By: Daniel J. Madison, Author of "Process Mapping, Process Improvement, and Process Management" and Owner, Value Creation Partners
Millions of dollars spent, countless hours wasted, and frustrated business users seem to be fairly standard outcomes when IT and business try to work together. While this problem seems apparent, little progress has been made. What is happening?I believe two key factors are in play. First both the IT and business folks are operating under a number of faulty assumptions. Here are some flawed assumptions from the IT perspective.
Every department experiences constant low level change. This change is normally a manual response to unmet automated support requirements associated with operational evolution. But, it affects, rules, policies, procedures, activity, workflow, performance, and quality. This impact increases over time as the operational change builds and effectiveness and efficiency become concerns. This discussion will address ways to find this work and put processes in place to optimize the operation and sustain an optimal level of performance.
As more organizations understand and realize the benefit of managing processes, the next step is to manage the enterprise from a process perspective. Working with many organizations, Process Strategy Group was instrumental in developing an Implementation Roadmap and Assessment Framework to guide an organization through the journey to becoming a process based organization. A high level review of the Implementation Roadmap and Assessment will be presented, and what organizations need to consider in their implementation.
By: Jerry Talley, Independent Consultant
There is a new approach to surveying employees that can create the constant and comprehensive feedback an organization needs. Traditionally employee surveys have been large enough that they were done infrequently. They were often part of a major assessment that was comprehensive and cumbersome. No wonder that employees traditionally complain that nothing ever comes of their inputs. In contrast, imagine a survey that is (a) 1-2 minutes long (perhaps 5-12 questions) (b) sent out to targeted samples within the organization (c) once a month or more.
Contributed by:Marvin Wurtzel, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant,
Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.
By: Marvin Wurtzel, Wurtzel Consulting, Inc.
The vast majority of Six Sigma proponents agree to the fact that the key to Six Sigma improvement success is the building up of an effective infrastructure. An effective infrastructure is the foundation for the success of the organization in its implementation of Six Sigma. It is also clear that the success of Six Sigma lays on the projects selected and their link to the strategy of their organization and the effectiveness of the value chain processes.
Process design principles are distilled best practices derived from world class organizations. These principles provide a guideline for process improvement efforts. By using design principles, new processes can be designed very quickly. In addition these new processes will exhibit higher quality, lower cost, faster cycle time, and less worker frustration.
This talk will provide an overview of BPM and Six Sigma to indicate where there are synergies between the various types of programs. BPM builds the framework to create strategic alignment, measure business processes using metrics aligned to business goals, and identify performance gaps that have a major impact on the customer and on achieving desired business results.
Six Sigma can be used as the vehicle to implement significant quality mprovement, stabilize the processes and close the gaps. Six Sigma can be used to remove waste from the process and provide higher quality resulting in improved customer satisfaction. Together they can provide a process enabled and customer focused enterprise.
By: Karen Tricomi, Systems Engineer, Enterprise Methods & Processes, from a major financial services organization
This month’s article provides tips on ways to display information in a way that is content rich. These methods display information in a way that enhances understanding, highlights important elements, and minimizes distractions.
In 1983, Edward Tufte published a remarkable book titled The Visual Display of Quantitative Information1.
Process design principles are distilled best practices derived from world class organizations. These principles provide a guideline for process improvement efforts. By using design principles, new processes can be designed very quickly. In addition these new processes will exhibit higher quality, lower cost, faster cycle time, and less worker frustration.
