(Photo Credit: My Kids)
This post is part of a series "Generalizing the Secret Ingredients for making any Process Improvement Project a Success Story". Your comments, feedback and insights are welcomed.
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it is quite challenging to generalize the key factors of a successful project as the factors are termed and viewed differently with a different angle under the aegis of various disciplines like Quality Management, Project Management, Time Management, Business Process Management, Supply Chain Management and so on. If all these views are combined together it will provide more options and a more clearer view. In these serial posts some of the most important contributing ingredients are discussed:
1. Chalk-out Business Process(es) which includes the Business Process Flow Charts.
2. Know where you are now and where you want to be. Do an AS-IS (The Present Scenario) and TO-BE (The Desired Objective) analysis. In short know the big picture of the desired future. This is important as not doing so will lead to RE-work, RE-engineering and RE-process which will cost more than 03 times as explained in the discipline Quality Management in CoPQ - Cost of Poor Quality.
3. Know the Intensity of Change required and the requirement of the project whether this a BPR - Business Process Re-engineering/Process Improvement Project or a BPM - Business Process Management/Paradigm Shift Project which is based on new concept. The success of implementations depends on the willingness and commitment of the management and the design of the project to be as much user/implementer friendly as possible.
4. Know the scope and limitations of the project. What aspects you want to improve or work on and what you will not consider at the moment. Identify the DOs and DONTs of the project.
5. Identify how will you get there that is who are the team members for the project and what are their Skill Set. Take the relevant Skills' Inventory and identify what further skill set is required. On the basis of this know your strengths and weaknesses. Make strategies to counter your weaknesses/short-comings by your strengths.
Also identify the Process Owner(s), the Key Resource(s) and the Stakeholder(s).
All these should be followed by Responsibility Matrix which describes the roles and responsibilities against each assigned task in the project.
6. Know how to measure your milestone. Try to make each step/phase of the project measurable so that you know how much you are far away for your goal. Usespecific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bounded objectives.
7. Communication Plan has to be made to ensure the smooth flow of information among the team members/stakeholders. Delays in most of the cases have been identified as a result of less/poor or no communication.
It is advisable for frequent meetings and discussions on the progress of the project so that all the team members stay informed and updated.
8. Break the project in phases. Breakdown the project in phases to the level of the smallest workable part. Working on smaller units/parts are more effective than working on the bigger units/parts.
9. Equip your Project by making short term plans in order to support your long term. When you work on short-term plans you minimize your risk and you maximize your potential to use the available alternative plans. This also supports the Plan > Do > Check > and Act Cycle .
10. Identify inputs and outputs. Make a matrix which identifies theSource(s)/Supplier(s) > Input(s) of the Supplier(s) > The Process(es) > The Output(s) of the process(es) > and the Customer(s) / beneficiary of Output(s).
Identify critical point(s), process(es) which are extremely important. Do a Failure Mode and Effect Analysis for each process so that you know which are the most critical ones.
11. Do a Value Stream Mapping so that you know what process(es) in the chain of system(s) are adding value and what are not. In this way you will be more efficient using Lean (Minimizing your wastes that is minimizing non-value-added activities).
12. Review the Chalk-out Business Process(es) that is to look at your chalked process(es) and to look for adjustments on the basis of the above stated ingredients.
13. Log Key Lesson Learnt from the project so that in future you can save resources by not repeating such mistakes.
14. Continual Improvement is necessary to optimize your process(es)/system(s) hence the PDCA (Plan > Do > Check > and Act) Cycle should be followed and lesson(s) learnt from the mistake(s) have to be incorporated in the shape of solutions in the system.
15. Dashboard reporting that is the Scorecards are required to be devised and monitored in order to reconcile the performance of the project. This also helps you to know whether everything is under control and in the assigned operative limits.
In the following posts more insights on the above stated factors will be shared.
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Asif Pervez is the founder and life coach at QuBpro Research Institute. Asif is a Business Process and Supply Chain Management technocrat with strategic vision powered with 15+ years of accomplishment at driving savings, optimizing and improving process, operations, planning and instituting innovative solutions while focusing on quality and service. The experience, knowledge and trainings have equipped Asif with latest tools and techniques to have macroscopic as well as microscopic view of problems and to run high end process improvement programs and conduct successful information systems implementations.
The views expressed in this blog are based on the author's experience and do not reflect his current or past employers.
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(Photo Credit: Myself - Asif Pervez)