improvements are identified and an action plan is created that will deliver the results identified plus other ideas generated in the session are collected to form the basis for on-going improvements. The idea is to find quick wins that can be achieved in a short space of time followed by continuous improvement using the ideas bank.

This approach requires a relatively small amount of time, has a defined business reason to support it and is owned by the area that requested it. Once one project is successful word of mouth and promotion from the senior champion will generate more requests for projects and the business will see on-going efficiencies being delivered against key business drivers.

The key to its success is a commitment to finding a solution to the business drivers identified, an open and challenging attitude and the need to embrace change and see it through to the end.

Nothing new there then!

"This post is on behalf of the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP"