Process Management

Management and planning decisions should always be based on factual evidence rather than speculation or assumptions. When factual evidence is available to support a business case, all stakeholders have more confidence in your team’s decisions. And decisions can be made faster, with more accuracy.

So why is it that executives often make their decisions based on “experience” and “gut-feel”?

It’s often easier to trust a colleague’s experience of a new technology or the evidence about a new management technique shared at an executive seminar than it is to sift through mountains of marginally-useful information.

More strategic decisions are made on the golf course than in the board room because when the data isn’t there, the decisions still must be made.

A good management system has the right information available whenever it’s needed. Management needs more than just financial data to manage effectively. You also should expect to have:

•  observable, traceable, and trackable operational metrics, enabling you to tell customers how you’re progressing
•  data that can be used as a direct input into Executive Management’s strategic planning process
•  an ability to predict with reasonable accuracy the level of quality and success that can be expected in future projects
•  evidence that demonstrates achievement of your performance objectives, including schedule, costs, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

What happens when processes break down

For any system to work effectively, information flow must progress along the right paths of the organization’s processes, with no disconnects on its way to reaching its planned destination. If there’s a course deviation, contingency is planned. Faulty information, whether inaccurate or channelled off course and not available when needed, becomes unreliable . When decisions are made based on unreliable information, the consequences cascade throughout the organization until ultimately, the system fails.

Large multinational corporations often believe they are immune from such catastrophes, but the reality is that they often just have more resources with which to fix their problems. But when they do go down, it’s usually in a big way.

While larger organizations may not suffer as many visible incapacities as smaller organizations, they do just as much of a disservice to their shareholders, customers, and employees through the sheer volume of rework and waste that results from defective information.

Visibility & Discipline

To improve the management quality of an organization, and its flow of information, consistent and clear oversight is required. Visibility is mandatory and its achievement is in direct proportion to the degree of discipline exercised within the organization.

The first step to achieving this visibility is through an audit or assessment that exposes the problem areas. Only by determining the degree of the organization’s conformance to its own policies and processes, as well as its current and potential capability, can effective remedies be applied. This initial baseline provides a benchmark against which all improvement activities are measured, with ongoing surveillance assessments measuring progress.

The real objective of process management is to enable everyone in the organization to work toward and achieve the same goals. Audits and assessments help you do that by:

1. measuring your organizational performance, from the product’s cradle to grave from the perspective of the customer: 

Result : an objective, quantitative benchmark that identifies organizational and operational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

2. providing an insight into and oversight over the organization’s inner workings

Result : to clearly and accurately have the right decision-making information to detect and fix:

– broken processes – so they can be reintegrated into the process flow
– mistaken assumptions – to ensure accuracy and prevent mistakes
– miscommunicated or outdated objectives – to help you achieve the right goals
– lack of understanding of policy, process, or strategy – to educate
– lack of direction – to guide ensuring the right path is taken
– high defect density ratios – to reduce rework, costs, and schedules
– lack of efficiency – to reduce rework and improve productivity
– low productivity rates – as a result of inefficient or broken processes or lack of training or direction
– high maintenance and support costs – as a result of too few peer reviews and development controls
– too many shortcuts – as a result of lack of process definition, discipline, or communication
– costs overruns – to increase your bottom-line profits. 

3. exposing the faults and analysing their root cause

Result : establishing the priorities for improvement, assigning appropriate resource, developing tracking mechanisms, and establishing measurable improvement goals 

4. providing a reliable and repeatable quantitative measurement of the organization’s maturity and capability 

Result : plans reliably implemented, providing assurance of your commitment to the needs of your current and prospective customers.

…in short – all of the aspects of processes that are people-driven, and thus prone to error. 

Metrics play a critical role in systematic process improvement. Initially, metrics will provide evidence to support a diagnosis and analysis of your organization’s performance or customer projects.

Afterward, they are carried forward as a benchmark against which to manage performance and to estimate, track, and control it. Once effective management practices are in place, metrics will enhance any aspect of the organization, including product and process quality and/or environmental management.

Collecting data about defects or issues throughout the life cycle and using that data to focus on defect detection and prevention both supports and enhances your relationship with your customers. Without metrics, project, quality, and environmental management are difficult to implement and if implemented, are often suboptimal.

Process measurement begins with the definition of your goals. Thresholds must be established and actual performance must be monitored via these metrics. Fact-based management becomes possible with early insight into unexpected results. These activities also allow for early root-cause analysis and mitigation planning, and looking for negative trends or unexpected results which exceed control limits in either a positive or negative direction.

Every significant process change requires a well-considered plan as a vehicle for communication, managing, tracking, and measuring progress, especially planned versus actual.

Whether the plan is all-encompassing, covering all processes, or focuses on only selected, specific process requirements, a well-managed plan is necessary to plot the activities, timelines, budgets, resources, and work breakdown structure and to track and sustain progress. The plan should include all the variables that will affect the initiative.

Process teams can learn as they participate in facilitated process redesign sessions that focus on the best practices and quality / environmental management principles of their industry. Process design and mapping sessions accomplish, at a minimum, the following activities:

•  identification and definition of relationships within the system (customers and suppliers, both internal and external)
•  control over the interfaces with the customer
•  definition and promotion of the internal supplier chain within the organization (i.e. each participant in a process who hands off to the next participant is dealing with an “internal customer”)
•  identification of inputs and outputs
•  identification of entrance and exit criteria
•  definition of work product characteristics
•  identification of required management practices
•  identification of process gaps
•  labelling of linkages and handoffs
•  determination of appropriate process controls points
•  definition and specification of required records.

At the end of these sessions, everyone has a better appreciation of not only their roles, but also of the impact they have on other areas of the organization. The result is typically an improvement in both communication and teamwork.

Real improvement is only possible when the root cause of the problem has been identified, analysed, and understood by all parties. Only then can an effective, long-term solution be developed.

But sometimes it’s just not possible to address the real problem in an optimal way. Constraints often prevent the best solution from being implemented. However, that doesn’t mean significant improvements can’t be achieved. There are always alternative solutions with which to tackle a problem. It just may require a little more creativity, but real gains can be made, but only once the problem is understood.

The scope of the improvement may be a single process or across the enterprise, according to individual business requirements and objectives.

As improvements are made and documented, process documentation, work products, and status are reviewed to ensure ongoing compliance with objectives and requirements as well as the target capability level.

Whether you change a single process or an entire management system, you should be engineering change with sufficient discipline to ensure you do it right the first time and continue to minimize the amount and frequency of rework that change can often introduce.

Change management is more than just making changes. Doing it right means taking the scientific approach and using sound engineering principles to keep costs low and benefits high.

You may not be able to eliminate all impacts to your organization, but you should be able to keep them to a minimum while improving effectiveness at the same time.

Without measurement, there is no way to determine in which direction the organization is moving. Your organization’s requirements for process and product measurement must be satisfied to provide you with the intelligence with which to make intelligent choices and improvement decisions.

Metrics play an increasingly important role in systematic process improvement. Initially metrics will diagnose and analyse your organization’s performance or customer projects. Afterward, they are carried forward as a benchmark against which to manage performance and to estimate, track, and control it. Once effective management practices are in place, metrics are used to enhance any aspect of the organization, including product and process quality and/or environmental management.

Collecting data about defects or issues throughout the life cycle and using that data to focus on defect detection and prevention both supports and enhances your relationship with your customers. Without metrics, project, quality, and environmental management are difficult to implement and if implemented, are often suboptimal.

Process measurement begins with the definition of your goals. Thresholds must be established and actual performance must be monitored via these metrics. Fact-based management becomes possible with early insight into unexpected results. These activities also allow for early root-cause analysis and mitigation planning and looking for negative trends or unexpected results, which exceed control limits in either a positive or negative direction.

In-house classroom training seminars for any of the following can be provided on your site to support learning, adoption, and implementation of many of the processes and systems within the software / environmental development life cycle. Most courses are based on International or IEEE Standards.

Software Development Life Cycle
Sustainable Development Life Cycle
Requirements Management
Configuration Management
Peer Reviews & Inspections
Testing
Verification & Validation
Internal Quality Auditing
Software Quality Assurance
Project Management
Risk Management
Problem Resolution
Reuse
Metrics
Introduction to ISO 9001
Introduction to ISO 14001
ISO 9001 Internal Auditing
ISO 14001 Internal Auditing
ISO 14001 Elements
ISO 9001 Elements
ISO 9001 for Software Using ISO/IEC 90003 Guidance for Software.

A maximum of 14 students is recommended to ensure optimal student participation and interaction.

Reviews are an established technique that remove defects efficiently from the work products early in the life cycle. An important by-product of this process is a better understanding of the work products and of defects that might be prevented.

Reviews involve a methodical examination of work products by the producer’s peers to identify defects and areas where changes are needed. The specific products that undergo a peer review are identified in the product’s / project’s defined process and scheduled as part of the planning activities.

It is not uncommon for projects, especially software projects, to spend half of their design budget on testing activities. Improving the testing process represents a significant opportunity for cost savings. Tasks required in implementing a good testing / review process include:

•  test planning
•  organizational structure – the relationship between testing and other functions in the organization
•  writing testing cases
•  test automation
•  collecting data during testing and using it for decision making
•  managing this process to ensure it’s performed consistency
•  measuring the outcomes of this process against targets.

What’s the best life cycle model for your business?

Are you trying to be agile, but finding yourselves slowing down the process instead?

Just because a model works for another organization doesn’t mean it’s suitable to your current environment.

Cradle-to-grave life cycles that work well and keep the organization on track must take into account your products, their estimated life spans, your packaging or bundling plans, as well as a host of other factors , each of which influence the choice of life cycle structure.

The average employee spends up to 50% of their day looking for information that should be readily available. One can extrapolate the effects on productivity and customer satisfaction and what improvements could be possible if this length of time could be reduced even by half.

Most organizations have no idea how much information they own or the degree of its accuracy. The keep everything, just in case. The more information they have, the greater the likelihood that they will have a difficult time retrieving it.

Do you know how much data you own? 
IS it accurate and complete? How much is useful? 
How would you survive a records audit? 
In how many places does the same information exist, the duplication of which increases the likelihood of error? 
Can you always find what you need exactly when you need it?

If your answers to these questions reveal some gaps in your data quality, consider taking action to clean up your data, purge what’s unnecessary, and make your important records readily available for those who need it.