Organizational Optimization – Workshop 3 (Current State)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Organizational Optimization is provided by Mr. Shortt Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
If you would like to view the Client Information Hub (CIH) for this program, please Click Here
Learning Provider Profile
Mr. Shortt is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and Co (AGC) as well as the owner of an international business education and consultancy company which focuses on individual, personnel and overall business optimization. Mr. Shortt is honored to provide AGC services through a wide array of past business experience that includes such industries as Biotechnology, Healthcare, Government and Utilities. In these industries, Mr. Shortt has held various roles in operations management, product management and design, sales, and workflow optimization.
Historically, Mr. Shortt has worked with many of the Fortune 500 global leaders in diagnostics, information technology products and services, such as McKesson, Roche, and Danaher, and has also served in the US Army as an officer in the Medical Service Corps, where Mr. Shortt provided not only leadership expertise, but also workflow optimization utilizing IT and hardware applications, leveraging such workflows aids as robotics and automation. Mr. Shortt’s personal education, which is highlighted by an MBA with an Executive certification, has been structured for him to be able to provide leadership perspective and expertise in how to identify a business’ foundational current state in such areas as Financials, Business Strategy, Marketing Strategy, and Personnel Management, and then to leverage that expertise to prioritize and optimize a business’ path to success. Mr. Shortt holds various certifications, such as Business Analysis from a managerial perspective, and also possesses a Six-Sigma Black Belt certification. Mr. Shortt’s personally-owned business, Ascension Advising Solutions, LLC, which is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, as well as in Tallinn, Estonia in the EU, has provided business training and consultation services for various international companies in Europe, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and recently in China. Mr. Shortt is the author of two books on finding financial success and empowering your business, as well as a business optimization blog. Mr. Shortt is also the primary author and life coach of a self-optimization website dedicated to the long-standing benefits of mindfulness meditation in today’s modern world. Mr. Shortt’s service skills for AGC notably incorporate: leadership optimization, business strategy and optimization, personnel management, and program education and development.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
Once the leadership team has gained an understanding of the benefits of the program in month one, and decided on a designated area within the organization for implementation in month two, then the actual work of the business optimization plan can begin. This very important step involves the documentation of the actual workflow, process, or contribution that the chosen business unit, department, etc., currently undergoes. Key stakeholders in this process are identified and assigned tasks that contribute to this overall deliverable. This deliverable can be in the form of flow diagrams and swim lanes, tables, Kanban boards, etc., and will be used as the source of truth for where the organization currently resides on a given process. It is pertinent at this step that all individual gaps in understanding of the current workflow, process, etc., are identified and a complete product is created, so that collectively all affected parties gain like awareness, and clearcut decisions can be made later on in the program as a result. The key to this crucial step in the program, regardless of the format or tool used, is detailed documentation, with no assumptions of any sort or consolidation of steps.
Objectives
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Successful Change Management: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Business Process Management: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Project Management: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Stakeholder Roles: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Researching Current Process: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Documentation of Project: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Stakeholder communication and Validation: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Successful Change Management: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Business Process Management: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Project Management: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Stakeholder Roles: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Researching Current Process: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Documentation of Project: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Stakeholder communication and Validation: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Building Awareness of the Need for Change.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Voice of the Customer (VOC).
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Successful Change Management.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Business Process Management.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Project Management.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze The DMAIC Model Introduction.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Stakeholder Roles.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Researching Current Process.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Documentation of Project.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Stakeholder communication and Validation.
Introduction
You might be wondering what a current state analysis is and how it might help you achieve specific objectives while seeking to enhance business systems and processes for organizational optimization. These techniques assess business practices and pinpoint areas for development. Utilizing these analyses boosts overall effectiveness and production. In this workshop, we will discuss the definition of current state analysis, how it differs from future state analysis, its advantages, how to undertake an as-is evaluation of current process(es), and lastly, provide frequently asked questions regarding these studies.
What is current state analysis?
The management technique of current state analysis, also known as as-is process analysis, is used to identify and assess a company’s processes and workflows as they currently exist. As-is diagrams, which describe an organization’s current procedures, are also used in these assessments. This method can be used, for instance, by a recruiting firm to evaluate various internal processes including receiving resumes and applications, publishing job openings, or conducting phone interviews. By assessing your current functions for effectiveness, efficiency, dependability, and customer satisfaction, as-is procedures assist you in determining how to improve your organization’s tasks. The high-level goal is to determine the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and threats of each process.
Either the entire organization or a single team procedure is the focus of a current state analysis. The secret is to perform data-driven, observational, and analytical research. Additionally, measurements allow you to assess how well a company is fulfilling its obligations and what modifications are necessary. These are the objectives of this approach:
• Saving money and/or cutting unnecessary costs
• Creating new processes
• Improving or developing current workflows
• Improving customer satisfaction
• Increasing staff coordination
• Adherence to new regulatory requirements
• Adapting certain processes globally after a corporate merger
Current state vs. future state process analysis
While the as-is processes analysis depicts the state of your operations at the moment, the future state processes analysis demonstrates the organization’s potential. A tool for enhancing the current procedure is future analysis. Starting with an analysis of what is happening in the organization right now and ending with how you want it to look in the future, the process management strategy is composed. You must take into account business objectives, the interactions between your processes, and stakeholder relations when performing these studies.
You can utilize the as-is diagram (as above) in these discussions to suggest changes to the business’s present procedures. You can determine whether problems within particular processes have an impact on other sections of the business by understanding how processes interact.
As-is process analysis advantages
An organization’s operations can be built on a solid foundation thanks to a current state process analysis, which also adds to management strategies and enhances workflow. You might provide remedies for problems identified through the process analysis of the situation as-is if you want to model optimal management and leadership techniques. To establish your priorities, you might assess the company’s state and contrast it with your objectives. You can also talk about problems with your managers or superiors. Think about creating an initial future state diagram that illustrates the potential of your future workflows.
How to conduct a current state process analysis
Here’s a guide to help you conduct a current state process analysis:
1. Conduct research.
Creating an overview of the company’s present products, activities, and services is the first phase of an as-is process study. Once you have a list of these components, you may create a summary or graphic that illustrates the supply chain of the organization. This aids in your personal comprehension of the services and items provided by the business. Normally, you conduct research into how the company conducts business at all levels and throughout all departments. You might wish to record the start and end times of the procedures, as well as which team members are in charge of keeping an eye on those operations.
For instance, you can locate and make a note of each phase in the production process, such as the packaging and raw material purchase. Asking department managers, members of senior management, and stakeholders for assistance with your study and a list of the pertinent data would also be helpful. To have a precise understanding of the processes, think about speaking with the people in charge of the products and their production. Here are several methods for gathering data for your as-is process analysis:
Interview professionals
Ask everyone involved in carrying out those processes if you want accurate information about the company’s procedures. You could, for instance, consult your managers, technicians, and top management. Individual reports can confirm that processes are running smoothly, while faculty reports can reveal process steps about which you were previously ignorant. To gain a comprehensive grasp of the company throughout the research phase, you may wish to speak with a wide range of people and experts.
Direct Observations
To gain an idea of their jobs and the process of producing things, you might choose to watch the people in charge of the various phases of operations. You can do this by asking your coworkers whether you can follow them for the day. Consider requesting their thoughts on certain procedures.
Surveys
Individual participants can be sent surveys or questionnaires to get official written feedback. You have the chance to ask specific questions in surveys that you might not have had the chance to do so through observation or interviews. You can use surveys to get feedback and responses from respondents on issues that came up during other data collection techniques, like observation.
Group meetings
Organize and host meetings with all important stakeholders in order to summarize the procedures and obtain participant confirmation of earlier findings. The purpose of the meetings is to record the process. Conducting these meetings after completing other research tasks like interviews and observation is advised. This will enable you to summarize all you’ve discovered before working with participants to spot any gaps and confirm your findings.
2. Documenting the process.
You can use a process map to record the process information after conducting the necessary research and data collection. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a tool used by process managers to represent processes in their current state. All stakeholders may easily understand and comprehend processes thanks to the standard process modeling system approach known as BPMN. The industry now uses the BPMN 2.0 process notation as the norm.
You can use a variety of diagrams to represent your processes even if BPMN is the most popular. Your current state process map may include all process inputs, systemic support functions, detailed descriptions of finishing the process, and all process outputs, regardless of the process or diagram type you employ. Keep in mind, that in my experience, when communicating a process that they perform over and over, people tend to combine steps in a process into one simple activity—make sure that you capture each individual step within an activity, and not simply document an activity (a group of steps). The goal of this very important documentation step is ultimately for the team of decision-makers within an organization to visualize every step in a process, so that all parties can clearly see areas for improvement.
3. Identify any bottlenecks, roadblocks, or weaknesses.
Every firm evolves over time and has the potential to undergo positive and negative transformation events. You typically use current processe documentation as a basis to drive future state diagrams and attempt to innovate and experiment with new ideas to ensure the change is positive. Before drawing a diagram of your future condition, try to assess your current situation. When you spot problems, you can demonstrate your leadership abilities by suggesting fixes. Check your current procedures for the following factors:
Obstacles
Obstacles (or constraints) are hindrances to efficiency. Determine any potential bottlenecks in your present state procedures as well as their root causes. Simple examples of bottlenecks include not having enough team meetings to move a project along or having only one person involved in an approval process which hampers a project’s progress.
Gaps
Check your procedure for any gaps that are keeping you from obtaining the target level of efficiency. For instance, you might learn from a gap analysis that one person handles two or three production processes. You might wish to think about suggesting changes to the workforce’s size to lessen their workload.
Faults
Find faults in your current situation even though you have the right method in place. You could, for instance, make documentation or communication improvements. You can begin creating your future states and devising ways to improve them once you have determined the flaws in your current state process.
Why is Current State Understanding so Important?
Understanding current state, or “as-is,” is essential to the change story because you need to establish the baseline before you can explain your intended course of action. Consider the present as the starting point of a roadmap that will lead you from the present to the future, then through the “messy middle” (transition).
Before documenting the current condition, which is a difficult process involving time and money they often do not want to spend, leaders frequently want to jump to the future state. Some people believe that this stage is unnecessary and would prefer to start designing a new solution straight away. It might be challenging to create the best solution for the future state when this kind of thinking results in design that does not fill in gaps or resolve problems.
To design the future state, a thorough grasp of the current systems and procedures is essential. Even if a completely new process is being developed, there is always a current state, whether it is documented or not. Think about the following facts about the present:
• Lack of technology does not indicate lack of current state, simply that the current state is expected to be made up of more manual processes.
• The details of the current state process are necessary to create a future state which meets the needs of employees, and ultimately, the organization performing the process.
• The perception that there is no current state really means there are gaps in an existing process, which will be resolved by the new future state.
• The current state identifies gaps that need to be documented into the future state requirements and design. Gaps indicate areas of current state process that are missing. If these gaps are not identified and documented, they will continue to be gaps in the future state. As indicated earlier, you cannot transform something if you don’t understand the details of what needs to be transformed.
Current state and future state evaluations need to comprehensively analyze people, processes, and technology. This is important for two reasons:
1. To ensure that requirements for the future state are accurately captured from a business analysis perspective so that the new system and procedures may be built to effectively meet existing gaps and requirements.
2. From the standpoint of organizational change management (OCM), to comprehend the impact of the change—how large, how small, how complex—so that strategies may be designed to help users navigate the change curve and swiftly embrace the new systems and procedures.
Documenting current state has numerous significant advantages for the business as a whole, the technical team, the change management team, etc. This documentation:
• Contributes to the creation of a clear image of what is changing by pointing out shortcomings in the present state and needs for the future state.
• Assures that everything required to support the business process has been planned for and taken into consideration in the future state, therefore, putting all the elements into perspective. This places the leadership, project team, stakeholders, and technology provider(s) on the same page.
• Establishes guidelines for who, what, when, and how tasks are to be completed.
• Assists in locating areas for improvement before putting your method into practice.
• Enables stakeholders and users to compare the present and future states by visually aiding in their understanding of the change(s).
• Can be easily enhanced with screenshots and additional information to create process-driven training that is easier for end users to understand.
Organizational change management’s main goal is to make it easier for stakeholders to go from the current state to the desired future state, which will promote adoption and increased use of the new procedures and technologies. The basis for moving the business solution forward is provided by current state analysis.
Current state assessments call for the participation of seasoned workers who routinely use the procedure. The organization will need to gather the employees who will be the main recipients of the change and document the gaps that the future state will fill if there is no existing state documentation. They are the subject matter experts; as such, they are aware of the current challenges and can offer suggestions for methods to reduce or eliminate them in the future.
Current State Map
A current state map is typically viewed as a snapshot of the procedures and techniques your business currently employs to manufacture goods and provide full services. But in a company environment that is ever-changing, a current state map must encompass more than just processes. This is particularly true if your company is embracing agile methodologies, and you’re making plans for a more adaptable and agile enterprise architecture.
We’ll talk about what should be on a map of the current state in this workshop. We’ll go through some of the applications and tools you can use to map your current workflow(s) in the first course manual.
What needs to be mapped?
Because you can’t know what you need unless you first know what you currently have, it’s crucial to map your system’s existing status. You should map the sections of your organization covered in this section in addition to your processes and value streams. The objective is to produce a map that is “a blueprint of features, capabilities, apps, and tech stack,” as DevOps.com puts it.
Business functions
Typically, a firm is made up of numerous distinct departments or business divisions. Each department’s activities and procedures serve as a representation of the numerous corporate duties.
To tackle particular activities, such as data analytics or digital marketing, a large corporation may recruit experts or specialists. Smaller businesses may require its staff to undertake a variety of duties across many departments in order to complete those business functions and keep the business operating efficiently.
The objective of your current state map is to identify the numerous business functions in the many departments across the entire firm, regardless of how big or small your organization is. You will get knowledge about who performs what tasks and where, and you will be able to identify any areas that may need to be optimized.
Sales and marketing, finance, human resources, IT, research and development, and other business operations are just a few examples.
Business capabilities
A company’s current ability to complete its work is characterized by its business competency and capability. This includes the personnel’s skills and knowledge, the materials and tools on hand, and any additional resources needed to complete the task. You can identify individuals with the necessary skills to carry out specific tasks and the locations of resources (people, hardware, raw materials, etc.) by mapping business capabilities. You may get a better understanding of where you might need to order more equipment and where you might need to hire more staff by analyzing the business capabilities.
There is no conventional process flow offered for this information. There are no detailed instructions. The objective is to get a visual picture of the skills that your organization has identified. You’ll need to identify your company’s capabilities in collaboration with your team, management, and stakeholders.
Here are some things to consider:
• Explain what is done rather than how it is done.
• Specify the result you want from your capabilities. An optimized account management skill, for instance, might result in the desired client retention outcomes.
• It’s important to define each capability precisely.
• Make each skill distinct. An enterprise architect, for instance, differs from a software architect.
• Capabilities can be observable or abstract. Hardware, such as a laptop, could be considered tangible. Conversely, the capacity to operate in an agile workplace may be considered intangible.
Business applications
This is another situation where you need to be aware of what you already have before deciding what you need, therefore you’ll want to add business applications to your present state map.
Business applications essentially automate sections of standard business workflows and are created with the explicit intention of assisting employees across your firm in managing particular business processes. For instance, finance may have a set of accounting and payroll business apps, and sales and marketing may have CRM solutions.
You may utilize business applications to swiftly scale to meet customer needs, which can be helpful as you make plans for digital transformation. Business applications can assist you in finding new business possibilities, clients, and revenue streams in addition to making it easier to manage internal and external customers.
To streamline operations and make working with consumers easier, business applications can be tailored to your needs. Additionally, if you wish to, there are tools that can assist you in creating your own applications.
Technology stack
A technology stack, also known as a tech stack or solutions stack, is a grouping of programs, frameworks, and technologies that a business employs to perform various functions. A tech stack is somewhat similar to business applications, however, business apps are a bit different in that they are more focused on a certain business purpose. A tech stack is a compilation of all the technologies needed by the entire organization to finish a project.
There isn’t a single tool that necessarily contains all the features that you may require. The top software programs for each of the several business functions should be included in the tech stack. They don’t all have to be purchased from the same supplier.
You must map out your current tech stack before you can build the one you require. Many of the tools you already have may be integrated into your standardized tech stack. Understanding what you already possess will enable you to identify what you still require.
Cloud architecture
Cloud architecture is dynamic and can be complicated. So you may get a clear picture of your current situation by building a visual diagram of your cloud infrastructure. A cloud architecture schematic is also included, as it:
• Provides a high-level, visual picture of the system that improves understanding. The relationships and interactions between various components are simpler to comprehend. This helps you to better predict the effects that modifications will have.
• Facilitates the presentation of complicated ideas and concepts to audiences with various levels of technical understanding, which enhances communication. Additionally, it’s simple to update stakeholders on progress.
• Promotes teamwork since team members may examine the system, discuss the design, search for patterns that are successful, identify weak spots, and identify areas for improvement while using the same diagram.
Case Study: Taking On Current State Analysis
“There was an instance where I had spent hours interviewing stakeholders about how the integration was supposed to work. I understood the business need clearly. The information is needed to be fed into one system so that it could narrow down choices based on criteria set up on the back end of another system. I diligently documented the process in each system and discovered that changing one piece of information would cause the whole structure to collapse. I raised the risk. The team responsible for the transition told me that these weren’t risks. What had I missed?
In a world where systems evolve quickly and companies transition from Waterfall to Agile methods of project management, one thing that doesn’t change is the need for a shared understanding of the Business Problem. In the cases I illustrated, it was through Current State Analysis that the true requirements were discovered.
In this case, I had not walked through current state of the full process. My logic kept failing because of one missed piece in a system that I did not have access to. Instead of relying on other people to tell me what the system did (and after weeks of frustration), I finally had the end user walk me through the entire process from end to end. My mistake was glaring at me. By not having a complete understanding of current state, I could not make any solution work without asking for an unnecessary platform change.
Although often dismissed as “time-consuming” or “obvious”, Current State Analysis creates a shared understanding of the process that is essential to the success of Business Analysis work. Whether it’s formalized in a presentation, written on a cocktail napkin, or communicated in morse code, Current State Analysis is invaluable to the BA process.”
Source: Anne Sams, BA Times
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Building Awareness of the Need for Change
It takes more than just a desire to change or an executive order to increase your organization’s awareness of the need for change. It takes structure and purpose to develop change capability in relation to organizational optimization.
The danger is that as a community, we become fixated on the idea of change agility but fail to take the necessary steps to make it a reality. Many organizations are undergoing change as they develop a core competency in change. It is profoundly changing the way that changes are planned and carried out.
The following four crucial suggestions for increasing organizational agility are based on some of the most serious errors participants in the research have observed in organizations that get fired up about change capacity but fall short when it comes to actually changing how they change. You will be better able to influence how change occurs in your organization if you keep these suggestions (and the associated errors) in mind.
1. Obtain sufficient and capable sponsorship
The most important factor in success has remained active and visible executive sponsorship in all eight of Prosci’s benchmarking investigations, dating back to 1998. Why might this factor in success differ if the change involves enhancing change capability? The correct degree of sponsor, actively participating in the effort, will be necessary to develop organizational agility. This entails doing more than just expressing a wish to be more agile. In order for the attempt to succeed, it entails providing the necessary funds, resources, authority, credibility, and commitment.
Your primary role as a practitioner pitching a change agility investment to senior management is tying organizational change capabilities to the strategic and financial success of the company. You must be able to link the development of change management skills to what matters to your executives—their capacity to earn a profit during times of change and steer the organization in the desired direction.
2. Exercising a Change Management Capability: Build a Project and a Change
In order to exercise a capability for change management, simply build with structure and intention, just like you would for a project or change. You will need to:
• Recognize where you are right now; envision where you want to go; and design a plan of action.
• Create a project plan, business case, and charter.
• Persuade others to implement change, by using effective change management.
3. Define the Organization’s Future State
Establishing the organization’s future state gives you direction and a way to gauge your progress. When the excitement surrounding change management ebbs and flows, it also fosters stability. Unfortunately, a lot of practitioners start working on change capability without ever establishing what success would look like. Note, this will be covered in detail in an upcoming workshop.
To express the intention of constructing a change management capability, we employ “we” words. Examples of “we” statements at each level are shown below.
Organizational Change Capability
In terms of change, you should continuously meet and go beyond expectations. The same is true for optimization and transformation.
Project Change Capability
On all projects, you should allocate the proper funds and resources for change management. At the beginning of every project, change management is priority.
Individual Change Capability
We all regard it as a part of our jobs to “lead change.” We are judged on how well we do since we possess the necessary skills.
4. Throughout the capability build, use a multifaceted approach
There are many moving pieces in organizational agility and a change management competence. You cannot grow your change agility if you are only doing one of the following:
• Training people
• Hardwiring change management activities into a project management approach
• Creating a Change Management Office
All of these strategies have their advantages, but without a comprehensive plan, you end up with separate methods that struggle to advance a core competency.
Many business people use a five-wedge model called the Enterprise Change Management (ECM) Strategy Map to describe the various types of tactics that can be used to embed change management. Each of the five wedges must be considered. And over the lifecycle of your change management capability build, there will be different focuses on different wedges. Although the balance of your ECM Strategy Map might look different than the map of another organization, you need a holistic approach to build change capability.
Chapter 2: Voice of the Customer (VoC)
What is Voice of the Customer?
Listening to your customers is exactly what the phrase “voice of the customer” (VoC) means. Customer feedback is gathered and analyzed as part of the voice of the customer process, which helps to directly improve both the product and the customer experience. This isn’t anything new, you’re presumably saying. Customers have been heard by businesses for years, and you’re right. In the past, gathering client input has been a crucial component of expanding a firm. However, the Voice of the Customer focuses on gathering individual data rather than aggregate data. It places emphasis on “closing the loop,” or providing customers with evidence that their feedback has been taken into account while developing products and services. An ideal Voice of the Customer program will offer a framework for handling and leveraging customer input across the whole organization. VoC develops a plan that encompasses the entire business so that all departments may collaborate to solve the issue. As a result, your company may take a coordinated approach to enhancing the customer experience, resolving problems, and fostering growth.
Why is the customer’s voice important?
By listening to their consumers, businesses may improve their offerings and create something that their target market will value and continue to spend time and money on. VoC concentrates on comprehending data rather than only gathering it. Why? Because if you are aware of consumer issues, resolving them should be your top priority. On the other hand, if you are aware of a place where people are enjoying your offering, you ought to want to learn why so you can build on it. Voice of the Customer involves more than just distributing a survey and praying for a positive answer. You would anticipate that your coach would let you know when your form is poor if you paid them top bucks to train you with the goal of becoming a world champion gymnast, wouldn’t you? That’s because advancement requires constructive criticism. VoC recommended practices emphasize asking incisive questions rather than just positioning yourself for compliments (which can still be helpful, but we’ll get to that in a minute). Are customers dissatisfied with the price? Do they experience any issues utilizing your product? Does your service genuinely make their lives easier, or just adds stress? Even while the comments might not be all smiles, they offer new perspectives that inspire change.
“If you had some magic power and were able to discover exactly what customers are craving, and if you also knew how to produce their dream product at a low price, then you would be guaranteed to get rich! Therefore, capturing the exact Voice of the Customer is like striking gold.” – Kai Yang, Author of Voice of the Customer: Capture and Analysis
A company that is genuinely committed to its VoC program would listen to each client, respond to their feedback, and use the data to refine its operations. By paying close attention and responding quickly, you may smooth out rocky parts for prospective clients and gain quick value from pleased clients. Without a VoC plan, firms miss out on important opportunities to capitalize on delighted customers and appease displeased ones. The first can open up new commercial opportunities, while the second is crucial for decreasing churn. Customers are particularly receptive to both good and negative treatment, and both can benefit from these efforts. According to an Oracle study on the effect of customer experience:
• 46% of consumers were pleased when an organization responded to a customer’s negative comment.
• 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience.
• 24% of consumers who had unsatisfactory service interactions shared their experiences through social networks in 2010.
Customer Analysis: Using Data to Know Your Customers Better
The secret to business growth and success is understanding your clients and what motivates them to purchase your goods or services.
Companies can design more individualized client experiences and differentiate themselves in a crowded market by identifying different consumer groups and their demands through customer analysis.
Customer Analysis: What Is It?
Analyzing customer data to derive insights and guide business decisions is known as customer analysis. In order to reach new customers, customer analysis applies market analysis methodologies to comprehend current users.
Brands may categorize customers into groups based on shared traits, identify customer pain spots, and comprehend how their products or services address customer demands by studying a variety of quantitative and qualitative data. This enables companies to design individualized experiences depending on things like customer behavior, gender, age, and interests.
To improve customer experience (CX) for those you already have and utilize predictive analysis to draw in new ones, customer analysis is all about knowing the demands, satisfaction, and pain areas of current customers.
Reasons Why Customer Feedback Is Important
When considering gathering consumer feedback, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. It can be difficult to know where to begin when faced with the demographics of so many types of clients and so many options with which to capture their feedback.
One thing is certain, however– By actively seeking out consumer feedback, you can make sure that you never veer too far from the needs of your target market(s), even as those needs evolve.
With the proper capture and assimilation of feedback, your leadership team may gain insights that will help them map out the future of every aspect of the business, from the product to the user experience to customer service. When it comes to ensuring that customers are satisfied, the evaluation and gathering of these insights are extremely crucial.
In this section, we outline 7 techniques for gathering consumer feedback. Here is a solid presentation of the information you need to gain an understanding of the various approaches.
What exactly is client feedback?
Customer feedback is the knowledge, opinions, concerns, and suggestions that members of your community have expressed regarding their interactions with your business, goods, or services. Even (and especially) when it is unfavorable, this feedback can inspire positive change in any firm by driving organizational changes by way of the evaluation of your customers’ experiences.
Why is client feedback crucial?
Customer opinions are crucial since they act as a roadmap for your business’ expansion. Don’t you want to know what your customers think of your company in terms of what you’re doing correctly and also what you are failing at?
You can uncover real-world experiences that make it simpler to modify and improve the client experience over time. In other words, getting actual input is how you can continue to put your customer demographic first in all you do.
Kano Model Analysis
The Kano Model is a method for evaluating how aspects of products or services affect consumer satisfaction. According to this approach, a product or service is much more than just functional; it also considers the emotions of the users. For instance, all new car buyers anticipate that their vehicle will stop when they apply the brakes, but many will be delighted by the voice-activated parking assistance technology.
This one great feature addition could satisfy clients and boost sales without substantially increasing costs. On the other hand, adding features to a product on a regular basis can be expensive and may only increase its complexity without increasing consumer happiness.
The model thus urges you to shift from a “more is always better” approach to product development to a “less is more” approach while considering how your products relate to your consumers’ demands.
Professor of Quality Management at the Tokyo University of Science, Dr. Noriaki Kano, published the Kano Model of Product Development and Customer Satisfaction in 1984.
We will examine the Kano Model in greater detail in the Course Manual 2, Kano Model Analysis section of this Workshop and look at an instance of this model being successfully applied in a commercial setting.
Chapter 3: Successful Change Management
What is change management and why is it important
Many people might not be completely clear on what change management is. Planning, implementing, and tracking changes in a company is the process of change management. It’s crucial since it ensures that adjustments are made without difficulty and implemented smoothly. The change management process should be used to make sure that pertinent stakeholders continue to stay on the same page, and that employees are prepared appropriately for changes. Employees may find changes challenging, so it’s crucial to have a strategy in place to ease their transition.
Change management as a framework for working through optimization efforts has a lot of advantages. Improved decision-making, increased productivity, and improved communication are just a few of these advantages. Additionally, change management can assist in boosting worker morale and fostering a more contented workplace.
The process of change management
For changes to be executed successfully and without delays, the change management process is crucial. There is a five-step procedure that needs to be followed to guarantee success.
1. Planning: The change management team will create a plan for implementing the change during this stage. They will establish a timeframe for the change and assign accountability for each activity.
2. Preparation: Employees will get ready for the change during this phase. Employees will be informed of the change by the change management team, who will also explain its purpose and outline what to expect. Employees will be trained on how to use the new system or procedure as well.
3. Implementation: The change will be put into effect during this phase. To ensure that the change is correctly implemented and that everyone is on board, the change management team will collaborate with the appropriate employees and/or their designees.
4. Monitoring: The change management team will monitor the change to ensure it is proceeding as intended during this phase. Additionally, they will make any alterations required to guarantee the success of the move.
5. Evaluation: During the evaluation stage, the change management team will determine whether or not the change was successful and how well it was implemented. They will also point out any areas that require improvement and offer suggestions for modifications.
How to get employees ready for changes
It’s crucial to get workers ready for changes when they occur in an organization. This can be accomplished by being accessible to answering their queries, discussing the change early and frequently, and offering assistance and training. Employees must comprehend the change’s purpose and implications for themselves. If you don’t provide them this information effectively, they can resist the adjustment(s) and/or become disenchanted.
Although implementing change can be challenging, having a strategy in place will help to guarantee that everyone is on board. The process of change management is essential for every organization going through transformation. You may successfully implement the change and support your staff through the transition by following these steps:
What change management has to offer
Employee resistance to change is common when it is introduced in a company. To ensure that everyone is on the same page, that they understand why the change is taking place, and that they know what they need to do to adjust, the process of change management is crucial. Change management has a lot of advantages, such as:
1. Better communication is promoted throughout the organization when employees are appropriately informed about changes.
2. Increased productivity– When there is a clear strategy in place for how changes will be executed, employees are less likely to be distracted by external factors and more likely to concentrate on their task.
3. Lessened stress– By offering structure and clarity, change management helps to reduce the tension that uncertainty about the future can bring for workers.
4. A more positive work atmosphere and improved morale can result from making employees feel that they are a part of the change process and that their issues are being taken seriously.
5. Increased creativity– As people look for new ways to complete tasks, change management can help employees release their creativity.
6. Better decision-making– Change management may assist in ensuring that everyone is on the same page when it comes to implementing changes by developing a clear procedure for decision-making.
Chapter 4: Business Process Management
Business process management (BPM) is a structured method for enhancing the procedures that firms employ to complete tasks, provide for their customers, and produce profit. A business process is an action or series of actions that aids in achieving the objectives of an organization, such as boosting revenue or fostering diversity in the workforce. BPM employs a variety of techniques to enhance a business process, including analysis, modeling how it functions in various circumstances, adjustments, monitoring the new process, and ongoing improvement of its capacity to produce desired business objectives and results.
Given how the organizational roles, guidelines, strategies, business objectives, and other components it contains are continually changing, BPM is a vast subject and, by definition, a dynamic one. BPM has supported a range of optimization approaches over the years, including Six Sigma, lean, and agile methodologies.
BPM software packages were created to assist significant business change as business processes at some firms were too massive and complicated to be handled without the use of automated tools. As Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and other so-called intelligent technologies grow, these enabling BPM technologies have also advanced, offering new methods for discovering, designing, measuring, improving, and automating workflows. The traditional focus of BPM on back-end processes has changed with the rise of digital business solutions and can now encompass the optimization of customer and employee engagement systems.
What justifies the importance of business process management in characterizing the current state?
Source: Solutions PIT
Because successful business processes are essential to an organization’s success, business process management is significant. The following are typical illustrations of procedures that assist businesses in achieving their objectives:
• developing and making a new product
• fulfilling a product order
• managing customer service
• assimilating a new employee
These corporate procedures could include hundreds, thousands, or even more tasks, along with the approvals necessary to finish them. They frequently involve staff members, IT systems, and other pieces of equipment used by the company, as well as business process outsourcing companies. These duties are broken down into organized, repeatable phases by a well-designed business process, which employees may use to deliver reliable results. The repeating procedures reduce the danger of under- or over-allocating resources by assisting companies in predicting the resources they require. Measuring the steps identifies weak points and bottlenecks, pointing to opportunities to improve the business process.
Business process management (BPM) specialist Michael Rosemann compared business processes to the lifeblood of an organization. He is a professor of innovation systems at Queensland University of Technology and the director of the university’s Centre for Future Enterprise.
In the forward to Paul Harmon’s recently updated Business Process Change: A Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals, Rosemann penned the following: “Like blood vessels, they fill it with life and determine its way and speed of value creation as well as the cost to serve its customer base. Thus processes reflect not only organizational productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency, but also its reliability, complexity, and ultimately its culture.”
Therefore, a business can suffer from a badly designed or managed business process that hinders productivity and efficiency. Additionally, automating an ineffective process as is might actually accentuate subpar performance, thus undercutting corporate objectives.
To prevent this, business process management (BPM) employs systematic techniques for identifying, modeling, enhancing, automating, and continually monitoring business processes. When done correctly, BPM connects processes with business objectives and helps businesses deliver goods and services more effectively and at a reduced cost. According to process experts, another reason for the BPM approach’s continued relevance today is the way it helps businesses adapt to changing needs.
The rapid rate of business change in the twenty-first century doesn’t appear to be slowing down. To succeed, organizations need to be able to react swiftly and wisely. Playing catch-up is no longer an effective strategy because things are changing too quickly, according to Daniel Morris, managing partner of business transformation firm Wendan Transformation Consulting. Successful businesses are also outpacing their rivals with novel approaches, concepts, and goods.
Morris and other BPM proponents argue that BPM’s core value proposition is its capacity to support quick, low-risk, and cost-effective business process change. He stated, “It allows you to continuously reinvent your business operations, injecting innovation as you go and doing so over the long haul.”
Chapter 5: Project Management
Can you afford to not have project management?
What would keep the client and team together without it? And without it, who is left to steer projects through their ups and downs, conflicts, and disasters?
Great project management entails much more than ensuring that the project is delivered on time, within budget, and in accordance with the project scope. It also involves bringing clients and teams together, establishing a vision for the project’s success, and getting everyone on the same page regarding the necessary steps to maintain that success. When projects are run well, the benefits extend far beyond the actual delivery of the product itself.
Dashboards for project management
One of the pillars of a prosperous business are streamlined and successfully run projects. Regardless of the sector or industry, strategic initiatives targeted at particular business areas assist an organization to advance, all the while expanding, improving, and changing year after year. Effective management reports will also foster a data-driven approach to decision-making in business and achieve long-term commercial success.
But according to a global survey by the Project Management Institute, just 58% of businesses properly comprehend the value of project management, despite the potential for corporate growth (and critical importance) of successfully delivering collaborative plans. With this information at your disposal, you can significantly outperform the competition and significantly advance your project.
Project management dashboards will assist you in using an online data visualization strategy to manage all of your company’s strategic activities, no matter how big or small. This will improve the cohesion, collaboration, intelligence, and profitability of your enterprise. With the aid of contemporary technologies, you may keep an eye on, improve, and boost the performance of your projects while raising team productivity, cutting down on labor hours, and ultimately, costs.
Using project management dashboards: The Top 6 Benefits
No matter the industry or specialization, dashboards for project management have a wealth of advantages for any contemporary firm. Here are some of the most notable ones explained:
1. Cohesion and communication
Communication is the cornerstone to effective project management. Your project is likely to exceed expectations and surpass goals if everyone participating in a given strategy or effort knows their job, has access to the insights they need to complete their tasks to the best of their abilities, and understands the data in front of them. These essential qualities will be added to your strategic actions by using project dashboard software that can generate in-depth analytical reports.
2. Centralization of data into information
Projects can become challenging in today’s digital business environment since there are so many platforms or touchpoints to take into account, not to mention the enormous amounts of data (raw, unorganized and unanalyzed facts about the business) that are available at any one time.
Project dashboards display and visualize information (structured, analyzed, and examined data presented in context) that is entirely pertinent to a given project, and because each insight is available in a single area, you can quickly access all of the metrics or insights that are essential to your project without logging into other platforms or applications. Quick decision-making capabilities around keeping the project on track, both from an operations and financial perspective, is what a project dashboard is all about.
3. Encourage teamwork
Projects typically involve multiple teams and departments working together on related tasks. A given team frequently can’t begin a new task before other departments have finished theirs. It is difficult to keep everyone up to date on the project’s timetable and development. By integrating robust project management dashboards and business intelligence (BI) reporting solutions into your company, you can quickly put all this turmoil behind you. The ability to collaborate across departments and keep everyone informed about the progress of the project’s various stages is made possible by having all the necessary information in one location. This results in a far more productive implementation and tighter timelines.
4. Targeted information
A live, continually-refreshing dashboard enables you to monitor, evaluate, and continuously improve your performance by allowing you to work with a specific Key Performance Indicator (KPI) template that is pertinent to the activity at hand.
Additionally, learning to compare easily consumable visual data will enable you to recognize patterns, build on strengths, pinpoint shortcomings, and dramatically increase the success of your initiatives.
5. Utilization of real-time data
While an online reporting tool offers you a variety of perspectives from which to monitor your projects, it’s crucial to emphasize the availability of real-time data. These dashboards will give you the ability to constantly pull real-time information, whether you need an urgent response to your business question or you simply want to have the most recent information without manually updating it. Real-time data, for instance, will guarantee that you have the proper information at the right moment if you want to measure how much time is spent on a certain portion of the project.
6. A holistic overview of the complete project
Gaining a thorough understanding of the tasks, budgets, deadlines, strategic or operational KPI’s that you need to track is essential whether you’re working on an IT project or one involving social media (as previously mentioned). Today, you can design a modern and effective social media report or dashboard, for example, and have all your touchpoints in a clear, succinct visual summary. In the past, you could make a traditional report and work with historical data to gain insights for the future. This will give you a solid foundation from which to see many perspectives holistically and enable sustainable project development and overview.
Balanced Scorecard Model
Different businesses employ various performance measurement techniques. Managers select the approach that best serves their teams’ needs and the unique requirements of the company.
Others may take into account operational standards like operating cash flow or net profit margin in place of more conventional financial metrics like earnings-per-share (EPS) and return on investment (ROI).
But this raises a number of queries:
• Why should companies use just one technique to track business progress?
• Is one performance tracking strategy better than the other?
• Which is the most efficient measure of performance?
These issues are addressed by the introduction of the balanced scorecard in project management. Teams must be able to simultaneously view company performance from a variety of key viewpoints given the volatile market environment.
What is the balanced scorecard model?
The balanced scorecard model is a strategic management framework that links a company’s overall mission to its day-to-day operations. It is a tool for corporate strategy that assesses how well an organization is doing in relation to its overall objectives in order to boost business results.
The phrase “balanced scorecard” was first used in David P. Norton and Robert S. Kaplan’s 1992 study on performance measurement.
They came to the conclusion that non-financial measures should also be included in reporting after analyzing the performance methodologies that were available. They suggested the following to make the bill “balanced”:
• Coordination of company operations with the primary corporate strategy
• Including non-financial measurements like customer metrics, learning and growth, and internal business processes
What is the purpose of a balanced scorecard?
The balanced scorecard idea was developed to provide a comprehensive understanding of corporate performance.
Traditional performance evaluations were only based on financial indicators. Performance measures began to include non-financial components with the introduction of the balanced scorecard methodology.
Since then, it has developed into a strategic framework that links organizational objectives with KPIs to monitor project teams’ progress. Balanced scorecards, often known as BSC’s, are used by corporations and organizations of all kinds to:
• Align overall strategic objectives with operational activities
• Prioritize projects and initiatives
• Improve collaboration between stakeholders and get them on the same page
• Track organizational performance to ensure that it progresses as planned
Chapter 6: The DMAIC Model Introduction
The Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control Process, or DMAIC Process for short, is a method for enhancing processes utilizing information that is currently accessible. This approach is designed to enhance the outcomes of all project phases. This indicates that it is a holistic approach that improves every aspect of the company process. It is divided into five steps, as suggested by the name, namely the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control stages.
Process History for DMAIC
W. Edwards Deming first presented the DMAIC paradigm in the 1950’s. Professionals trained in the Six Sigma approach have since utilized it as a tool for product improvement. One of the most frequent complaints of this approach over the years, however, is that it is ineffective as a standalone communication tool across employees with varying skillsets and backgrounds.
DMAIC Model Stages
As was already mentioned, the abbreviation for all of the steps in the process is DMAIC. To get the desired, positive outcomes from an optimization project, these stages are crucial. Continue reading below to learn more about what each stage does for the entire process:
• Define – This is the initial stage of the entire process where you identify the goals that need to be met.
• Measure – This is where all metrics are formed to ensure that the goals will be met. In-short, this is where the guidelines are formed.
• Analyze – Assessment is the key to this DMAIC process stage since you will test out the methods involved. All your methods will need to go under test and evaluation to determine their effects, whether if it’s positive or negative.
• Improve – If negative effects were found during the analysis phase, then you will need to find ways to improve them.
• Control – Ensuring the long-term positive effects of the changes made is the main focus of this stage. This is where you apply all results of the previous stages to keep the project as productive as possible.
As you may begin to realize, the DMAIC Methodology is a fantastic method to guarantee the success of any project. However, it is not a standalone automated tool for success because the success of the project still depends on hands-on efforts of the entire team. In addition to the DMAIC, you may also employ additional methods like SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis and PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique). However, as DMAIC incorporates all pertinent project components, utilizing it alone is still highly effective for optimizing processes.
The DMAIC model in relation to Six Sigma
Usually, the DMAIC model and Six Sigma go hand in hand. This is due to the fact that DMAIC derives from that methodology and is specifically applied as the Six Sigma working model. However, this does not imply that the DMAIC model cannot be implemented apart from the comprehensive Six Sigma methodology.
The DMAIC model versus the PDCA cycle
The DMAIC paradigm differs from the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, and Act) Cycle in that it places a greater emphasis on project-based thinking. While the PDCA Cycle focuses more on the problem as a whole, DMAIC employs more of a focus on identifying the root causes of issues.
A3 Management or DMAIC?
The conventional Six Sigma-based, project methodology, DMAIC, aims to continuously improve. The traditional project management strategy used by the Lean methodology, known as A3 Management, strives to complete projects quickly and efficiently. Which approach is best depends primarily on the nature of the current process problem. While DMAIC initiatives aim to minimize deviations, A3 Management projects are typically used to address lead-time difficulties.
Chapter 7: The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
Which pressing issue(s) would you like to address first in your organizaton? Phase 1 of the Six Sigma DMAIC improvement process is Define. In this Define phase, the project team creates a project charter, a high-level process map, and starts to investigate the needs of the process’s consumers. The project team defines the project emphasis for themselves and includes input from the organization’s leadership team during this crucial phase.
Create a “Problem Statement” to describe the issue at hand.
Concentrate on a significant, yet controllable issue that has a substantial positive effect on the client.
Selecting which issue to address without offering a quick remedy is occasionally the most difficult element of solving problems. Teams typically start by “fixing what bugs them,” but the best initiatives ultimately concentrate on elevating customer happiness and delight.
Verify that the issue is important and will have the desired impact. After identifying the problem, the team formulates a Problem Statement that contains the following information:
• A Main Process Measure: Select a metric that affects the process’s clientele. Lead Time and Quality are the two process-related “buckets” of concern for customers. The lead time measures how long it takes to deliver a product or service after receiving a request. Accuracy, completeness, the number of flaws, etc., are only a few examples of components of quality. Simply state: Are you attempting to speed up the process? Or are you attempting to improve the product or service?
• The Issue’s Severity: It’s important to provide an estimate of the problem’s size. This could represent information such as the percentage of defective goods or the monthly volume of late orders. To provide context for the issue, it’s crucial to be precise. It’s possible that severity data won’t be accessible right away, so the team will have to fill in the gaps later, during the Measure Phase.
Confirm the availability of resources
Assigning a project team lead (who is also at least a Green Belt or even a Black Belt), as well as a person in a leadership position (also known as a Sponsor or Project Champion), is a crucial initial step. Members of the team may come from many departments within the company, but they should all have some link to the project area. Do those involved in the process have the time to devote to the problem? Does someone in a position of authority want the problem to be resolved? Participation from these key contributors while working on the project is essential.
Creating a “Goal Statement” will help you define the goal
The Problem Statement ought to directly mirror the Goal Statement. The objective might be to reduce order delays, for instance, from 10% to 5%. This statement specifies the precise moment at which the team and project will be deemed successful in quantifiable, time-bound terms. Naturally, keep in mind that this can be modified after the Analyze Phase, when the main causes are identified.
Create process maps to define the process
With a high-level process map, the team creates a bird’s-eye view of the procedure. SIPOC, which stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers, is a common high-level map. The Value Stream Map is another high-level map that is more closely associated with cycle time reduction efforts. Both of these maps can be utilized throughout the duration of the project.
Conducting a Process Walk, sometimes referred to as a “Gemba Walk,” once the high-level map has been finished is a fantastic approach to comprehend the process in more detail. The project team interviews each participant in turn during this walk to acquire a complete picture of the work that is really done at each stage. The team uses this data to create a clearly defined and very precise map. A simple flowchart, such as a Swimlane Map style, which employs swimlanes to indicate workflow relationships and handoffs between departments, can be used to show detailed mapping.
Define the Client and Their Needs
Each project tends to have the process’s client as its main objective. The individual end-users or even the organizations who purchase the products or services provided by the process are referred to as customers. Customers may come from outside the firm or may be an internal component. For instance, the employees of the company can be viewed as internal clients for a human resources department.
The team aims to comprehend customers and their needs more fully throughout the Define Phase. Following the capture of feedback from client interviews or surveys, the team converts the results into quantifiable needs that give the team ideas on how to enhance the procedure or address a corresponding business challenge.
Keep Others Informed of Project Progress
The team confirms they are on pace to resolve a valuable process issue by routinely updating the Project Sponsor, or Champion, on their progress. The A3 is one of the most effective ways to update Sponsors and Stakeholders. The team uses the A3—a customized, one-page document—to make its thought process and project status clear to others.
The stakeholders who may be affected by modifications to the process under consideration are also another crucial group to bring into the mix. The Define Phase marks the beginning of stakeholder analysis and management, and the team keeps in touch with this important group throughout the project. This makes it easier to maintain their engagement and sense of ownership throughout the process of change.
Chapter 8: The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
The goal of the Measure phase is to determine the size of the issue using data. In other words, the goal is to evaluate the process’s effectiveness as it stands in order to identify the issue. Any anecdotal perspectives can be laid to rest, as this phase is focused only on actual real world inputs.
Goals of Measure Phase
• Establish baseline performance of the process
• Identification of process performance indicators
• Develop a data collection plan and then collect data
• Validating the measurement system
• Determine the process capability
Overview of the Measure Phase of DMAIC
Based on the project inputs, the Measure phase can take between two and three weeks to complete, for example. Clearly, this phase can scale up to months, based on the size of the project. The participation of all important stakeholders, in particular, is crucial for obtaining high-quality data.
The Measure phase focuses on gathering data, validating the measuring system, establishing a baseline for the present process, and assessing the process capabilities. The Measure phase of Six Sigma offers a variety of concepts and tools.
Process Definition & Fundamental Tools
Process map: A process map is a tool that visually depicts the inputs, steps taken, and outputs of a process in a step-by-step flowchart.
This flowchart shows how inputs (X) and outputs (Y) are related. Make a process map of all the steps needed to transform raw materials into output (Y), after which you may then pinpoint the aspects that are critical to quality (CTQ).
Process maps make it easier to spot process waste or inefficiencies. This aids in identifying the crucial procedures for data collection.
Value stream mapping: Value stream mapping gives the movement of resources and information throughout an organization by way of a visual depiction. All the non-added and added values needed to produce the product are included in value stream mapping. It is made up of the steps used to get the product from the raw ingredients into the hands of the customers.
Spaghetti Diagram: A spaghetti diagram, commonly referred to as a spaghetti chart, illustrates the fundamental movement of people, goods, and paperwork during a process.
Cause and Effect Matrix: During root cause analysis, the cause and effect matrix establishes the relationship between process input variables and the customer’s outputs.
Data Collection
In fact, the Measure phase is all about collecting as much data as possible to get the actual picture of the problem. Hence, the team has to ensure the measurement process for data collection is accurate and precise, as well as relevant to the issue being optimized.
Data Types
Data is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables. It may be numbers, measurements, observations or even just descriptions of things.
Below are the types of Quantitative Data:
• Discrete data: The data is discrete if the measurements are integers or numeric counts. For example, this can be the number of customer complaints, weekly defects, etc.
• Continuous data: The data is continuous if the measurement takes on any value, usually within some range. For example, stack height, distance, cycle time, etc.
Coding Data
Sometimes it is more efficient to code data by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing by a factor.
Types of Data Coding:
• Substitution – ex. Replace 1/8ths of an inch with + / 1 deviations from center in integers.
• Truncation– Ex. data set of 0.5541, 0.5542, 0.5547 – you might just remove portions. Truncation is seen frequently where software applications have limitations in reporting up to certain decimal places.
Chapter 9: Stakeholder Roles
‘Authenticity’ is the key component of a positive public image in today’s hyper-transparent business world, where corporations are held accountable by the media, the general public, and campaign organizations. A company’s entire authenticity is determined by its goals, culture, and capacity for profit. This, in turn, determines its capacity to expand, both internally, by hiring more people, and externally, by luring investors or acquiring assistance from other businesses.
Among the stakeholders in the company are investors and employees. All people as well as organizations with a stake in how well a business operates are considered stakeholders. Building strong, balanced connections with stakeholders is crucial for companies since doing so will influence how authentically they are able to address their needs.
Building a solid reputation is based on consciously identifying, paying attention to, and responding to the priorities of each distinct group of stakeholders.
The roles of different types of stakeholders
Stakeholders can be divided into two categories: internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. Each stakeholder type’s priorities and demands of the business are different.
Internal (primary) stakeholders
The internal stakeholders of a firm are the management, directors, and employees.
• To ensure that they are compensated and stay in their positions, employees are motivated by the success of the business. Employees’ attention to health and safety may also vary depending on the type of the company. For many, it’s crucial that their own goals and the objectives of the company are in line.
• In order to increase their investment returns, shareholders are focused on good performance. Many companies have historically operated using a shareholder-centric business model, but more and more people are discovering that a broader emphasis on all stakeholders is more profitable in the long run.
• Managers are concerned with project management and the operation of specific parts or departments of the company. Their top priorities are how much autonomy they have, how much influence they have over their teams, and how well they are supported in their responsibilities.
• The board of directors is focused on increasing the company’s revenue and generating a profit for investors. They consequently place a high priority on running their firm effectively.
External (secondary) stakeholders
Customers, shareholders, suppliers, government organizations, and the general public are examples of external stakeholders. There are several reasons why they want the business to succeed.
• Customers want to get the greatest product or service available. Additionally, they might want to see the company improving society and lessening any negative effects on the environment.
• Suppliers want there to be more demand for the company’s goods and services so that, as a result, there will be more need for their own products.
• In order to sustain the economy, governments and regulatory agencies want the company to abide by the law, hire more people, and maintain sound financial practices.
Communities view the company as a supplier of goods and services, a source of local employment, and a buyer of local materials. They care about the company’s effects on their region and its involvement in charitable endeavors.
Which stakeholders are most crucial?
Stakeholders are people with unique wants and desires, despite being viewed as a collective. They might also cross over into several groupings.
Investors can also be employees. Additionally, a politician might live in the neighborhood where the business is located. Even with the greatest of intentions, a corporation cannot evenly meet the needs of all stakeholders 100 percent of the time. It will frequently encounter situations when it must put one stakeholder’s needs ahead of another.
If investors decide to curtail spending, the company might have to lower employee compensation or even resort to lay offs. Similar to this, they might have to sever ties with a dependable supplier in favor of a supplier with a lower price to retain profitability.
Companies must identify their major and most significant stakeholders in order to provide maximum stakeholder satisfaction. They should devote reasonable resources to interacting with these people.
This activity is known as stakeholder prioritization and is based on three stakeholder features:
• Power: How much weight they carry in the company’s operations
• Legitimacy: How they affect the company’s perception among the greater community
• Urgency: How quickly they demand action from the company
Depending on their sector, size, and length of existence, different companies will have different business goals. They will order stakeholder groups differently as a result of this.
For instance, a multinational firm that trades on the open market will probably give investors top priority. In order to draw in new investors and raise its share price, it aims to maximize profits for its current investors.
A start-up company, for example, may be less concerned about luring substantial investments (as at its inception) once it reaches a substantial growth plateau. Instead, it may begin to put an emphasis on developing strong bonds with regional suppliers, having a contented, devoted workforce, and—most importantly—creating a strong client base inside the community.
How should businesses prioritize their stakeholders?
Stakeholder priority can typically be broken down into three categories. Employees, clients, and investors are the first and most crucial group, without whom the company cannot function.
Suppliers, neighborhood organizations, and media influencers are secondary to them. Their specific significance is based on how the company’s key stakeholders perform and react to that performance.
There are also regulating bodies. Their demands are often clear and easy to follow, but persistent noncompliance is an issue.
Each project inside the organization will have its own project stakeholders who may need to be ranked differently in regards to a company-wide stakeholder profile. To make sure the program is successful, project managers and designated staff will be in charge of setting priorities and meeting the program’s defined expectations.
Stakeholder roles are shifting in the quickly changing business world, where new challenges are always emerging and competing for dominance. Therefore, it is challenging to rank stakeholders in terms of importance to a corporation.
Instead, corporations must incorporate ongoing stakeholder management into many of their business decisions. This is a necessary activity to guarantee maximum company-wide flexibility to satisfy stakeholders’ continuously shifting demands.
Securing and upholding stakeholder satisfaction and confidence is an ongoing activity. Companies must keep in mind the three criteria on which they will be evaluated in order to retain the commitment and support of their stakeholders:
• Behavior: How do you behave with your stakeholders?
• Communication: How do you listen to and interact with them?
• Performance: Do you achieve your intended objectives?
Chapter 10: Researching Current Process
Stakeholder Interviews
By asking stakeholders about their present business processes, we may better understand their context, discover the business goals that most concern them, and get their support.
Stakeholder interviews are frequently used to gain an understanding of your stakeholders and their perspectives, which is essential to the success of your project.
An interview with a stakeholder is a discussion with a person who has an interest in a project with the aim of acquiring information to help the project succeed.
A researcher conducts a user interview to gain knowledge on a subject of interest, such as the employee’s use of a system, their behaviors, and/or habits. Similar to this, during a stakeholder interview, a member of the user experience team questions internal or external stakeholders in order to define success metrics, shape the design process, and ultimately meet their expectations.
Workflow Analysis
A workflow is a planned series of tasks that can be continuously carried out manually, in an automated fashion, or in any combination of the two. Workflows are also utilized to carry out other operations like information processing, service delivery, material transformation, and more.
The channel of data migration must be clear, stakeholders must understand their roles, deadlines must be predicted accurately, and risks must be identified. Furthermore, it helps for it to be a simple design and easy to alter.
How to create a powerful workflow
A workflow is used to specify the best procedure for finishing a task. It can also be used to specify what is being done, who is doing it, and when it will be finished. You need to complete the following things in order to develop a successful workflow:
1. Identify and observe the resources
The first step is to identify the resources you need to create and carry out the workflow. Do you have digital forms and email threads at your organization, or do you employ any manual, paper-based workflows? Do you have a direct execution automation tool?
Additionally, you must be fully aware of all parties engaged in the execution of a certain workflow. Before creating one for their duty, you must speak with the process workers and find out about their challenges.
2. List out the task sequence
Lack of a specified structure in a workflow causes a lengthy procedure that delays task completion. Multiple tasks can be carried out concurrently in a non-linear manner with the help of an organized, chronologically and/or sequentially ordered workflow. The completion time can be greatly shortened by doing this. However, it’s crucial to make sure that two resources don’t overlap while performing concurrent operations and to account for redundancy when creating a process.
3. Delegate roles
Following the task sequence’s organization, you must decide who is in charge of each task and give them specific roles. While certain jobs can be completed without supervision, others require approval or change.
By moving a task up a level, an automation engine (application) can help you with this phase. One of the example tool for the design and implementation of processes is Corredor, the automation engine plug-in from Crust’s CRM Suite.
4. Use diagrams to visualize the workflow
You and your team can better understand and visualize your procedures by creating flowcharts and diagrams for them. A tool for business process modeling can assist you in creating detailed workflow diagrams.
Chapter 11: Documentation of Project
What is BPMN?
A planned business process’s steps are depicted using flowcharts using the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) approach. It visually illustrates a thorough sequence of business operations and information flows required to complete a process, making it a crucial component in business process management.
Modeling strategies to increase productivity, take into account changing conditions, and gain competitive advantage are the goals of BPMN. In recent years, there has been a drive towards standardization of the process, and it is now frequently referred to as Business Process Model and Notation, still utilizing the BPMN abbreviation. It is different from software design’s Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Recent history
The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) created the Business Process Modeling Notation, which has undergone numerous changes over time. This group united with the Object Management Group (OMG) in 2005, and the OMG took up the project. Business Process Model and Notation was the new name for the approach that OMG released in 2011 along with BPMN 2.0. By adopting a more extensive collection of symbols and notations for Business Process Diagrams, it produced a more thorough standard for business process modeling. Since BPMN doesn’t naturally lend itself to decision flows, a decision flow chart approach known as the Decision Model and Notation standard has been added to BPMN since 2014.
Resistance to Change
Rarely do most people adapt to change quickly. That’s because it’s a basic human impulse to oppose change.
For corporations, this poses a challenging issue. Success in today’s industry depends on successfully navigating and also implementing change. Organizations that lack business agility and are slow to innovate will struggle to endure. But this obviously results in a large number of employees experiencing significant change throughout their careers.
What does change resistance mean?
Simply said, change is difficult and frightening. It is simpler in some persons’ views to keep a current habit than to take up a new direction in life. When you try something new, failure is always a possibility. For this reason of launching into the unknown, many people would rather stay in their familiar surroundings than explore new ones.
Even people who say they like change could find it difficult to adapt to in the workplace. After all, making a personal change versus accepting top-down organizational change is extremely different. Employees, as a reactionary recourse, frequently have few options, which leads to resistance to change at work. This leads to feelings of uneasiness and loss of control.
Consider the scenario of implementing new software across the entire organization. As an employee, you are proficient in utilizing the current platform and may not have visibility into the full scope of why a new system is being implemented. What you do realize is that it will take a lot of effort to relearn the related fundamentals. You can worry as a result, either consciously or unconsciously, that the change would make it harder for you to execute your work.
Sometimes, employees focus on perceptions of potential losses far too frequently instead of potential gains.
Who resists change?
While it’s a common misunderstanding that only entry-level or front-line employees are impacted more by change, this is untrue. Everyone in the organization, from house-keeping to high-level management, is impacted by the shift. Furthermore, the level of intelligence has little to do with the amount of resistance. Even the most intelligent people among us are not immune to the unsettling nature of impending change.
Cost of Poor Quality
Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) is the additional expense incurred when offering customers subpar goods or services. In other words, it refers to all of the financial losses that the company has suffered as a result of making mistakes. Examples of this can be warranty lapse, scrap, rework, and repair.
A mechanism called “cost of quality” is employed in the company to assess the financial burden of high quality. In other terms, it is the price that must be paid to obtain the desired high-quality goods or services.
Cost of quality incorporates also the result of adding the costs of low, and simply, good quality. Essentially, each level of quality has an associated cost, with the possibility of additional cost after the fact.
Why Consider Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)
• COPQ tells how profit is affected by the current level(s) of quality
• It speaks the language of management to guide in decision making
• It helps to prioritize improvement activities
• It helps to optimize the resources and also helps to identify waste in the system
• It is a tool to maintain a continuous improvement culture
Chapter 12: Stakeholder Communication and Validation
To achieve project completion and overall success, all project managers must acknowledge, proactively manage, and overcome communication, particularly during the present state analysis. A shared understanding of language, tone, and conditions of agreement is necessary for the development and implementation of a comprehensive communication plan that fulfills the demands of stakeholders from multiple companies and firms. Examples of the Terms of Agreement include adopting a standard media format for all significant communications, taking responsibility for information release, and requiring stakeholders to acknowledge receiving information.
By virtue of their position, project managers need to be outstanding communicators as well as skilled connection builders. Since employees are often recruited from the country where the company is located, relationships are essential to comprehending the culture and values of a specific company or firm as well as the culture of the country where these enterprises are located. In order to implement communications mechanisms, it is necessary to integrate people, technologies, and products. Of course, project managers cannot only create a communications system based on calls and emails. To ensure a strong communication plan, the use of telephony devices, presentations, reports, a network of stakeholders working together, and a control mechanism for acquiring, collecting, tracking, and evaluating data/information are also required.
The number of potential communication paths or channels should be taken into consideration by project management as a measure of the communication complexity of the project. Stakeholder identification enables transparent communication during updates or project status meetings. Understanding and effectively responding to the expectations or concerns of the stakeholders requires an understanding of who they are and where they sit in the development and deployment phases of the project. The next step after gaining this understanding is to create a strong communications plan. The guidelines for how and when communication occurs are set forth in the project communication plan. You want to set the tone for all project-related communication as the project manager. This enables you to keep the project under control and helps to guarantee that all stakeholders are given the pertinent information.
What is a project sign-off sheet?
It’s simple: a sign-off sheet is a document signed by all stakeholders.
It states:
• The project’s intended goals and whether they were met or not
• The project’s key deliverables and whether they were actually delivered
• Corresponding comments and observations, if any
• The project start and end dates
All parties are then required to sign off. The project is officially (and, more crucially, legally) concluded by their signatures.
Stakeholders may express any concerns they may have here, but by signing it, they concur that the project team’s obligations are finally fulfilled.
Depending on the unique legal requirements and contractual duties of your firm, you will have many possible alternatives.
A sign-off document for a complicated project will consist of dozens or even hundreds of pages. For instance, government contracts typically have “sign-off books,” not just sheets.
The basic idea is the same: sign the document, and the project can be considered finished, regardless of the size or scope of the sign-off sheet.
Curriculum
Organizational Optimization – Workshop 3 – Current State
- Building Awareness of the Need for Change
- Voice of the Customer (VOC)
- Successful Change Management
- Business Process Management
- Project Management
- The DMAIC Model Introduction
- The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
- The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
- Stakeholder Roles
- Researching Current Process
- Documentation of Project
- Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Organizational Optimization corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Organizational Optimization corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Organizational Optimization corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Organizational Optimization program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Organizational Optimization corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Organizational Optimization corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Organizational Optimization Specialist (AOOS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Organizational Optimization – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Online Article
“Why Is The Current State Analysis Important?”
Published on September 3, 2015
By Sergey Korban,
Business Analysis Expert, ICP
As we move further and further into a digital era and replace a Waterfall approach with Agile, the Current State Analysis becomes somewhat a redundant step in many projects.
While it’s fair to say about greenfield software development projects, it’s a risky way of doing business analysis in companies having a bit of legacy in their history.
I personally consider understanding of the “as is” state of business processes and technology landscape to be a key business analysis activity.
However, the Agile approach doesn’t place the same degree of interest into this analysis and views it as a low value exercise that should be reduced to the minimum or best skipped completely.
Common Themes Against The Current State Analysis
The common themes of justifying avoidance of the Current State Analysis are:
• a waste of time on studying what will be discarded anyway
• deficit of project time to spend on the current state analysis
• old thinking should be discarded to give way to a fresh, Agile, approach.
Valuable Outputs From The Current State Analysis
My experience, based on 60+ completed projects, shows that there are valuable findings and outputs from the Current State Analysis that ensure project success:
• clear definition of a business problem, needs and pain points
• good understanding of the business domain
• visibility of how things are done now and where the bottlenecks are
• identified causes of poor performance of either business processes or technology solutions (or both).
• known process intensity patterns – critical and normal business hours
• integration points and principles of an organisation with its environment – from both process and technology viewpoints.
Having a clear picture of the current situation and identified pain points, a Business Analyst can make well supported recommendations about the project scope and feasible options to address the identified problems. Thus, the gathered knowledge enables to set out a path of improvements towards the desired ‘to-be’ state.
5 Benefits Of Current State Analysis
#1 You know where you start a journey to the destination point
The map metaphor is handy to highlight the necessity of knowing where you start your journey. The path to the desired point is never a straight line. So you need to map decision points along the way to ensure that you have enough resources (money, buy-in, tools and skilled human resources) to complete the journey. You also need to measure your progress between the two points to ensure that you did not get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
#2 Discovered facts facilitate the introduction of a change
The analysis findings outline what everyone (including management) does – both right and wrong. It helps have conversations that help people feel more at ease with learning what is done poorly and what is the essence of the proposed changes.
#3 Articulated pain points are an opportunity to engage employees into finding solutions
A good Current State Analysis helps to change the culture of the organisation. It becomes possible because employees can start to see how they are connected within the organisation, where a shortcoming turns into a pain point and affects the process performance.
Employees begin to see the impact of their individual activities on their unit and the organisation at large. As a result, employees begin to work together as a team to improve their interactions.
#4 Visibility of interfaces of the organisation with its environment
Maps showing connections (processes and technology) between the organisation and its environment create a vivid visual context for communicating the proposed changes.
#5 Well defined scope of the change and project deliverables
Defining impacted areas in detail gives a solid foundation for specifying and then baselining a project scope. This, in turn, saves funds allocated to the project and reduces time to market thus delivering an additional value to the business. The specified scope enables to determine the key deliverables and expected benefits.”
To view the original article, please visit: www.linkedin.com
Online Article
“Importance of Current State Analysis for Effective Change Management”
By Avinash Kavirajan,
DLT Labs,
November 1, 2021
Today’s dynamic market poses numerous challenges for any business in different forms: changing consumer preferences, evolving technologies, or the changing economy.
This leads to evolution and transformation in the market, creating a gap for a business. To bridge this gap, companies must engage in effective change management to understand trends better and adapt to such a dynamic environment. Some businesses transform faster than others. Those that are slow or unable to embrace change ultimately lose their competitive edge. In extreme cases, some may even close up.
The starting point on the roadmap to change for a business is identifying why a change is essential.
>> Changes tend to be brought about by a few factors:
• Current business problems
• The emergence of new market opportunities
• Change in legal & regulatory requirements
The above factors form the basis for the decision-making that goes into initiating and making a change. Finding answers to poignant questions such as why and when to change helps businesses plan ahead, allowing them to set down a time frame to aim for when it comes to completing the changes in the areas they have identified.
Simply put, businesses must find answers to these questions – what needs changing? How do we make these changes?
To understand what needs to be changed, businesses must analyze their current state.
What is Current State Analysis?
Since business is constantly evolving, they must understand their present state and identify any impact that a change can bring about. The analysis considers the current structure, culture, capabilities and processes of a business. Since this can be a lengthy process, many might wonder if this analysis is worthwhile, to begin with. In short, it is.
Why conduct current state analysis?
This analysis evaluates a business’ specific competencies and performance, comparing capabilities to competitors. It also helps identify its positioning against the backdrop of prevailing industry trends.
Such information gives decision-makers and those in charge the detailed data they need to make an informed choice, as it produces an accurate, holistic picture of what is yet to be achieved and where the gaps lie.
Techniques to assess the current state
Assessing external factors impacting business
1. PESTLE analysis
• Political – relates to government policies and changing regulatory requirements
• Economic – Relates to the macroeconomic factors in the market
• Socio-Cultural – Relates to the behaviours & attitudes of people
• Technological – Relates to changing technology landscape
This helps identify any significant outside forces that may affect either any business’ initiative or the business itself, unearthing potential threats and opportunities for a business. It can be challenging to identify situations or environments that can influence business outcomes without a PESTLE analysis.
For example, you may have a product that works exceptionally well in urban /densely populated areas. However, those in rural areas may face technological barriers that greatly reduce their ability to access your product. Such nuances in information can make the difference between financial success or ruin.
Understanding the competitive landscape is also vital. This is where Porter’s five forces come in.
2. Porter’s five forces
Porter’s five forces consist of the following points:
• The threat of new entrants
• Pressure from substitute products
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Bargaining power of buyers
• Intensity of rivalry
This tool can help company stakeholders understand the competitiveness of a business in the market while giving them a complete picture of the barriers to entry and the factors affecting profitability in a specific industry.
While factors external to a company are a key part of understanding the business’ strengths and weaknesses, companies must also look within the organization to know where they stand.
Assessing internal factors impacting business
1. Understanding organizational structure
Analyzing a company’s organizational structure can reveal where its strengths and weaknesses lie internally and help determine how business operations are handled in the context of producing its output. Such an analysis conducted periodically can give stakeholders an idea about issues (like, for instance, inefficiency) that have emerged but have not been addressed.
2. Determining organizational culture
An organization’s culture is critical for evaluating the willingness and ability of a business to reach its desired state in the future. While this is a big topic, learning about how leaders and employees deal with managing change, can be a key identifier into the steps needed to implement a change. Generally, resistance to making or discussing change by company employees and leaders can be a sign of a rigid culture. In contrast, detailed processes for change management are a sign of an open, flexible culture.
3. Gauging technology and infrastructure
Sometimes, the gaps in a company that limits its ability to be more efficient or enhance cost-effectiveness or competitiveness can be due to gaps in technology. Digital transformation is an example of such a trend. Companies that foresaw the rise in e-commerce, invested and adopted technology to operate seamlessly within this new trend when the change occurred. Hence, the adoption and evaluation of technology and infrastructure can paint a clear picture of the prevailing technological constraints a business faces in its current state.
4. Examining constraints in policies and procedures
Many policies are essential to ensure that a company complies with relevant regulatory requirements. However, beyond these regulatory obligations, other procedures can be a bottleneck by creating constraints in the current state and limiting business transformation. This is why it is important to check and plan for a new policy’s impacts.
• The above internal and external analysis tools can help a business identify its competitiveness, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and its ability to generate a profit in the market.
Conclusion
Markets constantly change. Businesses need to keep pace and adapt in accordance with these changes. Without knowing where a company stands currently, progressing to a future state in a competitive space would be catastrophic for a business.”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: www.dltlabs.com
Online Article
“The importance of current state analysis during change”
By LSA Global
Do Not Skip Current State Analysis During Change
While it may be tempting to begin important organizational change efforts by looking ahead to the desired future state, do not underestimate the need to understand and agree upon the current state before you embark on a change initiative.
In fact, a recent McKinsey Global Survey pinpointed “Completing a comprehensive, fact-based assessment of the business to identify opportunities for improvement” as one of the most important steps to take because it sets the tone.
For change management to succeed, you need a complete picture of the context of changes you wish to make before you can thoughtfully design, communicate, and implement the new ways of thinking, behaving, and working.
Without a strong foothold in reality and a view of the “whole board,” it is difficult for change leaders to create meaning, encourage positive thinking, and align stakeholders amid the inevitable uncertainties and ambiguities of large scale change. A complete picture starts with conducting a current state analysis during change so you can actively involve and effectively communicate the why, what, when, who, and the how of change to those most affected.
Without an Understood Current State Analysis During Change
Just think about it. Without an accurate, systemic, and agreed-upon picture of the current state, how can you expect to make better informed, more creative, or more impactful decisions around the desired future state?
Those affected by change tell us that an unclear current state during change creates four major problems:
1. The impetus, rational, and urgency for change are not clear or aligned enough.
2. The opportunities and implications of the new changes become ambiguous and diluted.
3. Key stakeholders are not ready, willing, or able to support and execute the new vision for change.
4. Faulty assumptions and incorrect root causes lead to inevitable rework, time delays, budget overruns, and unmet expectations.
A Roadmap for Organizational Change
Just as with any important journey, organizations going through change need a clear and compelling road map to get from the current set of circumstances to the ideal (and hopefully better) future state. It is critical that you clearly establish where you are now in order to plan the best path to where you want to go.
In our change management simulation, this starting point is what is called the “As-Is” or Current State. Getting the current state analysis during change right allows you to understand, agree upon, and quantify root causes, not just symptoms.
Characteristics of the current state that you need to get right include a common understanding of the current:
• Strategies
• Organizational structures
• Cultural and team norms
• Processes
• Systems
• People
• Needs, concerns, challenges, and interests of key stakeholders
If you skip doing a thorough current state analysis as part of your change initiative, you could become a failed change research statistic. Gartner studies suggest that 75% of all US IT projects are considered to be failures by those responsible for initiating them with half of the projects exceeding budget by 200%. A Standish Group study found that 31% of projects were cancelled outright, and Bain found only 12% of change initiatives achieved or exceeded their aims with over one-third failing miserably.
Investing the time to create current state clarity allows you to enlist those most affected by change and to create alignment with key stakeholders by sharing an honest assessment of the current state. While it may feel like a time consuming step in the change process, in our experience it sets the stage to co-create the desired future together and drastically speeds up the “hearts and minds” portion of the change process.
5 Common Traps of As-Is Analysis
In addition to being so anxious to get going that leaders overlook root cause and current state analysis, here are five additional current analysis traps to avoid during change:
1. Conducting Undisciplined Feedback Sessions
Though it is helpful to gather feedback from all those who will be affected by the change, leaders need to guard against these meetings becoming a free-for-all. Be clear at the outset that the purpose of the meeting is to gather current state information, not to provide solutions – at least not yet. Capture any potential quick wins in a parking lot and move on.
2. Ignoring the Iceberg of Ignorance
A well-known study by Sidney Yoshida in 1989 found an “Iceberg of Ignorance” exists in most organizations. The study posited that 100% of an organization’s true problems are known to front-line employees while only 74% are known to supervisors, 9% are known to middle management, and only 4% are known to executive leadership.
While those percentages seem a bit extreme, there is no doubt that perspectives from the entire organization are required to get an accurate picture of how work gets done.
3. Failing to Acknowledge the Way Things Actually Get Accomplished
While many systems and processes are documented or known, users typically have found better, different, and sometimes unconscious ways of accomplishing their tasks. Current documentation or cursory discussions do not always reflect reality. It is important to uncover how work actually gets done on a day-to-day basis before the organization undertakes improvement efforts.
4. Misunderstanding Matrixed Workflows
A huge pitfall of current state analysis is misunderstanding or overlooking various points of integration. Work typically flows through a variety of methods – some automatic, some manual. Carefully observe each point at which one system/person/department/function feeds another so you understand the interdependencies (or silos) between different areas.
5. Ignoring a Major Obstacle
Sometimes an obstacle to change looms so large (or is so political) that no one will acknowledge it. Avoidance may be due to a lack of resources, politics, risk of looking bad, or simply denial that it exists. To set the stage for meaningful change, call it out and gain what insight you can from why it was ignored.
The Bottom Line
Change experts recognize the value of creating a common understanding of the current state before launching a comprehensive change initiative. Misunderstanding the current state creates incorrect perspectives about the changes to come. Incorrect perspectives about change cause friction, swirl, and faulty decision making. Do you have a holistic, accurate, and agreed-upon map of the current state?”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: lsaglobal.com
Online Article
“Current State Analysis of Your Data”
By Vanessa Lam,
January 19, 2022,
TDAN.com
Whether you’re stepping into a new organization as a data lead or trying to overhaul your data infrastructure, the first step in the process is to understand how your organization currently uses data. While that may sound simple, it can be an intimidating process to start. This is the beginning of a series of articles meant to give you a jumping-off point to understanding your data organization. In this series, I will be outlining the important categories to consider as well as some example questions to ask to better understand the current state of your data organization.
There are four main categories to consider when doing a current state analysis of an organization’s data: Data Quality, Data Freshness, Data Culture, and Data-Driven Outcomes. This first article will give you definitions of these four terms and why they are important, and also address the first term, Data Quality. In future articles, I will provide some questions (and some of their potential answers) to better understand these categories.
Data Quality
Data Quality refers to the accuracy and precision of your data. Is the data being input properly? Is there high enough coverage on data fields to trust the data? Good data quality is essential in order to know that insights drawn from this data can be trusted.
Data Freshness
Data Freshness refers to whether or not data is available where and when you need it to be. It also used to assess the fit of the tools and processes to the business needs. Practically, we will recognize these as the cadence of data input and data refreshes as well as the reliability of processes and tools.
Data Culture
Data Culture refers to the way that people in the organization interact with data. Who is able to interact with it? How do they feel about it? How do they speak about it? This is critical to understand if employees are willing and interested to work with data or if increased education and discussions are required to improve adoption of healthy data practices.
Data Outcomes
Data Outcomes refers to an organization’s main goal for their data. Is it a revenue driver? Does it dictate decision making? Do they need it for fundraising? These questions will indicate how data is being used now, but also potentially areas for it to grow.
These are the four major categories that we will be focusing on when doing a current state analysis on the data. As you can see, this is a wholistic look at data; we are not merely looking at the data itself, but the treatment and sentiment toward data across the organization. It is essential to consider all these factors when trying to build a sustainable data organization. Follow along for future articles that will dive deeper into the questions we can ask to better understand these four categories!
This section of this article will focus on Data Quality: what it is, why it is important, and what questions to ask to determine its current state.
The questions are organized by stakeholder group to facilitate usability; hopefully you can use this as a template to start your Current State Analysis journey. A few definitions before we begin – note that these groups are not mutually exclusive:
People who Input Data: These are people who collect and/or input data into the system. For example, salespeople inputting their sales numbers, or survey creators.
People who Manipulate and Analyze Data: These are people who organize the data and create analyses. This includes Data Engineers, Business Intelligence Professionals, and Data Analysts.
People who Make Decisions based on Data: These are the people who use the data to make decisions. This may be a sales manager deciding where to invest resources, a product manager understanding product use demographics, or an executive trying to cut costs.
What is Data Quality?
Data quality is a measure of the condition of your data, including accuracy, consistency, and completeness. Data quality can be affected in any part of the process, from collection to ETL to analysis. Accuracy refers to how well your data reflects the truth while consistency refers to how well individual data elements match each other. An example of accuracy and consistency in data collection is when a Sales Representative fills out their sales region (e.g., Pacific Northwest). If the input is a manual text field, it is possible for them to spell the region incorrectly (Pacific Nortwest) or even capitalize the region incorrectly (pacific northwest). This is a failure of data consistency. A possible correction here would be to supply a drop-down list of the possible regions (e.g., Pacific Northwest, Midwest, South, East). However, this scenario still provides opportunities for inaccuracy in choosing the incorrect region. An example of incomplete data here would be the Sales Representative leaving this field blank or not filling out the sales record entirely.
Potential solutions to these issues could be making the Region field mandatory or even pre-filling the field if Sales Representatives are assigned to specific regions. However, be aware that putting these rules on data collection may slow down data collection or even disincentivize people from completing forms if they think that it is too difficult or restrictive. When assessing data quality rules, it is important to evaluate whether guardrails and processes can be added to make positive change, or if the restrictions will cause unintentional side-effects.
Why is Data Quality Important?
Good data quality is essential to know that insights drawn from the data can be trusted. Most analysts have the experience of their manager questioning the numbers from the data, especially if they have some anecdotal knowledge that implies that the data is completely incorrect. Better data quality will reduce the number of times that this happens as the data will be more accurate and complete, meaning that it is a better reflection of the truth. In the cases where there are still disagreements, they may be more substantive and provide opportunities to talk about where anecdotal evidence and collected data may differ.
Questions to Determine Current State of Data Quality
To Those Who Input Data
These questions are designed to better understand the guardrails around data collection. It is important for data to have strong validations, such as choosing from a dropdown list instead of allowing free text; however, be aware that this could backfire if the validations prevent accurate data entry (for example, missing categories in a dropdown) or make it too difficult to fill out (making long forms with many mandatory fields can make a form unappealing to fill out). Often, data quality issues are rooted in poor data collection.
• What is your process for inputting data?
• Are there specific fields for inputting commonly collected information or is it largely free text?
• Are there selection options for appropriate fields? (e.g., A dropdown with “True” or “False” selections or a free text field where you can type “True” or “False”)
• Are there automatic or pre-loaded values in the fields? Are you typically using the pre-loaded value, or do you frequently need to change it?
• What is your biggest frustration when inputting data?
To Those Who Manipulate and Analyze Data
These questions are designed to understand how the data looks to someone who is in charge of cleaning, understanding, and verifying the numbers to be presented to business stakeholders. They are often the ones who feel most impacted by poor data quality, and therefore likely have a good idea of where the data is weak.
• When doing analyses, how confident do you feel about the outcome based on the data?
• Do you feel like you need to put caveats on your data based on low confidence intervals?
• Are there data fields that are being used for multiple purposes? Are there data fields that still exist in the data, but everyone says to avoid?
To Those Who Make Decisions based on Data
These questions are designed for people who are using data to make decisions. Often, they are not the ones who have done the analysis themselves, so they may not know the intricacies of the data as well. However, they are usually keenly aware of the business implications of their decisions and have a good sense of what aggregate numbers make sense. For example, a sales executive will likely have a good idea if the number presented is approximately correct based on their experience with the industry, company, and knowledge of their sales representatives. It is important to hear their opinion because ultimately these are the customers of the data. If they aren’t happy with the quality, then some changes may need to take place.
• Do you find yourself seeing the data and overriding data-backed decisions because you don’t think that what you’re reading is a reflection of reality?
• What parts of the data are you confident in? What parts are you concerned by?
Conclusion
Data quality is a bedrock of your data systems. Without good quality data, analyses cannot be trusted, decisions cannot be made with data, and eventually people will stop relying on data altogether. Before attempting to implement a strong data ecosystem, it is important to have a plan to improve data quality throughout the organization, from data collection and data processes to analyses. This article is the first in a series discussing the important considerations when assessing your Current State of Data. Follow along for the next article about Data Freshness – measuring whether the data is up-to-date and reliable!”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: tdan.com
Course Manuals 1-12
Course Manual 1: Building Awareness of the Need for Change
How to get your organization to recognize the need for change
As a Chief Information Officer (CIO), project manager, or IT manager, the need for change as well as the much larger necessity to regulate change may be tough to convince your business or project team of. How then do we deal with it?
Make that adjustment, as the brilliant performer Michael Jackson once sagely advised. The message of the song “Man in the Mirror,” which he also sang and danced to, was that change begins with you.
Organizational Change Management is a tool we use (OCM). You’ll discover that it will be much simpler to characterize your current organizational state when employees understand change and how to control, maintain, and generally advance it in a positive way. OCM has a lot of potential. I’d like to draw your attention to two highly efficient approaches that have benefited me and a few businesses I’ve worked with on projects.
The ADKAR model from Prosci is the first. It was printed in the 2014 Edition of Best Practices in Change Management. The study, based on 822 organizational change leaders in over 63 countries, discovered that when businesses managed the “people” side of change successfully, initiatives had a six-fold increased likelihood of succeeding in terms of goals and budget.
Prosci’s ADKAR Model:
A – Make each individual aware of the need to change. D – Ensure each individual has the desire to change. K – Ensure each person has the knowledge in order to implement the change. A – Ensure they have the ability to change. R – Ensure the change is reinforced; sustain the change by making sure that people are continuing to implement the changes.
Having good communication and appointing someone that is “sponsoring” the change throughout the life cycle will help make sure it moves through this process.
The second model is John Kotter’s 8 Steps to Successful Change. It’s been around for 20 years now and is considered a big part of ITIL® Continual Service Improvement.
Step 1 – Establish a sense of urgency. “If we don’t change, we will fail.”
Step 2 – Create a guiding coalition. “We can decide how this change will happen.”
Step 3 – Create the vision of the change. “This is what the change will accomplish.”
Step 4 – Communicate the vision. “Hey everyone! This is what the change will accomplish.”
Step 5 – Empower and enable action for the vision. “I’m giving you the authority and resources necessary to accomplish the vision.”
Step 6 – Get quick wins. “Look at what we’ve accomplished so far! We’re on the right track!”
Step 7 – Build on the change and consolidate wins. “Let’s take what we’ve done so far and make it even better.”
Step 8 – Institutionalize the change (make it stick). “This change has really improved our project/service/organization. Let’s continue to do this.”
You’ll see that both models place a lot of emphasis on communication and on the people involved rather than the technology. Both models also select for significant leadership participation at all levels, not just senior and middle management. That makes the change easier to sponsor as well as own, and it fosters people to comment in such ways as, “This is actually turning out to be a good change.” Your team will perform admirably and be more invested if they feel they have a voice and can be heard.
How to build a Roadmap – Define Current State
How many of us in the industry can honestly say that we were instructed on how to create, hone, and present a professional roadmap based on a reliable technique with reliable, consistent results? I’ve been in this challenging profession for years, and I’m still amazed at the huge range and/or swing of results quality I’ve seen over time. This proper focus on quality also doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I’m not sure why this is the case, but perhaps it has to do with the old consulting industry’s consolidation and transformation (from the big eight to what now? Possibly 2 or 3?) or the decline in the craft’s reputation among our contemporaries. Alternatively, perhaps good planning went out of vogue. Regardless of the core cause(s), we want to take a moment to share some of what has worked successfully over the years in the hopes that it can improve your perceptions and skillset around building a proper roadmap.
It is clearly beneficial to invest in analytical skills, systematic thinking, and communication abilities.
The majority of transformation programs benefit greatly from what I’m about to discuss. This will be difficult to locate in textbooks, lecture halls, or your neighborhood bookshop. The approach I’ll describe is loosely based on the Software Engineering Institute-Capability Maturity (SEI-CM IDEAL) model, which is intended to direct the creation of long-range integrated planning for overseeing software process improvement initiatives. In the greatest and brightest organizations that have embraced an optimized style of thinking about how to direct their organizations to perform as intended, you will probably discover something similar to this. The balance will be disclosed in a future series using the adoption of Master Data Management as an example, so let’s get to the summary of what I wanted to say.
The Overall Pattern
At the risk of oversimplifying, the general format that EVERY roadmap adheres to is as follows:
1) Develop a clear and unambiguous understanding of the current state
– Business Objectives (not just strategy or goals, but actual, quantifiable objectives)
– Functional needs
– High impact business processes or cycles
– Organization (current operating model)
– Cost and complexity drivers
– Business and technical assets (some call these artifacts)
2) Define desired end state
First, what are you hoping to achieve at your organization, or within your specific business unit? Existing goal-driven strategies that are articulated into quantifiable targets– can you name them within your organization? If this information is essentially an unknown or no one can express the final goal(s) clearly, then the need for this build step is quite evident. This might be information held only by a few. Or, as is more frequently the case, there is a breakdown in communication between corporate leadership and the lower tiers of the organization, which results in vague downstream communication of leadership imperatives that no one truly embraces, because after all, it’s just a job.
I would anticipate that some better instances would be:
– Performance targets (Cash flow, Profitability, Velocity (cycle or PCE), Growth, Customer intimacy)
– Operating Model Improvements
– Guiding principles
3) Conduct Gap Analysis
Once we get to this point, we can start assessing the DELTA between who we actually are and what we genuinely want to become. When we have a clear picture of where we are and where we want to go, the practical steps start to make themselves plain and fall into place. The process of debating, exchanging, and resolving gap closing techniques can begin, typically encompassing the following initiatives:
– Organizational
– Functional
– Architectural (technology)
– Process
– Reward or economic incentives
The figure below shows an example index or compilation of your discoveries up to this point, centered on the four architecture domains (Business, Information, Application, and Technology) associated with the architecture, for the enterprise architect. In this scenario, the DELTA stands for the advised Gap Closure Strategy between the existing and intended end states. Or, to put it another way, the concrete steps we must take to get from where we are to where we want to be.
4) Prioritization
Prioritization is necessary now that we have the list of things that can be done. This is typically determined (in a technological road map) by assessing the relative business value AND technical difficulty, and then visualizing the results in some sort of quadrant graph. It is crucial in this situation that the stakeholders are actively involved in gathering the data and are fully informed of how they are ranking each task/object. Identifying what is practical and has the greatest business value is what we are ultimately trying to capture here.
5) Discover the Optimum Sequence
Now that we’ve established the initiatives and their high-level prioritization, how about the order? Or, to put it another way, are there certain tasks with constraints where we must complete those before others? Have we found any dependencies that need to be met before continuing? Sometimes, like growing up, you have to sequentially learn to crawl, walk, run, maybe ride a bicycle, and then drive a car. What about an organization’s ability to evolve and adapt to change? Not to be disregarded, this is a situation when having a thorough understanding of organizational dynamics is essential (see step number 1, this is why we need to truly understand where we are).
6) Develop and Publish the Road Map
We are now prepared to create the road map. We can start to put together a reasonable, defendable plan that details what should be done and in what order after we have the DELTA (current vs. desired end state), the prioritization effort, and the best sequence. Now, it’s crucial how this is communicated. We can more clearly state our position with our colleagues since we now have the supporting evidence, the clear path, and a tenable argument. We can easily provide the information to back up our claims for the need for change. The genuinely challenging activity is about to appear. We must somehow simplify and condense our message as appropriate to our target audience. To put it another way, we must condense all of this effort into a clear, compelling vision of how we might transform an organization or use technology to achieve our goals. Do not undervalue this activity; after putting so much effort into such an endeavor, the last thing we need to do is overwhelm our stakeholders with information. Yes, we require this for our own benefit in order to ensure that we did not overlook something during the analysis phase. Here’s another illustration of a visual diagram showing the first year’s deployment of a master data management platform:
Source: Pragmatic Architect
In order to ensure a successful planning endeavor, this is the fundamental pattern explaining how a solid roadmap should be produced for any organization across any discipline (business or technology). This is an activity that is often not to be taken lightly, so I wanted to point this out to aid in your own efforts. In order to come up with a set of practical measures to follow, we will be discussing some real world repercussions, while also pointing out some unintended consequences in the following case studies.
Case Study: How British Airways implemented successful change
In 1981, British Airways appointed a new chairperson, John King. Early on, it was noticed that the company was extremely inefficient and a lot of valuable resources were being wasted.
To help the organisation become more profitable, the chairperson decided to restructure the entire business. He decided that the most efficient way to do this was through a change management plan.
The organisation soon began to reduce its workforce. However, before this was completed, the chairman – through his change management leadership – provided the business with reasons for restructuring British Airways to help prepare them for the upcoming change.
His plan saw him axe 22,000 jobs – including half of the board – replace older planes with modern jets and eliminated unprofitable routes. One of his successors, Martin Broughton, paid tribute to King for the role he played in the transformation.
He said: “Lord King transformed the airline from a position of state-owned weakness to one of financial strength and global renown as a pioneer privatised carrier.”
So, through leadership and communication, he managed to direct the business through an incredibly difficult time and turned British Airways into a profitable business.
Exercise 1
1. How would you ensure that everyone in your organization is well-informed about the change?
– Answering this question will put things in perspective for everyone. All members of the company will know critical information about the organizational needs and what the company can offer to sustain these needs. This will ensure that everyone has the same set of goals and that the mission of the transformed company is clear to everyone.
2. What are your high-level goals and when do you want to accomplish them?
– It’s important to understand what the goals of your organization are, in order to create current state analysis and envision the future of the company. Once you know this, you can start to plan the steps needed to get there.
Course Manual 2: Voice of the Customer (VOC)
Consumers are more demanding than ever in the age of instant gratification. Brands are spending more money on Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs that use a closed-loop procedure to keep up with consumer expectations.
Any customer experience, research, or marketing executive will tell you that the era in which prospect engagement was achieved by way of a one-way discussion, in the context of customer marketing, is long gone. Market leaders are changing their listening and response strategies more quickly these days since VOC programs offer a significant potential for boosting customer loyalty and sales.
People are twice as likely to talk about a negative experience than a great one, and poor customer experiences cost U.S. businesses an estimated $83 billion annually in lost sales and defections.
Building a successful Voice of the Customer program
Setting the stage is important before you dive in and start creating a step-by-step plan for achieving customer experience maturity. Too frequently, individuals go right into developing a program without ensuring that all the necessary elements are in place to go forward with developing a customer-centric organization.
You may successfully implement client centricity across your entire firm by concentrating on the following six factors:
Strong leadership
Starting from the top down, a customer-centric culture must be established. Any customer-centric program has a poor likelihood of succeeding if there isn’t executive-level support. To really make a difference in the client experience, you’ll also want to win over the support of lower level leaders. Since leaders set the tone for their teams, their direct reports will do the same if they decide that the customer is vital.
Vision and clarity
To ensure that everyone in the organization can clearly comprehend the shared objective, your VOC vision needs to be detailed. Start by concentrating on the words and messages you’ll employ to communicate your vision. To help you gain the support and understanding of leadership, we advise creating a brief, straightforward vision statement.
Engagement and collaboration
An organization that prioritizes its customers will succeed over the long term with an engaged workforce. Additionally, as workers are more motivated, cross-functional cooperation and synergy will result in more significant and effective client initiatives. You must comprehend your workforce if you want to engage them honestly. The most effective way to accomplish this is by putting a formal employee experience program in place.
Listening and learning
A methodical approach to tracking and gathering consumer feedback is essential for enhancing the entire experience. Customer feedback can be obtained through a variety of channels, so it’s crucial to base any listening program on a solid foundation that can adapt when customers’ feedback preferences evolve.
Alignment and action
When a corporation is working towards an overall state of alignment, all of its employees are moving in the same direction toward a common goal, and each workgroup determines the steps it has to take to achieve that goal. Action, in general, refers to the quantifiable steps made to enhance the client experience. You can determine the areas where you should take action with the aid of a well constructed root cause or driver analysis.
Patience and commitment:
Building a world-class customer culture is not an overnight endeavor, and it cannot be entirely outsourced, as much as it pains organizations to hear this. Whether you like it or not, the world’s most prosperous customer-centric businesses were developed over a long period of time. Customer culture is gradually changing, collection methods are becoming more efficient, analyses are becoming more complex, and action is becoming more pervasive and aspirational. Leadership must show perseverance and dedication to the process and vision at every stage of the journey.
Three questions to answer before building your voice of customer strategy
Three important issues need to be answered before implementing a voice of the consumer (VOC) program. These inquiries might help you decide how to construct your program and the supporting technologies. The inquiries are:
• What business objective do we want to achieve by deploying a VOC program?
• Given our strategic intent, what do we need to capture?
• Given our objectives and our information needs, what survey technology should we use?
I’ll start with the most crucial and initial VOC query:
1. What business objective do we want to achieve by deploying a VOC program?
The other important questions you ask will depend on your response to this one. Typically, VOC projects support one of two main strategic goals:
• Benchmarking
• Continuous improvement
Answer A: Benchmarking
Some survey suppliers assert that their models meet both goals, but you should focus more on what they actually do (i.e., how they design their surveys) than what they say. Numerous rating questions are included in benchmark-focused surveys, and the entire methodology is heavily metric-based. One supplier that we’ve come across uses the first 13 questions to fulfill the benchmarking requirement alone, and it’s not unusual to come across a survey with one or two open-ended items within a collection of 30 or 40 questions.
It is crucial to take an “apples-to-apples” approach to the survey experience itself because benchmarking is a comparative exercise. This entails presenting the identical set of survey questions to each respondent, regardless of how they actually navigated the page. When done incorrectly, the responders may experience a lengthy exercise that isn’t always pertinent. Response quality is determined by brevity and relevancy, so the longer and less relevant the survey questions, the less probable it is that the responses will be of high quality.
As a result, the value your benchmarking surveys provide highlights comparative performance. The reasons behind your scores’ rankings, outside from basic causation, such as “navigation” or “look and feel,” are likely to remain a mystery. You still need to do more in-depth, granular investigation to identify the underlying causes of “navigation” because it incorporates so many different elements.
Answer B: Continuous improvement
Understanding causation is your tactical goal if your strategic desire is continuous progress. Ratings questions are helpful, but their worth multiplies if they are connected to follow-up inquiries intended to ascertain the reasons why the respondent gave that particular site or visit the rating they did.
“Based on why you came here today, how successful was your visit?”
Followed up with:
“Please help us understand the main reason you were successful [or unsuccessful].”
Therefore, surveys with a focus on continuous development show a considerably higher mix between rating questions and open-ended questions. The question set must be as brief and pertinent as feasible because responding to an open-ended inquiry requires significantly more work on the part of the reply. In other words, surveys for continuous improvement should be personalized for each respondent, with questions that take into account each visitor’s distinctive journey through the website.
It takes survey technology that can track visitor behavior and incorporate that information into a set of customised exit questions in order to “customize” each set of questions to the specific respondent.
“We see that you visited the Handbags ‘What’s New’ section. What did you think of our new designers?
“Please help us understand why the new designers affected you that way,” was said in response.
Be wise about when and what you ask for in terms of explanatory information because there is definitely a limit to how often you can ask a respondent to expound on a response. Responses that help you comprehend why your visitors react to the various components of the site experience are invaluable in the pursuit of continual development. They offer a thorough, granular grasp of causality, and by pinpointing a problem’s underlying source, you can completely resolve it.
Eliminating frequent issues is the fastest way to improve, but it’s also helpful to know why visitors appreciate pleasant aspects of their experience. Positives reveal:
1. What to emphasize and expand upon
2. What not to break when you go about fixing other problems
The next VOC query to pose is:
2. Given our strategic intent, what do we need to capture?
The responses to this question are constrained by the survey respondents’ willingness to reply to inquiries that may or may not be of much interest or relevance if your VOC strategy is focused on benchmarking. These questions produce trending metrics and rating data that have been divided into as many sub-components as the survey may fairly ask without compromising the validity of the data (people responding mindlessly to the questions, just to get through the survey).
However, VOC teams that are committed to continual development have the opportunity to go far further in serving the needs of their internal customers than can benchmark providers. This is why we frame the second inquiry using the word “capture” rather than “ask.” Fortunately, more than simply the responses to survey questions can be captured by intelligent survey technology. It can record the sites visited, the brands or categories that were looked at, the goods that were compared, or the tools that were employed. It can also keep an eye out for events like abandoned shopping carts, the development of wish lists, or abandoned checkouts.
This abundance of activity can be utilized to prompt the specific survey questions about the experience mentioned above or to give a complete, in-depth account of the respondent’s site visit. Since metrics, verbatim responses, and actual behavior can all be used to triangulate the answers to the questions posed of the data, the addition of behavioral data enables far more extensive analysis. Integration of survey data with web analytics data can, to some extent, reproduce these analytical advantages. However, it obviously eliminates the potential to ask behaviorally-triggered questions within the survey itself because that indicates a post-processing data merging. Because of this, post-process data merging loses the “in the moment” contextual value of recording the visitor’s response at its most immediate and vivid state.
For your internal clients, the ability to record practically every detail of a respondent’s visit offers up a world of possibilities. Your clients are free to request data to address their actual business concerns after the limitations of “dumb” survey technologies have been lifted. You will be able to meet needs by using a survey technique that is as varied as the clientele you serve.
• Executives typically want top-line visibility, such as trending data for Net Promoter Score (NPS), systemic problems, or initiative-specific metrics.
• The online marketing team wants to know demographics associated with the primary acquisition vehicles; they want to know why visitors responded better to one promotion than another.
• The site search team wants to know specifics about visitor response to the reorganization and layout of the results page.
• The merchandising team wants to know why a brand favorite no longer converts at its previous high rates.
• The site architects want to understand how the new taxonomy in the Sale section is working for returning visitors.
• The Checkout team wants to know why conversions dipped when they added a Guest Checkout option.
There are countless varieties. Nevertheless, the advantage of including behavioral capacity into your surveys is that you can benefit from the best of both worlds. By collecting contextual data that offers your internal consumers outstanding value and insight, you can reduce the amount of questions you ask responders by limiting your questions to those that are pertinent to their current site experience.
Survey responders will rarely view more than 20 items in your “master survey document,” which may have 50 questions (perhaps 10 common and 40 variable) and 30 behavioral events to track. Each one’s question mix could be different. By experimenting with invitation rates, you can generate a sufficient number of answers to the variable questions.
The third question you pose in the VOC is:
3. Given our objectives and our information needs, what survey technology should we use?
The solutions are now crystal clear. Your needs are straightforward and your survey technology can be simple if the goal of your VOC is benchmarking. The finest VOC approach, however, will be served by a smart platform– one with the capacity to collect the whole visitor experience and frame each survey in accordance with it. This will generate a great success if you accept ongoing website improvement and a foster a goal towards understanding causality.
Voice of the Customer program best practices
Early warnings and guidance for your success are provided by the Voice of the Customer, straight from the people who really matter—your consumers. Use these five “must-haves” to ensure that your VOC program is constantly improving:
Connect feedback across data channels
The accuracy and breadth of customer insights are hampered by the fact that many firms only use one or two channels to measure and optimize their interactions with customers. Voice of the Customer programs provide insufficient data about customer preferences, behavior, and satisfaction in the absence of an omni-channel feedback tool. In order to provide a more seamless customer experience, prominent brands and businesses also want to gather consumer feedback anywhere their customers are.
Customer Feedback example
Customer feedback surveys
It might be harder than you think to create an outstanding consumer survey. There are many other inquiries you might make of your clients. The good news is that you may select between shorter, slider surveys that appear on your site and help you target particular concerns and lengthier, conventional surveys.
Make sure you adhere to a few straightforward best practices if you want clients to finish a survey:
• Only ask questions that help you meet your goals.
• Write thoughtful open-ended questions.
• Create consistent rating scales.
• Avoid leading or loaded questions.
Collaboration across departments with action planning
In order to develop a successful VOC program, several departments must participate in the gathering, analysis, and application of insights. Action planning solutions should make it simple for departments to work together. Qualtrics Experience Management software, as an example, lets you tag owners, set deadlines, and even provide step-by-step instructions to help everyone delight their consumers.
Incorporate the voice of the employee
A thorough understanding of what is actually happening and why is provided to any organization by connecting the employee and customer experiences. Your company will be better able to understand how employee engagement affects the bottom line if you comprehend this connection.
Customer experience is impacted in three crucial ways by employee input. Employee input:
• Provides context for customer experiences
• Helps identify process, policy, and technology hurdles that hinder experience delivery
• Gives insight into the quality of employees’ experiences.
Use dashboards and reports to surface insights to the right people
You can make sense of what’s happening in your company with a real Voice of the Customer tool. A platform that lets you customize dashboards for each function and provide pertinent insights for the proper audience is what you need.
You may use Qualtrics to generate automated responses and alerts depending on factors such as department, position, location, responses, and more. Additionally, based on the feedback the leadership team receives from the frontline, you may automatically include the appropriate stakeholders.
Deliver clear ROI and business results
Any effective customer experience program must provide returns for the company, therefore it’s crucial to approach it with an eye on return on investment (ROI) and to base all of your measurements, KPI’s, actions, and changes on how they will benefit the company.
ROI ties increases in VOC measures like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) back to a financial metric rather than merely reporting on these data.
Thus, pay attention to:
• Market share — Increasing share of wallet (SOW) by convincing customers to spend more with you than with your competitors, increasing market penetration by broadening your appeal within your target market, and boosting category spending by persuading customers to spend money with you instead of your competitors are some examples of how to do this.
• Cost — A crucial part of any activity involves understanding the costs to serve, attract, and retain customers and comparing these to the anticipated benefits of any improvement. Increased retention may result from improvements in one area, but if the expense of the activity outweighs the anticipated improvement in the bottom line, it is not worthwhile.
• Efficiency — This metric is generally reported as a function of time, whether it be the total number of man-hours needed to satisfactorily execute a task or the whole period of time from start to finish.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) has emerged as the top financial metric for customer experience. This provides a strong assessment of ROI by taking into account a wide range of individual criteria, including share of wallet (SOW), market penetration, cost of acquisition, and customer retention.
A customer is often a cost to the firm at the beginning of their lifecycle, thus you won’t necessarily turn the cost of acquisition into profit for the first 12 months if you only focus on a single measure like customer acquisition. Other factors at play include an increase in your attrition rate.
Focus on the customer
You should always keep the customer in mind and never presume that you know what they want. You must pay close attention to what customers are saying to you and about you in order to stay one step ahead of the competition and meet your customers where they are. And you can accomplish that by putting a tried-and-true Voice of the Customer program in place that gathers, comprehends, and disseminates the knowledge your organization needs to be confident and customer-focused in its decisions.
Kano Model Analysis
What Are the Elements of the Kano Model?
Threshold attributes, performance attributes, and excitement attributes are the three categories of attributes (or properties) that the model assigns to goods and services. You can assess a product or service’s effect on customer satisfaction by categorizing it according to an attribute. Let’s examine each in greater detail:
1. Threshold Attributes (Basics) These are the basic features that customers expect a product or service to have.
For example, when you book a hotel, you’d expect hot water and a bed with clean linen at an absolute minimum.
2. Performance Attributes (Satisfiers) These elements are not absolutely necessary, but they increase a customer’s enjoyment of the product or service.
Returning to our example, you’d be pleased to discover that your hotel room had free superfast broadband and a 4K TV, when you’d normally expect to find paid-for Wi-Fi and a standard TV.
3. Excitement Attributes (Delighters) These are the surprise elements that can really boost your product’s competitive edge . They’re the features that customers don’t even know they want, but are delighted with when they find them.
In your hotel, that might be finding that the staff remembers your name, or you are being offered a free meal or given a box of chocolates.
A product or service’s inclusion (or exclusion) of each of the three traits can have an impact on a customer’s satisfaction level, as shown in Figure 1 below.
You can see that customers’ satisfaction levels will be extremely low if a product’s characteristics doesn’t satisfy their threshold attributes. Even if you completely fulfill these, you won’t really “wow” clients.
The majority of products compete on performance attributes, where a client compares products and evaluates satisfaction based on the accessibility of different features.
However, even if an Excitement Attribute isn’t completely implemented, people could find that it greatly appeals to them and makes them feel quite satisfied.
Customers’ responses to certain characteristics (or their absence) might also have a negative or no impact on satisfaction levels, as seen in Figure 2 below.
A product with only Threshold Attributes, even if it has a lot of them, may not even result in an indifferent degree of consumer satisfaction, as seen in the bottom-right quadrant. (In this case, the baseline difference is displayed along the x-axis.)
When you give Performance Attributes, customers start to find your product appealing. Most businesses position their products in the market along these lines, in the top-right quadrant.
The “wow factor” traits that can provide you a competitive advantage are called excitement attributes. Given that you don’t need many of these features to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction, they can be smart investments.
How to Use the Kano Model
Prior to using Kano Model Analysis, be sure to research the true values of your target market. Never assume you are an expert! Find out their likes, loves, and dislikes by asking them.
You can get support with this procedure from our page on market research. Using focus groups or surveys to directly contact your customers, for instance, is another effective way to monitor their shifting expectations. Additionally, you can determine which attributes in particular are significant to your clients by using Garvin’s 8 Dimensions of Quality.
Similar to that, drawing up a customer journey map can show you all the points of contact with customers and give you insight into their experience.
Tip:
Be careful to identify clients that are representative of the market you wish to sell into when you ask them for feedback. Then take the following five actions:
1. Conduct thorough research on your product or service, as well as anything you can think of to make your clients happy.
2. Sort these into Threshold, Performance, or Excitement Attributes and also include the category Not Relevant as a fourth category. These are the items that customers don’t care about, hence they don’t bring value.
3. Verify that your offering possesses each and every necessary Threshold Attribute. If necessary, you can incorporate these functionalities by removing some Performance Attributes.
4. Consider how you may incorporate some of the excitement attributes into your product or service after evaluating the excitement attributes. Once more, if necessary, reduce some of your Performance Attributes to free up money for your Excitement Attributes.
5. Decide which Performance Attributes you can offer at a price that is both competitive and still leaves you with a respectable profit margin.
Tip:
Include your clients in each of the aforementioned five processes. In this manner, you gain their perspectives throughout the entire procedure.
Key Points
Noriaki Kano, professor of quality management at Tokyo University of Science, created the Kano Model of product development and customer satisfaction in Japan in 1984.
The model gives goods and services three attributes:
1. Threshold Attributes. Customers expect these fundamentals.
2. Performance Characteristics. These are optional but do make a customer happier. To deliver Threshold and Excitement Attributes, you might need to dial back on some of these.
3. Attributes of excitement. These are the pleasant surprises in a good or service that make customers happy. Understanding your customers’ experiences and expectations, and effectively generating innovative ideas for improving your product or service, are key to carrying out Kano Model Analysis successfully.
Case Study: A Real-World Application of The Kano Model of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
In a Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) poll, 1,650 first-class passengers from throughout the world were included. The survey revealed a variety of intriguing conclusions about what first class and business class passengers expect from an airline. When choosing a carrier, two aspects in particular were crucial. These frequent travelers responded that when choosing which airline to fly, safety records and reputation were the most important considerations (84%). Additionally, 67% of respondents cited the importance of the airline providing fully reclined seats (i.e., lay flat). Other comfort-related characteristics that were cited as being critical to enhance the experience were access to airline lounges, internet connection while in flight, good food quality, etc. However, these additional considerations were not as widely mentioned as safety and lie-flat seating.
Regarding consumer loyalty and satisfaction, these airline survey results are very much in accordance with the Kano Model. The Kano Model essentially highlights the significance of distinguishing between performance that leads to customer dissatisfaction and performance that leads to customer joy. Even small improvements in performance on things that delight customers (i.e., “Key Enhancers”) will increase overall customer satisfaction and foster long-term loyalty. Poor performance on attributes that dissatisfy customers (i.e., “Key Dissatisfiers”) will have a dramatic impact on overall customer dissatisfaction and can create disloyalty. Knowing which regions are Dissatisfiers, Enhancers, and those that operate like both (i.e., are both a Dissatisfier and an Enhancer—what Growth from Knowledge Market Research firm (GfK) refers to as a “Dual” Dissatisfier/Enhancer) are the secret.
In terms of the global airline industry, maintaining planes in the air without incident is significantly more crucial to preventing unhappiness than adding lie-flat seating, opening the door to the airline lounge, or serving up some fancy food at 35,000 feet. The comfort-delighters (i.e., Enhancers) however, become crucial to future growth and consumer preference if the airline’s safety record is firmly established and maintained.
Any firm must distinguish between and comprehend how customers perceive how well it has performed in relation to these three categories of expectations:
• Failing to meet minimum expectations on any Key Dissatisfier will critically harm a company, lead to suppressed financial outcomes, and increased customer churn. Most often, avoiding poor performance perceptions on any Key Dissatisfier becomes a top priority for most product or service providers. At the same time, expending precious corporate resources to greatly exceed customer expectations on these same Key Dissatisfiers can be wasteful, and may not have a positive impact on business results.
• Failing to deliver exceptional experiences on Key Enhancers may not drive customers away, but exceeding expectations (even just a little) will delight customers, create points-of-difference from competitors, lead to stronger sales/profits, and heightened customer preference and choice.
In order to help customers select product or service performance enhancements that will have the most impact on overall customer happiness and loyalty, GfK utilizes the Kano Model. Avoiding consumer discontent with the expected “basics” of a firm is of utmost importance (i.e., Key Dissatisfiers).
Exercise 2
1. If I were going to design a survey to listen to the voice of the customer, which questions would be best to ask, and which platform would I share this on for maximum engagement? (Try to be as specific about your company in this response as you can)
Course Manual 3: Successful Change Management
Despite sometimes being referred to as the “soft side of change,” managing the people side of a change is frequently the trickiest and most crucial part of an organizational transition.
Think about an acquisition or merger. The technical aspect of the modification is undoubtedly intricate. You need to decide on the structure of the new corporation, integrate corporate systems, sort out the deal’s financial details, and more. But whether a merger or purchase is successful or unsuccessful may depend on how many people are involved.
Why is that? People will have to carry out their work in a different way. Their willingness to adapt new behaviors and procedures will have a big impact on the initiative. This is why a change’s soft side may also be its hardest side. Fortunately, you can manage the human side of change in an organized way and significantly increase overall success.
The People Side of Change
The human element of change is addressed through change management. If you don’t take your people along, developing a new organization, building new work procedures, and putting new technology into use might never reach full potential. That’s because a company’s ability to make money depends on how fully its employees accept and adapt to change.
A defined procedure and a collection of tools are used in change management to guide the people side of the change(s) toward a desired result. In the end, change management focuses on how to assist individuals in embracing and utilizing a change in their regular work activities.
We acknowledge that change management is both a process and also a capability when we define it.
Change Management as a Process
The change management process enables professionals inside businesses to grow and leverage the change management initiatives that aid in the transition of impacted people and groups. The Prosci 3-Phase Process, a powerful, evidence-based procedure, is part of the Prosci Methodology:
During Phase 1 – Prepare Approach, we ask and answer:
• What are we trying to achieve?
• Who has to do their jobs differently and how?
• What will it take to achieve success?
During Phase 2 – Manage Change, we ask and answer:
• What will we do to prepare, support and engage people?
• How are we doing?
• What adjustments do we need to make?
And during Phase 3 – Sustain Outcomes, we ask and answer:
• Now, where are we? Are we done yet?
• What is needed to ensure the change sticks?
• Who will assume ownership and sustain outcomes?
Change Management as a Competency
Change management is a leadership skill for facilitating change inside an organization at the organizational level. Additionally, it is a strategic competency intended to improve the organization’s capacity for change and response.
For senior executives, being competent in change management entails having the ability to drive change for the organization, which includes being a successful change sponsor and exhibiting commitment to the change on a personal and organizational level. Competency pertains to effectively guiding direct reports through their transition journeys for people managers dealing with front-line staff. Organizations that develop change management abilities throughout their ranks are more effective and successful, even though proficiency varies depending on your relationship to change.
Communication and training are only two aspects of change management. It also goes beyond dealing with resistance. A planned procedure and a comprehensive collection of tools are used by effective change management to promote both individual and organizational change.
Why Do We Need Change Management?
Effective change management should be used on both large- and small-scale projects for a variety of reasons. Here are the top three explanations:
1. Organizational change happens one person at a time
2. Ignoring the people side of change is costly
3. Change management increases the likelihood of success
Organizational change happens one person at a time
It is simple to solely consider change from an organizational standpoint. You might concentrate on financial structuring, data and system integration, and changes to physical locations when considering a merger or acquisition. However, any type of organizational transformation happens one individual at a time. That’s because only when employees Andre, Becky, Carlos, and Dharma perform their tasks differently does an organization-wide shift take place.
Rather than organizations changing, people do. Successful organizational change is the result of the cumulative effects of successful individual change. An organizational transformation project won’t succeed if people don’t make adjustments to their regular tasks and evolve their workspaces to accommodate a more enhanced direction.
Ignoring the people side of change is costly
Poorly managing or ignoring the people side of change has many consequences:
• Productivity declines on a larger scale for a longer duration than necessary
• Managers are unwilling to devote time or resources needed to support the change
• Key stakeholders do not show up to meetings and/or stay on task
• Suppliers begin to feel the impact and see the disruption caused by change
• Customers feel negative impacts of a change that should have been invisible to them
• Employee morale suffers and divisions between “us” and “them” begin to emerge
• Stress, confusion and fatigue increase
• Valued employees leave the organization
Additionally, projects experience rework, budget overruns, missed deadlines, and even abandonment. The health of the project and the organization are co-dependent and directly impacted by these repercussions. Fortunately, if you apply a disciplined strategy to the people side of change, you can minimize these problems.
Change management increases the likelihood success
The likelihood that a project will achieve its goals is directly affected by effective change management, according to a growing body of data. According to Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking research, only 15% of participants with subpar change management met or surpassed goals, compared to 93% of those with good change management.
In other words, initiatives with superior change management had a six-fold higher likelihood of achieving their goals than those with subpar change management. The study’s finding that ineffective change management corresponds with greater success than using none at all may be its most illuminating finding.
Prosci study even demonstrates a link between successful change management and adhering to a budget and timeline.
Individual versus Organizational Change Management
A personal perspective and an organizational perspective are necessary for handling change effectively.
Individual Change Management
Understanding how people experience change is what the individual perspective is all about. Prosci’s ADKAR Model states that a person has successfully changed when they have:
The adjustment won’t be as effective if someone becomes trapped on a construction block and cannot move forward sequentially through the model. Ensuring that individuals have Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement is the aim of leading the people side of change.
Organizational Change Management
Project teams use specific procedures and techniques from the organizational perspective of change management to assist effective individual change. If the ADKAR Model outlines what a person requires in order to successfully implement a change, then, accordingly, organizational change management is the collection of steps that an organization takes to increase its overall level of awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement.
Change Management Roles
Similar to a play’s director, a change practitioner supports players on stage by working behind the scenes. A change enabler supports and equips senior leaders and people managers to carry out their special, employee-facing tasks as they work to establish the change management strategy and plans.
For instance, studies have shown that employees prefer to hear about organizational change from top-level executives. Additionally, they want to hear from their immediate supervisor about how the change would affect their day-to-day job.
The role of the practitioner is to support key leaders and people managers in carrying out these and other employee-facing tasks successfully. The success or failure of a project or program will be determined by how well senior leaders and people managers perform these crucial duties during times of transition.
How You Can Create Successful Change
What can you do to lead change more skillfully? Start implementing change management on your projects and develop a change management culture within your company. These are the initial steps in ensuring that projects achieve their goals.
The difficult aspect of change is its impact on people, not its easier aspect. When it comes to the success of your initiative and avoiding the countless expenses that come with poorly managed change, investing the time and effort to manage the people side of your organizational initiatives pays off in the end.
The Role of a Change Agent: Characteristics, Types, Skills
New competitors, changing client wants, and technological advances all have an impact on company dynamics across industries. Having a change management strategy is essential since change is constant.
To overcome their resistance to change and successfully drive the overall transformation, employees require external encouragement, support, and guidance when they start the change journey. This outside help may come from change agents, consultants from outside the organization, or change leadership within the business.
We’ll learn more about change agents, including how they assist with staff acculturation to new practices and why firms turn to them for research and implementation of business process improvements.
Who Is a Change Agent?
An individual who serves as a catalyst for the change management process is referred to as a change agent, often known as the primary advocate of change. By motivating and influencing others, they assist an organization—or a division or department of an organization—in changing how it functions. A change agent will advocate for, support, enable, and encourage the implementation of change inside an organization.
Responsibilities of Change Agents
Key tasks carried out by a change agent include:
• Communicating how change is beneficial for both the organization and employees
• Listening to the involved team members and employees to gain feedback and incorporate it in the implementation process
• Understanding employees’ reactions to change and reducing resistance to change
• Actively engaging with employees by conducting change management exercises
• Encouraging and supporting employees to become change champions and promote the concept
• Identifying and leading other change agents and change consultants to succeed
• Providing feedback on challenges facing the change management lead
Internal versus External Change Agents
Change agents can be chosen from both within and outside of an organization.
An internal change agent is typically a team member who is knowledgeable about the organization’s development, behavioral sciences, and human intervention. Examples of such team members include managers, senior executives, leaders, human resources (HR) professionals, and others.
The fact that internal change agents are aware of the organization’s history of change initiatives and social politics is noteworthy in this case. They will work assiduously to build strong connections to strengthen attitudes and cultural views toward change, even after the implementation process is complete. To assist their effort, firms must choose external change agents if they don’t have an inside employee with the necessary expertise.
An external change agent is a consultant or change practitioner from a different organization who possesses the necessary competencies to advance change initiatives. They are uncolored by any history and routine of company rules, regulations, and policies, which enables them to thoroughly examine a variety of scenarios and provide appropriate change management models and techniques that aid in preventing change failures.
Although external change agents offer a different viewpoint, their presence can challenge the current workforce by making them feel uneasy, and their hiring can add a significant cost to long change initiatives.
Types of Change Agents
Every change endeavor has different needs, and particular change agents are required to assist them. The following three categories of change agents can help your organization change:
1. People-Focused Change Agents
Employee morale and motivation are raised by people-focused change agents, which aids employees in adjusting to change. Through behavior modification, job enrichment, and goal-setting, they examine issues such as absenteeism, turnover, and the caliber of work produced.
2. Organizational & Operational Structure Change Agents
To increase effectiveness and efficiency, these change agents concentrate on altering the organizational structure. Operations research, systems analysis, and policy studies are just a few of the analytical techniques that organizational structure change agents employ to alter the organization’s technology or structure.
3. Internal Process Change Agents
These change agents put a lot of emphasis on internal processes including communication, decision-making, and intergroup relations. Internal process change agents choose to implement the change through sensitivity training, team building, and employee surveys using a cultural change strategy.
Roles of Change Agents within an Organization
According to the demands and requirements of a change project, a change agent takes on one or more roles. Change agents can play one of four different roles.
1. Consultant
This change agent role acts as a change consultant to ensure a two-way flow of data and then does additional data analysis to give the team members useful insights.
2. Communicator and Advocator
Organizations frequently put too much emphasis on logistics during change implementation and not enough on change communication.
According to Gartner, 73% of employees report moderate to high levels of stress as a result of poor change communication, and those individuals perform 5% worse than average.
Therefore, for change to be successful, it must be accepted and supported by the team members; without good change management communication, the change is more apt to fail.
3. Trainer
A change manager frequently assumes the job of a trainer in addition to that of a consultant to assist team members in acting on the knowledge gained from data analysis and in developing new skills in preparation for the upcoming digital or technical change.
To give employee training and onboarding for a new procedure or application, organizations also make use of outside knowledge or change management technologies, like Whatfix’s digital adoption platform. Whatfix promotes a culture of self-help and offers a customized onboarding and training experience with features like customisable pop-ups and interactive walkthroughs in-app, offering contextual training and on-demand support – all within the context of work.
4. Researcher
A change agent, like a standard researcher, concentrates on resolving present issues while foreseeing future difficulties. Additionally, he/she performs competitive analyses and assesses how well an organization’s implementation plan and overall change management strategy are working.
Agents of Change Examples
Examples of change agents can be found in all sorts of teams, companies, and industries in addition to the various roles that change agents play. The organization’s change life cycle will determine the primary change agent.
For instance, British Airways Chairman, John King, made challenging choices like organizational reorganization, route cancellation, and downsizing which then allowed the airline to update its fleet of planes and reduce expenses. Because of this, British Airways was able to shift from a poor state-owned carrier to a forerunner in the privatized aviation industry.
Examples of various agents of change include:
• A consultant or internal researcher tasked with identifying what changes are needed in an organization
• A leader of a cross-functional stretch team tasked with creating an innovative solution to a complex problem that continues to challenge the progress of a company
• A learning and development professional tasked with training and supporting team members during a change
• A manager or director tasked with implementing a new software system or digital transformation process
What Are The Characteristics of Successful Change Agents?
More than ever, the position of a change agent is crucial since unsuccessful efforts cause costly losses and many years to pass before the company’s performance improves. For instance, Nike’s unsuccessful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software installation resulted in a total loss to the company of around 500 million dollars (USD), including missed revenue, project budget expenditures, and lawsuits brought about by unfulfilled orders.
The success of every change endeavor ultimately depends on crucial characteristics of a change agent and their interaction with the key decision-makers. In order to be a change agent who is truly effective, work to cultivate the following traits and abilities:
• Understands the Vision
• Both Broad and Acute Industry Knowledge
• Patient, yet Persistent
• Builds Strong Interpersonal Relationships
• Leads by Example
• Pragmatic
• Enthusiastic
• Well Respected
• Strong Communicator
• Experienced Negotiator
• Empathetic
• Organized
Techniques Used By Change Agents
An effective change manager will use different change management techniques to facilitate organizational change. Here are some notable methods change agents frequently employ:
1. Change Management Exercises
A change agent must lead discussions and training sessions that help workers comprehend and accept change. Exercises in change management offer a chance to discuss the change, evaluate the underlying goals, and comprehend the advantages for the organization of joining in at the beginning.
2. WIIFM
What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) is a key tactic for change agents. Employees must be won over by change agents by addressing their specific concerns. Communicate in a way that is specific to each team or employee’s level of involvement in the change and how it will affect them.
Consider changing from biweekly to monthly payroll processing, as an example. Everyone in the company will be impacted, but accounting will be more severely impacted than other departments. You’ll need to speak with each department differently and give the payroll team specific information about the change.
3. Stakeholder Analysis
Various stakeholders impacted by the change initiative are analyzed and categorized using the project management technique known as stakeholder analysis. This analysis offers suggestions for how change agents may meet the interests of the stakeholders, maintain their support for the transformation, and help prevent disruption. The change agent should compile a matrix of all interested parties, evaluate it, and note any anticipated attitudes toward the transformation.
4. Persuasive Technique
A change agent must create a convincing case for the necessity and advantages of the change initiative, as well as the related implementation strategy needed to carry it out. Depending on the activities and the stakeholders, the change agent will employ specific and pertinent strategies.
MoSCoW Technique
Change agents employ the MoSCoW method, a prioritizing strategy, to reach consensus on the relative value of various deliverables. MoSCoW consists of:
• Need to have
• Must have
• Might have
• Will not have
The change owner should adjust their influencing strategy in accordance with the “must haves” using the results of the MoSCoW analysis.
Conclusion
Every organizational change, no matter how big or little, needs one or more change agents. An external or internal change agent has the skill set necessary to lead and support the change effort and position your company for success.
Case Study: How Nokia successfully employed change management
Prior to the widespread adoption of smartphones, Nokia was a leading provider of mobile phones, accounting for 40% of the market in 2007. The Finnish corporation, however, was on the verge of failure by 2012, with shares down to under $2 from roughly $40 just five years earlier and more than $2 billion in operating losses in the first half of 2012.
The company appointed a new CEO and set out to remake itself after realizing it had missed the chance to take the lead in the smartphone industry’s progression. It changed its focus to network and mapping technology after selling its floundering mobile device division to Microsoft.
The corporation unveiled its Booster Program in 2008 in an effort to keep up with competitors’ emerging technology and constantly shifting client expectations. Manufacturing and development were condensed into only three horizontal business divisions, and the organization went from nine to four business units.
Siemens, a partner in the Finnish giant’s network infrastructure business since 2007, was also acquired, and the networks division became the company’s primary operation. As a result, shareholder value increased substantially. With the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent and the sale of its mapping division, Nokia has fully transitioned into a provider of full-service network infrastructure.
Nokia’s journey from a nearly bankrupt hardware maker to a top player in network infrastructure and technology shows how large organizations can adapt to significant disruptions.
Exercise 3
Do I understand why the change is needed?
– Make a note of the reasons why your organization is needing this change. For example, are you doing it to empower staff and is it vital to your organization’s continuous improvement transformation?
Do I know what is expected of me during this change?
– Make a note of how you, personally, will contribute to the change e.g. Support staff by having regular meetings where you answer any questions they may have. Some people are more open to change than others!
Share your answers with the group.
Course Manual 4: Business Process Management
In the majority of firms, managing business processes is a tremendous task. Many business owners believe it to be a significant expense or that it is only beneficial for extremely complex procedures. Nevertheless, BPM is significant regardless of the size of your company.
The meaning of Business Process Management (BPM)
Business process management (BPM) is characterized as an organizational discipline in which a business examines each of these processes separately and also together. To build a more effective and efficient organization, it assesses the current situation and pinpoints possibilities for change.
The predictable processes that make up the foundation of a company’s business are created, edited, and analyzed using business process management (BPM).
Each division in a firm is in charge of collecting some data or raw materials and turning them into something else. Each department may manage a dozen or more key procedures.
Is BPM similar to project or task management?
Business process management is neither project management or task management, which concentrates on specific tasks (which handles one-time or unpredictable flows).
In task management, a group of actions that result from a project are handled or organized. These projects are frequently unique and one-offs. A project management tool like “Microsoft Project” is employed when these projects are well-organized, such in construction work. For managing tasks in ad-hoc projects, use Trello, Asana, or Kissflow Project.
Business process management, often known as process management, is more concerned with continuing, repetitive procedures that follow a predictable pattern.
What is the purpose of Business Process Management?
Poor business procedures can cause mayhem if they are left disorganized and unsystematized. At the individual level, people only observe a small portion of a process, and few are able to scan out and see all of a business process’ consequences, including where it begins and finishes, the crucial data required, and any potential bottlenecks or inefficiencies.
Uncontrolled, chaotic processes are bad for business and can result in any of the following situations:
• Time wasted
• More errors
• Increased blame and finger-pointing
• Lack of data
• Demoralized employees
Organizations can enhance their processes and maintain optimum operation in all areas by using business process management.
A BPM lifecycle’s steps
Step 1: Design
A workflow and a form/template are typically used in procedures to collect data. Create your form and decide who will be in charge of each workflow step.
Step 2: Model
Create a layout in which to visualize the process. Focus on specifics such as conditions and deadlines to provide a clear picture of the process’s order of events and data flow.
Step 3: Execute
Implement the procedure by running it through a small group test (pilot) before making it available to all users. Ensure that access to sensitive information is limited.
Step 4: Monitor
As the process progresses through the workflow, pay attention to it. To ensure that process monitoring is carried out successfully, use the appropriate metrics to track development, gauge effectiveness, and identify process bottlenecks.
Step 5: Optimize
As you conduct your analysis, take note of any adjustments that need to be made to your form or workflow to improve efficiency. Think about making improvements to corporate processes.
What are some other types of business process management?
Source: Kissflow.com
BPM systems can be grouped according to the function they perform. The three categories of business process management are as follows:
Integration-centric BPM
Without much human participation, this kind of business process management system manages procedures that mostly switch between your current systems (such as HRMS, CRM, and ERP). Systems for managing business processes that focus on integration have a large number of connectors and API access, enabling the development of quick processes.
Human-centric BPM
BPM that is focused on people is used for processes that are largely carried out by people. These frequently require numerous permissions and separate activities. The user interfaces, notifications, and tracking on these platforms are excellent from a user perspective.
Document-centric BPM
When a document (such a contract or agreement) sits at the center of the process, these business process management solutions are necessary. They make it possible for tasks to be routed, formatted, verified, and signed as they go through the workflow.
Each of these can be included in the majority of business process management systems, but they typically each have a particular focus.
Examples of business process management
Human Resources (HR)
Have you ever thought that the onboarding procedure at your company is overly convoluted and disorganized? Does your HR department require candidates to spend a lot of time filling out paper forms, or even too many disjointed web forms? This is a result of your HR department not decidedly adhering to the BPM philosophy (BPM). By streamlining and automating your HR operations from beginning to end, business process management enables you to save money, time, and paper forms. Here are a few instances of how business process management can assist your HR department streamline its operations:
• Quicker approval of employee timesheets
• Easily onboard new employees
Sales
To get sales invoices accepted, the accounts receivable (AR) staff and the sales team typically spend a lot of time working together. The salespeoples’ lives are sometimes upended by even the smallest error on invoices. Business process management can help in this situation since it automates the acceptance of invoices, removing the possibility of manual errors and the need for back-and-forth clarifications between the sales team and the AR team. Here are a few examples where business process management can assist the sales department in streamlining their procedures:
• Shorten your sales cycle workflows
• Submit quotes and bills on time
Finance
Every day, a finance team is inundated with electronic tasks, emails and even paper forms since everything involving money must pass through them. As an illustration, if the asset management team wishes to buy 50 computers, they transmit the vendor’s quote to the finance team for approval. This is but one example. Imagine the volume of emails and paper forms that they receive daily from different teams. They struggle to manage all of these without a structure in place. They are able to control everything thanks to business process management (BPM) software and automation. Here are a few instances in the finance division where business process management proves to be a lifesaver:
• Travel request approvals in one click
• Customize workflows for unique scenarios
Features that every technology that is capable of managing business processes should have.
Here is a list of the qualities a good business process management system ought to have (now that you are aware of the reasons why a BPM system is required).
• Visual process diagramming tool
• Drag-and-drop form designer
• Role-based access control
• Mobile support
• Powerful administrator features
• Single sign-on (SSO)
• Integration with existing software systems
• Reports and analytics
• Performance for large user bases
• Process performance metrics
What are the benefits of incorporating business process management?
Here are some of the primary benefits of using BPM in your business:
• Gain control of chaotic and unwieldy processes
• Create, map, analyze, and improve business processes
• Run everyday operations more efficiently
• Realize bigger organizational goals
• Move toward digital transformation
• Improve and optimize tangled operations
• Closely track individual items as they move through a workflow
How Businesses Use BPM to Gain an Advantage
Businesses incorporate Business Process Management (BPM) into their company to carry out processes effectively.
Within an organization, processes are tasks and actions. The company couldn’t run without them. Although you might not think of the regular activities your company engages in as “processes,” that is exactly what they are. And that is how it ought to be viewed.
All businesses can be enhanced since these individual processes can be optimized. Businesses utilize BPM for this reason.
Why Companies Need to Be More Agile and Use Fewer Resources
Stakeholders seize the opportunity whenever it is possible to reduce resources without sacrificing quality.
BPM achieves this precise goal by reducing resource expenses while still promoting revenue development and inspiring team members.
Businesses today need to be flexible. The capacity to respond to demands, questions from customers, and obstacles is provided by agility. Those who don’t respond right away risk failing completely.
BPM offers the essential agility and control because of this. Businesses are granted consistent authority over their operating procedures. A controlled procedure enables businesses to be more involved and consequently responsive.
Numerous outcomes come from improved processes. Businesses where BPM is used will see growth thanks to improved performance, increased worker productivity, and the capacity to react rapidly.
Every business wants to accomplish more with less resources. Reduced costs as a result of fewer resources allow for greater savings for businesses. Costs are cut and redistributed through BPM if necessary.
Businesses utilize BPM for just these advantages. However, it also pertains to the provision of innovation.
Innovation is the Key to Business Success
A company grows when it has the capacity to innovate every day.
Supply chains are a crucial component of innovation, and BPM makes it possible to streamline these processes. Agility has the additional benefit of accelerating the market entry of any concept or product.
When your products and/or services can attract clients’ attention quickly, you can establish yourself as a thought leader. You also have the ability to capitalize on marketplaces faster than the competition, which is an obvious advantage.
To make the explanations clear…
A straightforward (yet fundamental) explanation of why businesses use BPM is that it enables them to accomplish more with less team effort and still provide high-quality results.
Revenue can increase more quickly since it aids in cost and resource control.
Processes can produce consistent results that are effective and reproducible by utilizing the power of contemporary technology and innovative approaches.
It is obvious that businesses utilize BPM to stay ahead of the market, have effective staff, cut expenses, and manage compliance.
Case Study: Camunda enables Process as a Service at R+V Versicherung
Insurance businesses are using technology more and more to effectively respond to market trends and advancements. R+V Versicherung AG has revamped its BPM architecture with Camunda and is now able to create, maintain, and run its process applications locally in order to stay one step ahead of rivals. With more adaptability, new requirements may be met more rapidly, which will directly benefit the company’s success.
Leading insurers are embracing digitalization.
With over 17,000 workers and 20 billion EUR in annual revenue, R+V is one of the biggest insurance businesses in Germany and a member of the cooperative financial services network. The R+V Group was successful in increasing the premiums written by more than 8% in 2020 and outperformed the industry significantly in every category. This accomplishment was primarily due to a thoughtful digital strategy that is already showing promise. The Camunda Platform is one of the pillars of this strategy.
A greater degree of agility adds value.
Before implementing Camunda, keeping all automated business processes up to date was always a challenge for an insurance company of this size – the old, monolithic software solution with three BPM environments was too inflexible. For example, it took months of preparation to perform a release change, as many manual tests needed to be carried out and environments needed to be completely rebuilt. Additionally, the update process was associated with system failures, which had a negative impact on the customer experience. As a result, release changes were only carried out every few years, with smaller updates of the BPM software several times a year.
These days, Jörg Ziegelmayer, R+V’s product manager for all BPM engines, supports new releases several times a month with virtually no downtime.
In the new microservices environment, this is done locally in the respective specialist teams that develop and operate the applications
The new development paradigm facilitates an agile approach and a productive DevOps culture, which in turn enables a shorter time-to-market for new services
In this way, R+V’s IT strategy greatly contributes to the corporate goals.
Open architecture enables easy integration.
Open architecture also plays a vital role in R+V Versicherung’s transformation, as it allows various other architecture and frameworks (microservices, applications developed in-house, etc.) to be integrated with ease. On the R+V customer and sales agent user interfaces, standardized web interfaces interact directly with the automated back-end processes. The same applies to insurance broker programs that work with R+V’s BPM processes – creating a claim, automatically generating a claim number, or orchestrating the functional process- ing behind it, for example. A large part of these processes is fully automated: the proportion of black box processing in businesses has significantly increased.
Camunda therefore fits seamlessly into R+V’s current IT strategy which, like many modern architectures, is cloud based.
Because Camunda Platform scales better than the previous BPM solution, peak loads can be absorbed more easily for example when there are heavy losses after a weather event or when customers are increasingly comparing prices and want to change their insurance company.
Exercise 4
Course Manual 5: Project Management
Why Is Project Management Important?
Strategic Alignment
Project management is crucial since it presents that what achieved as a result of a project deliverable, is accurate and applicable, and will actually contribute to achieving the corresponding business opportunity.
Every customer has strategic personal goals, which are advanced by the projects and/or the resulting products we complete for them. Because one of a project manager’s responsibilities is to ensure that projects are rigorously designed so that they fit well within the larger context of our client’s strategic frameworks, project management is crucial.
The objectives of projects should be tightly aligned with the strategic goals of the company, according to thorough project management.
Project management is crucial in determining a strong business case and being rigorous when calculating return on investment (ROI) because it may help guarantee the proper product is delivered and will actually add value.
Of course, risks can appea and develop into problems. Further, the business plan could change as initiatives move forward. However, a project manager will ensure that the project is adjusted and included in any realignment(s). Project management is crucial in this situation, since projects that deviate from the intended route or fail to adapt to the needs of the business, may wind up being costly or out of scope.
1. Leadership
Because it gives projects direction and leadership, project management is critical as a function of leadership.
A team without project management may be like a ship without a rudder—moving but with no clearly defined sense of purpose or direction. Team members can perform at their highest level thanks to effective leadership. Project management offers direction and vision, drives the team forward, clears obstacles, coaches them, and encourages them to perform at their highest level.
Project managers support the group while also establishing clear lines of responsibility. When a project manager is in place, it is clear who is in charge and in control of everything that is happening in the project (especially if you’re utilizing a RACI chart or other tools of a similar nature). Project managers are ultimately responsible for whether the project is a success or a failure, thus they must enforce processes and keep everyone on the team on task.
2. Clear Focus and Objectives
Project management is crucial since it makes sure that a comprehensive plan is in place for carrying out strategic objectives.
Teams who are given free rein to figure out project management on their own often do so without clear briefs or a defined project management methodology. Projects might lack focus, have hazy or unclear goals, and leave the team unsure of their exact responsibilities or the reasons behind them.
By segmenting a project into tasks for our teams, project managers put themselves in a position to avoid this and promote the timely completion of assignments.
The ability to foresee such an approach is frequently what distinguishes excellent project management from poor project management. As risk management is crucial in project management, breaking up work into smaller chunks helps teams stay focused on specific goals by directing their efforts toward completing smaller steps that will eventually lead to the project’s final goal.
The objectives of a project frequently need to be adjusted as potential and/or actual risks materialize. Again, a project could quickly become unmanageable without focused oversight, but effective project management (and a strong project manager) allows the team to concentrate on its goals and, when necessary.
3. Realistic Project Planning
Project management is crucial because it guarantees that realistic expectations are set regarding what can be delivered, by when, and for how much.
Without adequate project management and a sound project plan, budget estimates and project delivery timeframes can be created that are overly ambitious or lack parallel estimating insight from similar projects. In the end, this means that poor project management results in late and overbudget project delivery.
Negotiating timelines and milestones with key stakeholders, teams, and management should be a skill of effective project managers. Too frequently, the pressure to deliver affects the essential phases and, ultimately, the project’s quality.
We can all agree that many project activities will take longer than initially expected. A smart project manager will be able to assess the resources at hand, strike a balance between them and the necessary deadline, and create a realistic schedule. Project management is crucial for scheduling because it lends planning objectivity.
An experienced project manager establishes a clear approach with attainable deadlines in order for everyone on the project team to work within reasonable constraints and not with unjustified expectations.
4. Quality Control
Project management is crucial since it guarantees that the quality of deliverables that are being produced by the project continually meets a specified level of expectations.
Additionally, there is frequently a lot of pressure on projects to be finished. Without a committed project manager who has executive management’s backing and buy-in, tasks are undervalued, timeframes are compressed, and procedures are hurried. Because there is no quality management in place, the production is of poor quality.
The product is quality validated at every level thanks to committed project management, which also guarantees that a project has the time and resources to complete.
Gated phases are necessary for good project management so that teams may evaluate the output for quality, applicability, and ROI. Project management is crucial to quality because it enables a staged and staggered approach, giving teams time to review and verify their outputs at each stage of the process.
5. Risk Management
Project management is crucial because it makes sure risks are effectively handled and countered to prevent problems.
The success of a project depends on effective risk management. The temptation is to simply ignore them, avoid bringing them up in conversations with the client, and essentially, gamble a bit. But what helps prevent risks from becoming reality is having a strong process around the identification, management, and mitigation of risk. Dealing with risk is where project management really adds value, especially in complicated projects.
Project managers must thoroughly assess all potential risks to the project, quantify them, come up with a plan to mitigate them, as well as a backup plan in case any of them materialize. To identify dangers early, one needs to know the correct questions to ask.
Naturally, risks should be prioritized based on how likely they are to occur, and suitable actions are allotted for each risk (some project managers use a dedicate risk management software for this). The ability to deal with change and modify our project management strategy is crucial to completing projects successfully because projects never seem to go exactly as planned.
6. Orderly Process
Project management is crucial because it guarantees that the appropriate people do the right things at the right times and that the proper project management procedures are followed throughout the project life cycle.
Unexpectedly, many well-known, significant firms have reactive planning procedures that aren’t really based on any effective project management techniques.
Reactivity, as opposed to proactivity, can, nonetheless, frequently result in enterprises entering a state of survival. Teams split up, tasks overlap, and planning becomes ad hoc, which makes the team less effective and causes frustration.
Proper planning and process can make a significant difference as the team is aware of who is doing what, when, and how. A good process clarifies roles, streamlines inputs and procedures, foresees hazards, and establishes checks and balances to guarantee that the project is continuously in accordance with the overall goal. Project management is important in this situation because businesses run the danger of resource waste, project failure, and a loss of trust in their business connections without a structured, understandable approach.
7. Continuous Oversight
Project management is crucial since it guarantees accurate tracking and reporting of a project’s progress.
If everything goes according to plan, status reporting may seem pointless and uninteresting, and it may even seem like documentation for the sake of documentation. Continuous project oversight, however, is essential to guaranteeing that a project is proceeding according to the original plan and that it stays on course.
It is clearly easier to identify when a project is starting to stray from its intended course when effective oversight and project reporting are in place. Additionally, it is much easier to correct course when you can identify any project deviations earlier in the project life cycle.
As part of their stakeholder management, effective project managers often produce progress or status reports that are simple to understand. Clients or other project stakeholders can now independently track the project thanks to this. These status updates typically offer insights into the work that was accomplished and planned, the hours used and how they compare to those anticipated, the project’s progress in relation to milestones, risks, assumptions, problems, and dependencies, as well as any project outputs.
In addition to being essential for tracking progress, this information also helps clients win over other organizational stakeholders and give them simple access to project status updates. Additionally, it provides your staff with a quick, reliable method of staying in touch on a frequent basis to strengthen your customer relationships.
8. Subject Matter Expertise
Project management is crucial because someone must be able to determine whether everyone is acting appropriately.
Project managers that have a few years of experience under their belt will have solid knowledge of many different areas of completing the projects they oversee. They will develop technical experience, project management abilities, and subject matter knowledge. They will be fully aware of the tasks carried out by their teams, the platforms and systems they use, any opportunities and constraints, and the typical challenges that may arise.
They are able to have intelligent and well-informed dialogues with clients, teams, stakeholders, and suppliers because to their level of subject matter expertise and experience. They are well suited to serve as the project’s central center of communication, making sure that nothing is lost or forgotten as the project moves between various teams and work phases.
Without subject matter expertise provided by project management, a project may fall out of balance as the creatives fail to consider technological constraints or the developers overlook the project’s creative vision. Project management pulls everyone together and forces the necessary concessions to keep the team concentrated on the overall goal of the project.
9. Managing and Learning from Success and Failure
Project management is crucial because it draws lessons from prior successes and mistakes.
Project management may help you to overcome negative habits, and it’s crucial to avoid repeating errors when executing projects. Retrospectives, lessons learned, or post-project reviews are tools that project managers use to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what has to be done better for the following project.
This results in a useful collection of documentation that serves as a list of future “do’s and don’ts,” allowing the organization to learn from both successes and errors. Teams will frequently keep making the same mistakes over and over again without this learning.
These retrospectives are fantastic tools to utilize at a project launch meeting to remind the new project team about valuable lessons learned, such as underestimating projects. It is also a great time to shed light on past successes, such as the advantages of a strong process or the significance of maintaining timesheet reporting accuracy.
Summary Recap: The Importance Of Project Management
Without effective project management, teams and clients are subject to haphazard oversight, hazy goals, a lack of resources, unrealistic planning, varying levels of risk, subpar project deliverables, overbudgeting, and late delivery.
Seasoned project management is important because well-trained project managers simply produce great results.
Seasoned project management assembles and enables teams that are happy and motivated to work hard because they recognize how important their work is. Further, that project management-capable team makes sure the correct products and/or services produces a genuine return on investment (ROI) and creates satisfied customers.
Project Management Dashboard
A project management dashboard is a data-driven platform that presents a customized mix of KPI’s in one single, viewable area to enhance decision-making as well as the performance of the project. It does this by displaying measurements, stats, and insights as information that is unique to a particular project or plan.
Such a dashboard is ideal for particular departments wanting to track the effectiveness of their initiatives and marketing campaigns, identify historical or current trends, and eventually help all areas of company’s performance become more visible. Due to its easy usage and flexible access, project dashboard software is especially useful for interdepartmental communication, although we shall go into more detail about this idea later in the course manual.
How To Create A Project Management Dashboard?
A project management dashboard is undoubtedly an effective online tool for data analysis. However, this user-friendly data-driven software is only useful if it possesses the necessary characteristics, features, and functionality. Here are the eight key suggestions you should pay attention to while developing such a dashboard to guide your success:
1. Take into account digestibility
The pressure to complete a project will likely be intense at times, so getting immediate access to the appropriate information is essential if you want to meet your deadlines and accomplish your goals. Any effective project management tool will serve up insights in a way that allows you to quickly extract value from them, and be aesthetically appealing and properly designed.
2. Make sure to focus on usability
Project management dashboards must be totally user-friendly in addition to being easily digestible (or “scannable,” as it’s frequently called). Everyone in the company should be able to use your web dashboards fairly easily, and technical staff shouldn’t be required to step in and carry out routine data-driven operations. In other words, a project dashboard worth its salt will make it simple for all departments to consume the information that matters most to their function in a given project.
3. Choose the appropriate set of key performance indicators (KPI’s)
You must establish appropriate key performance indicators regardless of the type of project you are working on. There will be particular metrics you need to monitor for each of your data sources. Metrics for project management can be conveniently gathered into one place of access by using a dynamic dashboard. A dynamic dashboard generally has the capacity to refresh/update its data connections in real time or at least on a 24 hour basis. While there are many examples to choose from, only a few prominent, applicable KPI’s will be appropriate for your particular project. It’s crucial to choose a few KPI’s that will tell an informational story (and allow you to drill down into details, if necessary, on anything from the specific project status, team performance, and stated responsibilities) to upper management.
4. Benefit from strategic and operational dashboards
In our set of examples, we had demonstrated a project controlling dashboard. The dashboards used in this aspect of project management might be either operational or strategic. Operational dashboards, on the other hand, are intended to maintain track of the progress of an ongoing project in terms of things like expenses, deadlines, and resources. Strategic project dashboards, on the other hand, are intended to monitor the project as a whole, ensure that it is economical and efficient, as well as identify dangers. It is crucial for your management process to take into account both strategies because doing so will guarantee that the project is successful in the end.
5. Customize each element on your dashboard
It’s essential for your project management dashboard to be fully customizable. By customizing your business intelligence (BI) dashboard, you’ll be able to set KPI’s that are most relevant to your project while integrating platforms and services that are most useful to your activities and choosing designs or layouts that will prove the most helpful to you and your colleagues. The important notion here is not to overburden the dashboard with information that’s not relevant, too many colors, or metrics that wouldn’t even fit into your story. As mentioned earlier, choosing the right KPI’s as well as customizing the design and the position of each element will prove to be the more efficient way to present your project and it’s performance.
6. Automate your reporting processes to save time
The ability to schedule and automate your reporting activities is one of the final components when building a project management visualization or dashboard. You won’t have to manually update the data or manage many spreadsheets at once, which will save you countless hours whether you need a daily, weekly, or monthly overview. You may concentrate solely on your data and automate the time-consuming activities of regularly producing and distributing reports by using a professional BI dashboard platform. Project management requires that many various perspectives remain in alignment at all times, so this is crucial.
7. Extract actionable insights and learn from the process
Although it can seem obvious, it never hurts to reiterate a point. Once your project management dashboard is completely operational, you need to move past merely tracking metrics to extract useful information that will help you streamline various procedures and identify areas for development. When your project is finished, you may examine the data, determine what could have been done better or differently, and develop plans for your upcoming initiatives.
8. Use professional project management dashboard software
If you don’t have the time to create your own project status dashboard template, professional software will let you combine all of our instructional guidance into a single, unified point of access that you can personalize, automate, and use. The program can give you the option to deliver integrated dashboards so you can quickly implement them into your own application, website, or intranet, for example, if you need to create more user-specific content. But not only that—portability is another important quality of project-based software. No matter where you are in the globe, a strong data dashboard will give its users access to a range of media, including desktop and mobile apps, and will provide completely optimized, user-friendly access to crucial project data every single day. You only need a basic Internet connection and a few clicks to access your project management software dashboard. Microsoft’s Power BI is an example of a free application that has the capability to connect and intergrate with around 100 disparate applications. However, other paid applications provide more user friendly options with less user build.
You may read more about the best corporate applications in our topic to gain even more advantages from the many solutions you can use in your project.
These are just a few recommendations you ought to bear in mind when making the most of all the options a project management monitoring tool can offer based on your criteria in order to completely benefit from developing such a dashboard.
After concentrating on the definitions, illustrations, and advice for creating a good project management dashboard, we will now concentrate on the reasons why. You will understand why these data-driven dashboards are crucial for contemporary management efforts by learning the advantages of developing a PM dashboard.
What are the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard?
The four balanced scorecard views offer a harmonized methodology due to the inclusion of both forward-looking, non-financial measurements and backward-looking, financial elements. While giving a historical overview, it also keeps an eye on potential future value-generating components.
An organization is examined in the BSC from four distinct angles and goals. For each of them, KPI’s and targets are created. These are the four viewpoints:
Financial
Financial analysis is used to evaluate organizational performance. To comprehend the economic success of the organization, metrics including sales growth, earnings visibility, and associated financial data are examined.
Customer
Customers’ satisfaction with the business, its goods and services, pricing, accessibility, and quality are among the metrics that are evaluated.
To understand how customers interact and engage with the business, metrics like customer satisfaction score, percentage increase in user base, and customer turnover rate are examined.
Internal
To determine the most crucial business processes for the company, the core competencies are examined.
To find bottlenecks, waste, or process delays, operational metrics are monitored. Cycle time and the efficiency of the information system are two examples of these measurements.
Learning and growth
To enhance their market share, businesses should continually innovate and give their employees more freedom. To increase competitive advantage, cutting-edge measures like research and development costs and the proportion of revenue spent on employee training are monitored.
How the balanced scorecard impacts project management
Teams can analyze their projects using balanced scorecard project management by evaluating essential business from four categories in one report.
Three essential characteristics of every endeavor are complexity, unpredictability, and ambiguity. To accomplish predetermined goals, various tasks and processes are delegated to various team members and must be tracked.
When project management is given a balanced scorecard approach, it can:
• Clarify the project vision, mission, and objectives
• Outline the expected project outcomes to cater to all four areas — customer, internal, financial, and learning and growth
• Identify meaningful performance indicators to track project progress
• Discover any potential project roadblocks and eliminate them
How to implement a balanced scorecard in project management
When implementing a balanced scorecard, keep in mind the following necessary build actions:
1. Make a list of all current projects
2. Map the available projects to the balanced scorecard
3. Discover gaps and add the relevant projects
4. Remove the tasks that do not contribute to the achievement of business strategy
5. Prioritize projects based on business vision or mission to start execution
Balanced scorecard example
Creating a balanced scorecard framework is a five-step process:
1. Define the organizational mission, vision, and values for the project or business
2. Outline the four strategic perspectives — financial, internal, customers, and learning and growth
3. Establish the top-level strategic project objectives
4. Set up the business goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to track performance
5. Finalize the team or department level action plans and initiatives
Here’s a balanced scorecard example for an IT department optimization project:
How a balanced scorecard approach can help improve performance
Adopting the balanced scorecard approach can have a significant improvement on project performance. Studies show that the presence of a balanced scorecard adds a strategic dimension to project performance, such as:
• Aligning specific measures to expected outcomes to clarify project goals
• Setting up a link between corporate strategy and project vision
• Outlining key performance indicators (KPI’s) to track project progress
• Incorporating the viewpoints of all relevant stakeholders, internal and external
• Breaking down overall strategic goals into actionable projects
Organizations frequently develop and put into action their strategy in a chaotic manner. By using a balanced scorecard, strategy is meant to be an ongoing process.
Case Study: An utterly unique heritage project
This story is a stunning example of how project managers are preserving the UK’s industrial heritage. Network Rail is running its Great North Rail Project through to 2022, incorporating a range of route extensions, line upgrades and renewal projects. And last year it completed the restoration of the Gisburn tunnel in Ribble Valley. This unique Victorian Grade II listed structure comes complete with the original turrets. It was weaknesses in one of those structure that originally prompted the project.
Jack Ryder, who switched career from law to civil engineering in 2016, was the scheme project manager for Network Rail and is currently working towards chartership with APM. Bravo team!
Exercise 5
Choose one of the advantages of project management listed above and note down a time where this project management step has benefited you, personally. Discuss answers with the group.
Course Manual 6: The DMAIC Model Introduction
The DMAIC process is a section of the Six Sigma methodology that is frequently employed. Many people use it to find solutions to issues and to spot and correct mistakes in production and business operations.
We will examine how to apply the DMAIC process to problem-solving in this course manual. When adopting DMAIC problem-solving in your organization, you will also find helpful templates that you can apply immediately.
What are the five DMAIC Six Sigma steps?
DMAIC is a data-driven approach for methodically enhancing a process. The strategy focuses on improving the procedure that generates the output in order to raise the quality of a good or service. DMAIC strives to offer lasting solutions for process improvement.
DMAIC is an acronym for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.
DMAIC Process and Problem-Solving
The five stages of the DMAIC method are listed here, along with the actions you must take when applying each stage to applicable scenarios. With modifiable templates, several tools are available for each phase.
Step 1: Define the Problem
Consequently, there is a problem that has an impact on your clients or business operations. You must concentrate on the problem’s nature and how it affects your business in this initial step of the DMAIC problem solving process.
You must go through a few processes in this phase:
• Once the problem is defined, formulate a problem statement that specifies the problem’s nature in numerical terms and its level of importance.
• Ensure that all necessary resources, including a team leader and capable team members, money, etc., are on hand.
• Based on your problem statement, create a goal statement. It ought to be a quantifiable goal with a deadline.
• Draw a suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers (SIPOC) diagram to give the team a high-level overview of the process being studied, including its inputs, outputs, suppliers, and consumers. A value stream map can be used to accomplish the same task.
SIPOC Diagram for DMAIC
• Create a process map that details every stage of the process in an effort to visualize it in more detail. When determining the process phases and creating the map, involve the process owners. Swimlanes can be added to symbolize various departments, relationships, and accountable parties.
Flowchart for DMAIC Problem Solving
Step 2: Measure the Problem
You should gauge the size of the issue at this step. To achieve this, you must assess the process’ functionality in its current state. You can get assistance with this from the comprehensive process map you made in the “Define” phase.
Process length, defect frequency, cost, and other pertinent metrics are the baseline measurements you must consider during this phase.
The team will gauge its success in the “Improve” phase using these baseline measures as the benchmarks.
Step 3: Analyze the Problem
Finding the problem’s underlying cause is the goal of the “Analyze” phase of the DMAIC process.
• Analyze the process further to pinpoint the issue regions, using the process maps and/or value stream maps you’ve developed.
Process Flowchart for DMAIC
• To spot indications of issues with the processes, visualize the data you have gathered (both during the “Measure” phase and the “Analyze” phase).
• To visualize numerical data, use Pareto charts, histograms, run charts, etc. To find patterns, examine them and reach a consensus with the team leaders and process owners.
Pareto Chart for DMAIC
• Using the findings of your data analysis and process analysis, begin formulating potential solutions for the issue. Use a cause-and-effect diagram or fishbone diagram to document the participants’ understanding of the process during the session.
Cause and Effect Diagram for DMAIC
• Narrow down your results to the final few sources of the issue in your process using a 5 Whys diagram.
5 Whys for DMAIC
Step 4: Improve (Solve the Problem)
The emphasis at this stage is on minimizing the effort down to the identified root cause as well as developing and putting into practice any applicable solutions. The team will also gather information to compare its progress to the information gathered during the “Measure” phase.
• You may come up with a number of good root cause remedies, but it would be impractical to adopt them all. You must therefore choose the options that are the most realistic and cost-effective.
An impact effort matrix can be used to do this. You can use it to decide which option will have the biggest impact with the least amount of work or expense.
Impact Effort Matrix for DMAIC
• Using various solutions, you should create new maps that will depict the process’s status after the solution has been implemented. The future-state map or the to-be map are two names for this diagram. The team will get advice from it as they make modifications.
• Use the PDCA cycle to compare various solutions before deciding which one to use. The cycle enables you to thoroughly research potential solutions, assess the outcomes, and pick the ones that have the best possibility of working.
PDCA Cycle Example
Step 5: Control (Sustain the Improvements)
In this phase, the emphasis shifts to retaining the gains you’ve made by putting the solutions into practice in the DMAIC method’s last step. Here, you should continue to assess your progress and make a plan to keep an eye on your progress (a Monitoring plan).
Additionally, you want to put out a response strategy that outlines what to do in the event that process performance declines. You should then continue to document the improved processes using the updated process maps and other documentation.
Give the process owners these documents, together with the Monitoring plan and the reaction plan, for their reference.
Case Study: Portuguese Tire Manufacturer Saves Thousands Using Six Sigma’s DMAIC Methodology
An interesting case study on the application of Six Sigma and how it might affect business performance was provided by a tire manufacturing company in Portugal.
The DMAIC technique of Six Sigma is put into practice step-by-step in a recent study of Six Sigma deployment at Continental Mabor, a tire manufacturing plant in Famalicao, Portugal.
F.J.G. Silva, a professor in the engineering department at Portugal’s Polytechnic of Porto, wrote the paper, which was presented at the 2017 Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference. According to the article, Six Sigma was applied to enhance the sidewall and tread rubber extrusion processes for two different tire products. The reduction of process waste was the main objective.
Silva noted that Continental Mabor used Six Sigma since tire production is a highly competitive industry globally and “constant flexibility and adaptation” are required. Silva also added that “it is vital to strive for operational excellence” to be successful.
Conducting Research:
The business concentrated on enhancing the mixing, preparation, and building phases of the rubber extrusion process. Raw materials are delivered to the mixing department, where they are processed into compound sheets and employed in the department’s preparation on seven extrusion lines with a concentration on tread and sidewall extrusion. The building department is the extrusion process’s final “client.”
One measure of how effectively an operation is running for the company is the amount of material generated throughout the process that is later utilised for other purposes. The goal is to reduce the amount of “work off” material produced during the tread and sidewall extrusion process.
Once they had decided on the direction of the project and the research, they carried out the DMAIC cycle. Here is an example of how they did it.
Define:
The business created a project charter that identifies issues, sets objectives, and specifies the scope of the project in order to precisely characterize the process’ problem areas (including the employee teams involved). Moreover, a project charter:
• Develops the business case for how the project will affect the organization’s overall business plan.
• Clearly assesses the effect of the present issue on the business as well as the difference between the existing situation and the desired state.
• Establishes a precise scope for the project and identifies the areas on which teams will concentrate in order to prevent “scope creep”, i.e., expanding the project’s boundaries at an inappropriate point in a project’s timeline.
The business utilized a Gantt chart, a horizontal chart that depicts a product schedule, to generate the charter. In order to depict the extrusion process in more detail, they also employed a SIPOC visual. Supplier, inputs, process, outputs, and customer are all referred to as SIPOC. A SIPOC allows you to view the relationship between the inputs and suppliers, as well as the output for customers, throughout the complete process in one graph.
Measure:
Continental Mabor management then developed a data collecting strategy to obtain a handle on the state of the extrusion process at the time. This included counting the quantity of material that was discarded during the extrusion procedure. Ten three-hour trials each week were completed over the data collection period of 30 weeks. Following this period of measurement, the business was able to calculate the proportion of waste material produced during the tread and sidewall extrusion procedures.
Analyze:
After gathering a large amount of data, attention shifted to identifying the underlying causes of the process flaws that contributed to fluctuation in the amount of materials wasted. The business used an Ishikawa diagram to determine the relationship between several process inputs and activities and the issue of producing extra material. The possible causes that appeared to have the most detrimental effects were then prioritized using a Pareto chart.
In the sidewall extrusion process, they found that one machine was not operating as well as the others, which resulted in a substantial accumulation of superfluous material. They found that the method for feeding the machines was causing issues with machine stoppage and jamming during the tread extrusion process.
Improve:
A list of all the difficulties and their underlying causes, along with the subsequent steps taken to address them, were established during this phase. These include modifications to the equipment itself and adjustments to the ways in which workers input materials into the mechanism.
Control:
Data was then gathered on the modifications to the process once the enhancements were put in place. They were crucial in this situation. Five tons per day less work off material were produced by the company. The beneficial effect on the company’s bottom line, after accounting for the cost of machinery upgrades, was $165,000 euros per year, or slightly more than $200,000 US dollars at this time in history.
The implementation of Six Sigma methodology “had a key role in the achievement of the stated goal, ensuring that there was a methodical and disciplined approach to the challenges at hand through the DMAIC cycle,” Silva said in his conclusion on the process improvement at Continental Mabor.
Additionally, it offers a great step-by-step tutorial on how to successfully adopt Six Sigma.
Exercise 6
Course Manual 7: The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define phase
The Define phase (DMAIC), which comes first in the Six Sigma improvement process, is essential to the success of Six Sigma. Define is all about defining the problem and establishing the project aim, as the name suggests.
Use the DMAIC Define Phase to qualify a project, determine whether it is a good fit for the Six Sigma technique, and establish the project’s parameters.
Learn the context of the question being posed and concentrate on the 5W’s: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. When you apply the techniques listed below to determine scope, goals, and justification, the context becomes clear.
Objects of the Define Phase
• Have a thorough understanding of the project’s goals and parameters.
• Ascertain whether the process is a viable DMAIC candidate.
• Create a process map.
• Describe the demands of the client.
• Utilize project management tools to calculate schedules and expenses.
Overview of DMAIC’s Define Phase
Based on the project inputs, the Define phase lasts for about 2 to 3 weeks and starts with the choice of the project champion.
There are numerous distinct tasks to perform during the define phase because it is all about setting up the project. The Define phase of six sigma offers a variety of concepts and methods.
The Six Sigma Project Charter
The first official task for a Six Sigma project team is to draft a project charter. The team drafts the charter, which outlines the project’s 5W’s, before collecting a single piece of information or computing a single statistic. The following crucial questions should be addressed in a well-written project charter:
• What is the project’s goal?
• Who will be involved in the project?
• When will the task be finished?
• Why should the business back the initiative?
• From whence will the team obtain the necessary resources?
The thorough process of writing a charter may seem like “busy work” to team members who are new to Six Sigma, and they may be tempted to skip it so they can get started on the actual tasks. This would be bypassing a critical component. Any Six Sigma project’s charter is a building block for its success.
By focusing on established goals and objectives, the charter aids the project team in maintaining its path. In order to defend the project, management may also need to respond to certain challenging queries:
• Do the project’s advantages outweigh its drawbacks?
• Which departments will be impacted by the project?
• How will the project’s success be determined?
The project team is guided toward success by each of the charter’s numerous sections:
Problem Statement – This initial section of every project charter lists the problem and states how the process is currently performing. The statement should provide as much quantifiable data as possible to show the effects of the problem. Remember, the charter is a living document that can be updated as soon as new information becomes available. So if no actual data is on hand, using an estimate is acceptable.
Business Case – This section establishes how the project advances the organization’s objectives. A well-written business case helps demonstrate how the Six Sigma project supports the organization’s strategic goals and describes how the project solves your customer’s problems. It also shows how the project will impact employees, shareholders and customers.
Objective – This is a measurable statement that illustrates how much the Six Sigma project will improve the process (e.g. reduce application processing time by 10%).
Scope – This statement tells exactly what will be included within the project. A well-defined scope statement protects the project team from scope creep. Scope creep happens when a project gradually expands and takes the project team possibly outside its area of expertise and beyond its allocated resources. Scope can be expressed in one sentence that indicates the project focus.
Resources – These are the assets that the team requires to successfully complete the project, such as a database and key members of the project team.
Deliverables – These are the measurable benefits that the project is expected to yield (e.g. decrease costs by 15% or increasing sales revenue by 10%). Deliverables help the organization gauge the project’s success once it is complete.
Creating a Six Sigma project charter helps project teams answer difficult questions on paper to avoid making costly mistakes while executing the project. A clearly defined charter helps teams eliminate projects that have a poorly defined scope, deal with unimportant issues, pursue vague deliverables, overlap or conflict with other projects and/or focus on symptoms instead of root causes.
What is a SIPOC Diagram?
As mentioned earlier, SIPOC is an acronym for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customer. The creation of a process map that provides a high-level perspective of a Six Sigma project uses data and information from these five categories.
In the end, it’s a component of a strategy that helps a company run more efficiently with less waste and proceed with more effective business operations.
What Makes SIPOC Diagrams Important?
Utilizing a SIPOC diagram is a type of process mapping. The task of putting a project’s goals and, in some situations, specific steps on how those goals will be achieved is referred to as process mapping. It’s a straightforward yet efficient way to make sure that corporate leadership as well as every member of the project team are on the same page.
It also provides a quick snapshot of a project’s scope.
The resulting SIPOC diagram offers a high-level process map, the kind used by leadership to swiftly outline a project and give all team members a common frame of reference. Additionally, it can assist in locating issues and separating out sections that are unnecessary or of little use.
Definitions of SIPOC
What are the contents of the diagram’s five areas, then? Here are some succinct explanations:
• Supplier – A company that provides inputs for a process
• Input – Components, data, and other resources required to carry out a process
• Process – A series of organized procedures that turn inputs into outputs
• Outputs – Goods or services produced as a result of the procedure
• Customers – Those who will receive the outputs.
SIPOC Example Diagram
Keep in mind that the main objective of a SIPOC diagram is to immediately identify all the pertinent processes in a project. Remember that a key component of the diagram is quantifying inputs, both who supplies them and the method required to convert them into outputs.
This input-output model demonstrates how inputs are converted into outputs. It’s a useful technique for determining the key processes required to convert inputs into outputs.
Here is an illustration of how a SIPOC diagram functions. We’ll use the lemonade stand as an example of early entrepreneurship:
Supplier: Grocery store, home store, customer requests
Inputs: Lemon juice, water, sugar, ice, cups, stirring spoon, large pitcher, wood from home store, money jar, a busy pedestrian area, people to operate stand
Process: Construct lemonade stand, combine ingredients to make lemonade in pitcher, take customer orders, pour lemonade from pitcher to cup
Outputs: Chilled glass of lemonade, money placed in jar
Customer: Thirsty pedestrians
Of course, the merchandise the youngsters intend to purchase with their earnings is another component of the lemonade stand. This might be anything from a new bicycle to pet toys (in which case, a pet will ultimately also be a customer).
Even though it’s a very basic illustration of how the diagram functions, it provides a useful indication of how thorough one should be. Every tool and procedure used must be included. It merely has to be divided into its constituent parts and given a place in the diagram.
Use a SIPOC diagram in your subsequent project, if possible.
Value Stream Mapping Offers A Novel Approach To Assessing Current Procedures
It’s amazing how the act of carefully examining a well-known process may reveal opportunities for improvement that weren’t previously apparent. Value stream mapping is one method used in business to do this and is one of the lean strategies for process improvement that has received a lot of attention within corporations recently.
The Vice President of Strategic Relations at Hamacher Resource Group, Dave Wendland, recently wrote about the company’s usage of value stream mapping in an article for Forbes. A value stream mapping exercise can be “an eye-opening exercise that shows lost time, duplicated work, and wasteful spending,” according to Wendland.
What exactly is a value stream map?
Value stream mapping gives businesses the opportunity to reexamine a process. It’s a lean tool that entails making a thorough chart to depict a process visually. It provides a mechanism to record each stage of a process, from conceptualization to consumer delivery.
Finding waste in an activity is one of the main objectives of value stream mapping. According to the lean methodology, such waste can include:
• Product defects
• Extra processing
• Unused inventory
• Non-utilized talent
• Overproduction
• Transportation
• Waiting
• Wasted motion
These problems are located by examining each stage of the process and identifying what adds and subtracts value for the user. It is then removed from the process if it adds no value.
Why Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is Used by Companies
It is challenging to develop a reliable, consistent operation with little variance. Because waste in operations, as well as mistakes and defects, are the main issues that the majority of firms encounter, Lean Six Sigma has continued to have a key place in business longevity and sustainability.
Value stream mapping is therefore beneficial to a variety of businesses and sectors, from hospitals in Philadelphia to a county jail in California. It is crucial to first fully comprehend the present operation, regardless of the sector or particular operation. Only after that can you begin to make modifications that will specifically improve the process.
The Eight Wastes of Lean
Project teams search for anything that fits into one of the eight Lean wastes when describing how an operation functions with VSM. Product flaws, unnecessary processing, inventories, untapped talent, excess manufacturing, transportation, waiting, and wasted motion are some of these wastes. The following are some illustrations of typical waste areas:
• Demanding needless management reviews at higher levels
• Workers who put forth double the effort as their coworkers
• Excessive expenditures on unnecessary inventory
• Employees have to physically walk a notable distance to do their tasks because the necessary tools are not close by or easily accessible.
• Producing more products than the current market demand calls for
It takes a constant, laser-like focus on the client to find waste. Every step of a process must be evaluated by project teams from the perspective of the client. For that, you must have a thorough understanding of what customers want. It might be necessary to conduct a formal consumer survey to gather input on this.
Steps in the Value Stream Mapping Process
The main idea behind VSM is to produce a visual representation of an operation’s current state, followed in a later step by a VSM that reflects the operation’s planned future state based on customer needs and what a project team learns about the system’s current state.
The following are the steps for VSM:
Where Should Value Stream Mapping Be Used?
Remember that while VSM gives specifics on how a system operates, the objective is to separate activities and processes that create value from those that do not. Businesses can use VSM on a single product or a group of products together referred to as a “product family.”
Create a Team
Establish a cross-functional team that consists of managers and supervisors who are in charge of various areas of the business as well as representatives from the frontline staff who work in those areas. The ideal team size, according to the American Society for Quality, is 10. Larger teams may become challenging to manage, while smaller teams may miss critical concerns.
Gather Data
Managers should conduct a Gemba (process) Walk at this stage to learn exactly how a process is carried out, who performs it, and the tools that are employed.
Kaizen Meeting
At this point—or perhaps earlier—a team gathers for a Kaizen meeting (sometimes over several days) to develop the present VSM, a “future state” VSM, and a rough roadmap for getting there.
The specifics of generating a data box for each activity in a process are taught to Villanova students, along with additional information needed on a VSM (production requirements, types of information flow, time between activities, etc.). Typically, areas that require improvement are denoted by a symbol like a burst.
Case Study
Wendland stated in Forbes that the goal for Hamacher Resource Group, which helps with businesses to enhance the effectiveness of retail supply chains, was to enhance client quote preparation. The business aimed to remove bottlenecks and increase turnaround time for the entire procedure.Wendland outlined five steps taken during the value stream mapping process:
Interview Key Stakeholders:
Hamacher desired unvarnished criticism. Implementation frequently provides employees with the first chance to truly discuss their involvement in a process and where the issues are, as those who apply process improvement approaches find out. Wendland remarked that this is particularly valid for staff members who have been involved in a process for a very long time.
Create a Flowchart:
Every key task was put into a flowchart that offered a visual representation of the overall process. Wendland said this served two main purposes: It allowed everyone to see the process in its entirety and understand “the complexity that may exist.” Second, it allowed them to color-code and identify individuals and teams involved in the process (and quickly see any duplicative steps).
Assign Time For Each Step:
This involved both the time spent to accomplish a task and the wait time between tasks. The team used increments of days, but anyone can use whatever time designation works best for their operation.
Estimate Costs:
In addition to time, a cost must also be associated with each step in the process. Wendland wrote that the Hamacher team created a median hourly rate to estimate the costs associated with each step of the quoting process. This was an area that can be “an eye-opening step for most,” he wrote, and offers the chance to easily see where the process is running over budget.
Identify What To Eliminate:
The team could now understand where to cut out or improve phases in the process, especially with the knowledge gathered in Step 4. A value stream map also makes it easy for all parties involved to see the financial advantages of any changes that are made.
The Hamacher example is only one of several that highlight the benefits of value stream mapping. It offers a quick approach to make changes and is an easy way to identify waste and inefficiencies in a business.
Exercise 7
Course Manual 8: The DMAIC Model as it Relates to Current State: Measure Phase
In the Measure phase, teams begin to delve deeper into data.
Tollgates for the Measure Phase
Each stage of DMAIC has a series of tollgates. These tollgates mark critical milestones that teams must achieve to be successful. As taught in Villanova University’s Six Sigma Green Belt course, in the Measure stage, there are three major purposes of tollgates. They:
1. Establish the performance indicator identification, which specifies what teams will measure in a given process. The focus is on finding the key performance indicators from as early in the process as possible.
2. Create a data collection plan that clearly spells out the definitions and procedures for collecting data.
3. Develop a baseline performance measure that shows how well the company is currently doing, which helps illustrate the importance of the project. The numeric goal and definition of Six Sigma pertains to the optimization of a repeating process down to 3.4 defects per million opportunities or events. Not every project is a candidate for this level of scrutiny. Keep in mind that clearly, not every project will have this applicable scenario of repeatable events to monitor, as Six Sigma was first implemented in an industrial manufacturing setting with numerous recurring workflows; however, all workflows will benefit greatly from applying the various, scalable methodologies. The types of applicable projects for Six Sigma will be easier to visualize in our credit card application example below.
The following are some of the important instruments utilized during the Measure stage. Remember that not all Six Sigma projects employ these particular technologies. To reach the tollgate milestones, Six Sigma practitioners should employ the tools that are most effective in each circumstance.
Data Collection Plan
This plan serves as the foundation for the Measure phase. It’s one of the DMAIC phases that is both the most significant and the longest. Decisions made by organizational leaders will be based on the analysis of the data gathered during the Measure phase. Accurate performance data collection is essential.
A data collecting plan outlines in detail what information will be gathered. Additionally, it describes who collects and where and how they do it. This makes sure that the information gathered is correct, up-to-date, and important to the issue the team is attempting to solve.
Capability Analysis
This creates a framework for determining whether the current operation complies with requirements. A statistical measurement of the variability in a certain process feature is provided by capability analysis. It’s essential because one of Six Sigma’s primary objectives is to reduce variation.
Pareto Chart
A Pareto chart is a great cause analysis tool. It uses a bar graph to show statistics, with the length of the bars representing the frequency of errors and the associated time and financial implications. Usually, the longest bars are on the left and the shortest ones are on the right. When a team is working with several issues, a Pareto Chart is particularly helpful for examining the frequency of errors or for concentrating on one particular region.
Check Sheets
If data collection is not adequately tracked, it can quickly spiral out of control. Check Sheets, which are a component of the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt course, keep track of the quantity and type of data gathered, making it simple for all team members to know what data they have as they establish a baseline for performance.
Teams use these tools to gather information about the effectiveness and consistency of the present process. They also want to check the accuracy of the data, understand how it is measured, and assess the process’s capacity.
It takes a lot of time and effort to collect the data for the Measure phase. But the aforementioned tools can aid in better process management. Cleaned data is essential for the DMAIC analyze phase, where teams start to pinpoint the underlying causes of process issues.
Calculating Your Baseline Sigma
As mentioned earlier, a Six Sigma-compliant process allows 3.4 errors for every million chances. The procedure generates more faults as the Sigma is reduced. Businesses that attain Six Sigma performance have a sizable performance and quality edge over their rivals.
According to several statistical performance sigmas, a bank processing 360,200 credit card applications annually with nine possibilities for error would produce the figures listed below.
Six Sigma Performance – This level of quality produces a defect-free product 99.99966% of the time. During the year, 10 application errors will require correction.
Five Sigma Performance – This level of quality produces a defect-free product 99.977% of the time. Every week the bank will be required to correct 13 application errors.
Four Sigma Performance – This level of quality produces a defect-free product 99.349% of the time. Every day, 73 applications would require correction.
Three Sigma Performance – This level of quality yields a defect-free product 93.32% of the time. Every day, 770 applications would need to be corrected.
Comparing Six Sigma level performance with lower level performance can clearly illustrate the difference that a low error rate can have on productivity and profitability. In this instance, even though both levels are defect-free over 99% of the time, when the production volume is high, a tiny difference in error rate can result in over 18,700 more errors in the Four Sigma process!
What is Your Sigma?
Organizations are eager to calculate and continuously check their baseline Sigma since they are aware of the size difference between sigma levels and how it may affect client happiness and financial success. Organizations can clearly see how effectively a process is operating by knowing its baseline Sigma, which also enables them to assess the effectiveness of their performance improvement initiatives.
How to Calculate Six Sigma
The amount of defects per million opportunities (DPMO) is used to determine a Sigma level. With a few basic pieces of knowledge, organizations may improve the quality performance of their processes.
Key facts:
1. The number of units produced
2. The number of defect opportunities per unit
3. The number of defects
The amount of faults multiplied by 1,000,000 is the DPMO. By multiplying the number of defect opportunities per unit by the quantity of units, this figure is split. Once you have determined the defects per million opportunities, you can convert DPMO into Sigma using a conversion table, or better yet, a formula in a spreadsheet that also feeds a refreshing visual on a dashboard.
Example steps to establish current baseline capability:
1. Identify key metrics that will be required to evaluate performance.
2. Make a data collection plan. See if data is available for these metrics. What is the quality of this data? If the data is not available, where should it be obtained from?
3. After the data is found and validated, analyze the data.
4. Look for trends or patterns in the historical data when historical data is observed for a certain period. Find out the causes of these patterns through run charts, control charts, etc.
5. Do things look better or worse, and why?
6. What is the historical central tendency? (mean, median, mode)
7. What is the historical variability? (Interquartile range, standard deviation)
8. What is the historical shape or distribution? (histograms, box plots, stem and leaf plots, etc.)
9. Display the variation in the process– Observe and track relationships if present between the variables. (To study continuous data, scatter plots and correlation analysis can be used.)
10. Establish the current process capability, and later use that relatively for establishing improvements and goals.
What is a Pareto Chart in Six Sigma?
More than 100 years ago, an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto was studying land ownership when he discovered a principle that forever changed the way the world measures opportunity and solves problems.
Pareto discovered that 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the population. This later became known as the Pareto principle that separates the significant few (the 20%) from the trivial many (the 80%). It was certainly revealing – but that was only the beginning.
The same distribution pattern applied not only to economics but also to sales, technology and project management. For instance:
• 80% of sales come from 20% of clients
• 80% of customers use 20% of an application’s capacity
• 80% of problems originate from 20% of the projects
Using the Pareto Chart and Six Sigma
Six Sigma project teams are forewarned by the Pareto Principle that the majority of issues in a process will have a smaller number of root causes. There are many benefits to visualizing this data with a Pareto chart, including:
• Concentrating the team’s efforts on the issues that will have the greatest positive effects if they are resolved
• Quickly demonstrating the significance of issues
• Providing motivation to pursue further advancement
How to Create a Pareto Chart for Six Sigma
Teams can easily make a Pareto Chart by following these instructions because the process is quite straightforward:
1. Define the problem you want to study.
2. Create a list of potential causes – through brainstorming or using existing data.
3. Choose a meaningful unit to measure the problem – often frequency or cost.
4. Select an appropriate period of time – Make sure the time period is long enough to capture the situation. Select a period of time that allows for seasonality and shorter weekly patterns.
5. Gather data for each problem group – Teams can use either historical or real-time data.
6. Compare the frequency or cost of each problem group
7. Plot problems and their costs on a graph – List problems on the horizontal line of the graph and frequencies or costs on the vertical line. List problems in descending order from left to right on the horizontal line. List either the cost or frequency of the problem on the vertical line.
The Pareto Chart collects and visualizes the issues that arise during a process as well as their outcomes. The Pareto Chart can be used by project teams as a reference to choose which issue to address first. Consider which issues have the most impact on customers and profits when deciding which topic to focus on.
The Pareto Principle aids Six Sigma practitioners in understanding that the majority of issues with a process will have a condensed number of root causes. The Pareto Chart provides more information by displaying the sources of problems and how often or expensive they are. Project team members find it much simpler to decide which problem to tackle first thanks to the clarity that Pareto Charts bring to the problem illustration.
Data Collection Plan
Data collection plan is a useful tool to focus your data collection efforts on. This directed approach helps to avoid locating and measuring data that may not apply to the project at hand.
• Identify data collection goals
• Develop operational definitions
• Create a sampling plan
• Select and validate data collection methods
Plan for and begin collecting data
• Data collection form: In general, a data collection form is a way of recording the approach to obtaining the data that need to perform the analysis. Additionally, the data should be recorded by trained operators with a calibrated instrument and a standard data collection form.
• Data Collection check sheets: A Check Sheet is a data collection tool that usually identifies where and how often problems appear in a product or service. It’s specifically designed for the kind of process being investigated.
Measurement System Analysis
Measurement System Analysis (MSA) is a mathematical method of determining how much the variation within the measurement process contributes to overall process variability.
Accuracy: It is a difference between the true average and observed average. If the average value differs from the true average, then the system is not accurate. This is an indication of an inaccurate system.
Precision: Precision refers to how close the data points falls in relation to each other. In other words, a high-precision process will have little variance between the individual measurement points.
Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility
The Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility is a method to assess the measurement system’s repeatability and reproducibility. Furthermore, Gage R and R measures the amount of variability in measurements caused by the measurement system itself.
Gage R and R focuses on two key aspects of measurement:
Repeatability: Repeatability is the variation between successive measurements of the same part, same characteristic, by the same person using the same gage.
Reproducibility: Reproducibility is the difference in the average of the measurements made by different people using the same instrument when measuring the identical characteristic on the same part.
Six Sigma Statistics
Basic six sigma statistics is the foundation for six sigma projects. It allows us to numerically describe the data that characterizes the process X’s and Y’s.
Statistics is a science of gathering, classifying, arranging, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting the numerical data, all to make inferences about the population from the sample drawn. There are basically two categories: Analytical (aka Inferential statistics) and Descriptive (aka Enumerative statistics).
Inferential statistics: It is used to determine whether a particular sample or test outcome is representative of the population from the sample was originally drawn.
Descriptive statistics: A descriptive statistic is basically organizing and summarizing the data using numbers and graphs. Descriptive statics is to describes the characteristics of the sample or population.
• Measure of frequency (Count, percentage, frequency)
• The measure of central tendency (Mean, median, mode)
• Measure of dispersion or variation (Range, variation, standard deviation)
The shape of data distribution depicted by its number of peaks and symmetry possession, skewness, or uniformity. Skewness is a measure of the lack of symmetry. In other words, skewness is the measure of how much the probability distribution of a random variable deviates from the Normal Distribution.
Data Organization / Data Display / Data Patterns
The graphical analysis creates pictures of the data, which will help to understand the patterns and also the correlation between process parameters. Graphical analysis is the starting point for any problem-solving method. Hence select the right tool to identify the data patterns and to display the data.
• Control Chart : The control chart is a graphical display of quality characteristics that have been measured or computed from a sample versus the sample number or time.
• Frequency Plots: Frequency plots allow you to summarize lots of data in a graphical manner making it easy to see the distribution of that data and process capability, especially when compared to specifications.
• Box Plot: Box plot is a pictorial representation of continuous data. In other words, Box plot shows the Max, Min, median, interquartile range Q1, Q3, and outlier.
• Main Effects Plot: The main effects plot is the simplest graphical tool to determine the relative impact of a variety of inputs on the output of interest.
• Histogram: Histogram is the graphical representation of a frequency distribution. In fact, it is in the form of a rectangle with class interval as bases and the corresponding frequencies as heights.
• Scatter Plot: A Scatter Analysis is used when you need to compare two data sets against each other to see if there is a relationship.
• Pareto Chart: Pareto chart is a graphical tool to map and grade business process problems from the most recurrent to the least frequent.
Basic Probability and Hypothesis tests
Basic Six Sigma probability terms like independence, mutually exclusive, compound events, and more are the necessary foundations for statistical analysis.
Additive law: Additive law is the probability of the union of two events. There are two scenarios in additive law:
• When events are not mutually exclusive
• When events are mutually exclusive
Multiplication law: It is a method to find the probability of events occurring at the same time. There are two scenarios in multiplication law:
• When events are not independent
• When events are dependent
Compound Event: It is an event that has more than one possible outcome of an experiment. In other words, compound events are formed by a composition of two or more events.
Independent Event: Events can be independent events when the outcome of the one event does not influence another event’s outcome.
Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis testing is a key procedure in inferential statistics used to make statistical decisions using experimental data. It is basically an assumption that we make about the population parameter.
When using hypothesis testing, we create:
• A null hypothesis (H0) : The assumption that the experimental results are due to chance alone; nothing (from 6M) influenced our results.
• An alternative hypothesis (Ha) : We expect to find a particular outcome.
Determine the process capability
Process Capability Analysis tells us how well a process meets a set of specification limits based on a sample of data taken from a process. The process capability study helps to establish the process baseline and measure the future state performance. You can then revisit the operational definitions and specify what are defects and which are opportunities.
Case Study: Six Sigma for Small Business
The case study follows a distributor of plumbing products for a time period of around 18 months. The business committed to determine why its clients weren’t responding favorably to their products and/or services.
Implementation of the Define stage. The voice of the customer (VOC) strategy, which identifies the demands and specifications of your client base, was one of the strategies they employed. It’s a crucial tool if and/or when a business fails to receive many favorable reviews. Customers anticipated timely delivery, wise product selection, and an informed distribution crew, as according to the case study’s VOC strategy findings.
The company intended to describe their issue as they entered the Measure phase, but not just verbally. They desired to employ actual hard data in their communication. What did they discover after conducting some data collection? Their order fulfillment process wasn’t aligned with that of the rest of the sector. Compared to their rivals, they delivered products 46% slower. They were not providing prompt delivery, as per one of the VOC criteria outlined in the Define phase. Customers were feeling compelled to entertain competitors because of this shortcoming. Following this revelation, they made a commitment to slashing their order fulfillment cycle time (OFCT), i.e., the period of time between placing an order and the final delivery of a product, in the hopes that it would enhance their standing with clients.
Having identified their issue, they moved on to the Analyze phase and focused on determining why their delivery was so delayed in comparison to that of their rivals. Four potential explanations were identified as a result of their brainstorming: (1) the accuracy of the sales plans, (2) problems with safety stocks, (3) poor vendor delivery performance, and (4) falling behind the manufacturing schedule. All potential reasons were subjected to regression analysis to see which one would be the most problematic. They discovered, after constructing a Pareto diagram, that only 21% of their products accounted for 74% of their sales, and there wasn’t enough safety stock to satisfy the demand for those products.
That brought about the Improve phase, where they attempted to correct their issue. In order to ensure that the in-demand products remained in demand and that it was not a one-time fluke, they first implemented a monthly demand review. The second step was to place the orders for the items the clients requested and deliver them.
The Control phase was straightforward. They devised plans to monitor sales on their top 21% of products in order to ensure they weren’t over- or under-supplying demand. This would then see to it that their solutions would last as long as feasibly possible, and they would then assess the sales of those products each year. If a product fell out of high demand, they may consider replacing it with one that was gaining popularity.
The Results:
After 18 months with the plumbing product distributor, the researchers came to a confident conclusion.
“This case study illustrates that quality management and its tools should be increasingly adopted regardless of whether they are adopted only by SME’s or more globally by large companies. Thus, in order to achieve competitiveness, the Six Sigma methodology projects should be much more focused toward the SME’s, due to the interrelationship with the stakeholders and limited use of consultancies.”
Using Six Sigma principles, the company in this case study increased their annual sales by $248,034. They reduced delivery time by more than four full days.
The Takeaway:
This research is another point in favor of process improvement methodologies. It doesn’t matter how large your company is, how many employees you have, or how much revenue you gross every year.
All. Companies. Have. Processes.
Therefore, all those processes also have optimization opportunities.
Whether you’re distributing plumbing supplies, making billion-dollar acquisitions, or selling lemonade on the street corner, Six Sigma is absolutely a proven set of methodologies that directly and positively affect a company’s sustainability and bottom line, and provide a robust ROI.
Exercise 8
As taught in Villanova University’s Six Sigma Green Belt course, in the Measure stage, there are three major tollgates. As a group, try and recall the 3 major tollgates.
Course Manual 9: Stakeholder Roles
Think of yourself as Charlie from the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This whole business is entirely yours. Run around the factory and savor the wonderful sentiments of business ownership. The following day when you get to work, you realize…
Who actually does the work here? Who is genuinely in charge here?
Of course, you are. But not just you, though. Stakeholders are the numerous individuals that have both financial and personal interests in your company.
What kinds of stakeholders are necessary for business? Throughout this course manual, we’ll cover:
• The ten stakeholder categories you encounter in business
• The role of stakeholder versus shareholder – have you been referencing the wrong one?
What types of stakeholders are there?
Each of the types of stakeholders in a business are categorized in three ways:
• Internal or external
• Primary or secondary
• Direct or indirect
As the name implies, internal stakeholders are those who are present within a company. These are project stakeholders, such as employee personnel, who are directly impacted by the project.
Those with an interest in a company’s success but are not directly connected to its projects are considered external stakeholders. A supplier is an illustration of an external stakeholder.
Primary stakeholders, often referred to as key stakeholders, have a greater stake in a project’s success because it will affect them directly. They proactively support a project. Customers and team leaders are examples of these stakeholders.
Secondary stakeholders play a smaller, more broad role in project completion. These kinds of stakeholders provide assistance with administrative, financial, and legal issues.
Direct stakeholders participate in a project’s ongoing operations. Given that a company’s initiatives are fundamental to the everyday work of its employees, they might be regarded as direct stakeholders.
Indirect stakeholders are more concerned with the project’s outcome than its completion procedure. The concerns of indirect stakeholders include items like availability, packaging, and cost. The customer is one example of an indirect stakeholder.
The ten different types of stakeholders:
1. Suppliers
2. Owners
3. Investors
4. Creditors
5. Communities
6. Trade unions
7. Employees
8. Government agencies
9. Customers
10. Media
1. Suppliers
Suppliers are individuals or organizations that provide goods to your company and depend on you to generate income from the selling of those commodities.
Since their products have a direct impact on how your organization operates, suppliers frequently have safety on their mind in addition to thinking about how to increase their own revenue.
Is a supplier…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Secondary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Indirect.
2. Owners
Owner stakeholders are an organization’s owners. They contribute money or shares to the company and are involved in decision-making. A company may have more than one owner, and each would own equity in the company.
Is an owner…
• An internal or external stakeholder? Internal.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Primary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Direct.
3. Investors
Owners can be investors, but they can also be third parties that are entitled to timely and accurate information, such as financial statements on a regular basis. The ability to support or oppose important decisions like mergers and acquisitions may also be granted to investors.
An investor offers you more than simply funding to undertake initiatives that advance your company. They can also:
• Contribute ideas and give you advice
• Bring connections
• Motivate you
• Help promote and improve your business image
Is an investor…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Primary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Direct.
4. Creditors
Businesses receive financing from creditors, who may also hold a secured stake in the company’s value. From the sale of goods or services at your company, creditors are reimbursed. In the event of a company closure, creditors are compensated before shareholders.
Banks, vendors, and bondholders are some examples of creditors.
Is a creditor…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Secondary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Indirect.
5. Communities
One more group of stakeholders is the community in which a business operates. A community’s good enterprises are viewed as a resource.
Because your business and the community benefit each other in different ways than, example, a supplier and your firm, communities are important stakeholders in enterprises.
Communities are impacted by things like:
• Job creation
• Safety
• Economic development
• Health (from environmental development)
Is a community…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Secondary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Indirect.
6. Trade unions
A trade union, also known as a labor union, is a group of employees in one industry who get together to collectively bargain for favorable changes in social and political status, salary, benefits, and working conditions for their members.
Every company typically has a working connection with a union in order to consider the interests of other parties, such as the employees. It is possible to inform and advise trade unions on issues like worker safety.
Is a trade union…
• An Internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Secondary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Indirect.
7. Employees
Direct stakeholder in the business are the employees. They have direct client contact, generate income for their own support, and contribute to the smooth running of the company.
Employees may perform managerial, administrative, or other tasks. They often anticipate advantages including rewards, professional development, and job satisfaction.
Is an employee…
• An internal or external stakeholder? Internal.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Primary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Direct.
8. Government agencies
Governmental organizations can likewise be considered a significant stakeholder in a company. They levy taxes on the business, its workers, and other expenditures the business makes.
Is a government agency…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Secondary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Indirect.
9. Customers
Customers are the people (or entities, on a larger scale) who purchase goods from businesses. Customers anticipate receiving the highest quality products from that company at a reasonable cost.
Without clients, a firm cannot exist. Customers purchase products and/or services from businesses, and as a result, they are curious in how well those businesses are doing. Businesses must, in turn, make an effort to connect with customers and fulfill their demands.
Customers anticipate the company to deliver effective and superior goods and services. In general, securing the success of any organization depends heavily on serving the wants of the clients.
The quality of a company’s products directly affects its customers.
Are customers…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Primary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Direct.
10. Media
To promote their brand, every company needs ties with media publications. Press interaction is frequently required by businesses when they need to make a significant announcement or promote a product.
Is the media…
• An internal or external stakeholder? External.
• A primary or secondary stakeholder? Secondary.
• A direct or indirect stakeholder? Indirect.
A brief word about managing stakeholders:
Only if we put what we learn about the ten different kinds of important stakeholders into practice, will this information be useful and actionable.
How so? Stakeholder management.
Making sure that every stakeholder is heard while maintaining objectivity in the process is crucial to effective stakeholder management.
Is there a distinction between shareholders and stakeholders?
We are here to advise you that you shouldn’t use these phrases interchangeably, despite the fact that you may have heard people do so in the past.
Yes. and here’s the difference:
For a shareholder, money talks. Money is the differentiator between a stakeholder and a shareholder.
• A stakeholder has a vested interest in your business or a project. This type of stakeholder does not typically have a financial stake in your business.
• A shareholder has a financial interest in a business or project. Often a shareholder is a partial owner.
Does it still sound the same to you? That’s okay because they are still technically different types of stakeholders despite their variances.
Because shareholders invest money in the company, they are automatically stakeholders, making them a subtype of stakeholders.
Employees and local communities are stakeholders rather than stockholders because they do not necessarily invest in the company.
Making this distinction can help you prioritize your stakeholders when you make decisions that will have an effect on each one.
What Is a Subject Matter Expert and What Do They Do?
Businesses hire subject matter experts (SME’s) for their specialized knowledge in resolving particular issues or challenges. These specialists can provide value to organizations by assisting them in streamlining their production or communication processes. In this section, we define a subject matter expert and describe some typical benefits and constraints of this position.
What is a subject matter expert?
A subject matter expert (SME) is a specialist who uses their in-depth understanding of one or more subjects to assist businesses in resolving challenging issues or streamlining their decision-making procedures. Specialization in a certain job, division, technique, machine, or piece of equipment is the uniqueness to contribute that subject matter experts bring to the table. Many businesses decide to partner with SME’s to implement cutting-edge solutions to their processes and boost earnings. SME’s are frequently crucial in assisting departments with the resolution of complicated issues where the employees’ level of competence is insufficient.
How do subject matter experts help companies?
SME’s are highly skilled persons who may utilize their expertise to assist employers in handling complicated issues and putting new solutions into practice to aid in the expansion of the business. Here is how their expertise benefits businesses:
Understanding complex topics
The executives of an organization may elect to hire subject matter experts to assist their staff in comprehending difficult or novel concepts when faced with a structural or organizational change that necessitates the implementation of new solutions. SME’s are ideal for these scenarios since they are frequently subject-matter specialists with relevant educational backgrounds who are constantly refining their expertise. For instance, they might assist the staff in comprehending how specific software programs function.
Streamlining communication
SME’s have the capacity to absorb and analyze significant volumes of information in order to clearly and concisely describe the topic to other employees. As a result, their activities may improve internal communication and facilitate the implementation of significant reforms. They might also decide which information to convey to staff and which to leave out, among other communication-related jobs.
Solving problems
A subject matter expert may also be hired by a company if a problem within the organization requires quick response. SME’s use their experience and knowledge to pinpoint the root cause of the issue and provide solutions while reducing risks. Additionally, it is typical for them to design new organizational procedures that could aid in preventing future occurrences of the same issues.
Finding solutions for innovation
During times of fast expansion, a company may find that the assistance of a subject matter expert is essential to its success. For instance, a company might seek to enlist their assistance to scale its operations and train staff members for entering new markets or rebranding. Some SME’s are specialists at discovering and implementing breakthroughs, such cutting-edge technological solutions.
Encouraging teamwork
The planning, content creation, and knowledge sharing of other team members are guided by SME’s. They usually dedicate themselves to the team effort and take an active role in every aspect of project development. They may influence and inspire others with their actions and attitudes toward new projects while fostering a friendly environment and a constructive organizational culture within the business. Some SME’s may also be in charge of developing and implementing award programs inside the organization in order to promote teamwork. They can encourage workers while maintaining a high level of productivity and happiness with a rewarding program.
Improving workflow
SME’s may be in charge of aiding the organization in streamlining many of its procedures because they are adept collaborators and communicators. This may have an effect on other divisions they work in directly or indirectly. For instance, they might strive to improve the performance of a specific squad. Many SME’s begin by analyzing current business processes to look for patterns or inefficiencies in order to do that. The workflow can then be scheduled to minimize unneeded interruptions and increase productivity after they have prioritized projects and procedures based on importance.
Minimizing costs
Many businesses that find it difficult to resolve complex issues on their own opt to work with SME’s to cut expenses and improve decision-making. Even if the company has personnel that are capable of finding the proper solution but would require extra time to do so, this could still occur. The odds of boosting the effectiveness of the business when adopting the initial solution are often higher for SME’s because they can locate those solutions more quickly.
Limitations of subject matter experts
Working as a subject matter expert may have its restrictions, but they can get around them with the correct information and strategy. The following are some typical restrictions that businesses using SME’s may run into:
Narrow focus
SME’s are highly skilled professionals who devote a lot of time to learning about a certain subject or industry. They are therefore especially beneficial for businesses dealing with very specific and well-defined problems. However, because of their extremely narrow concentration, subject matter specialists may be less effective when the same problem calls for a generalist solution.
Staying simplistic
While working in a highly specialized industry that employs a lot of technical jargon, some SME’s are frequently in charge of communicating messages or new ideas to the organization. It could be difficult for them to explain such complicated concepts simply to a general audience. Fortunately, using the correct strategy and breaking the idea down into manageable knowledge pieces may be helpful and enable SME’s to effectively communicate them to the company’s workforce.
Missing links
Many businesses decide to engage SME’s from outside sources who are not regular workers. Both parties may have to overcome certain particular difficulties as a result of this. For instance, the subject matter expert might not have a complete understanding of the business or department that they need to completely comprehend the issue. Companies can address this by giving SME’s project briefs or by setting up individual and group meetings to hear everyone’s viewpoint.
Case Study: Twin Metals Minnesota: Using Early Stakeholder Engagement to Improve Strategy
The Challenge:
In developing one of the world’s largest underground copper mines, at a site near a popular outdoor recreation area, Twin Metals Minnesota must assure stakeholders and the public that it can mine in a socially and environmentally responsible way.
Although construction of the mine is several years away, Twin Metals sought to develop a meaningful new stakeholder-engagement and community-expectation strategy that would weave sustainability into the cultural fabric of the company, while serving as an effective framework for the company to identify, address, and measure the social and environmental impacts and opportunities of the project.
Strategy:
BSR Management Consulting Company worked with Twin Metals to develop a three-part strategy based on early engagement with a broad range of stakeholders:
1. Interview a broad range of stakeholders early. BSR interviewed stakeholders from local, state, and federal government offices, as well as community leaders and representatives of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGO). These interviews revealed connections between interrelated stakeholder groups and issues, which helped the company identify opportunities to maximize project benefits for surrounding communities.
2. Incorporate stakeholder interviews into the company’s emerging sustainability strategy. Twin Metals is in the process of building a sustainability strategy from the ground up by incorporating the issues, concerns, and opportunities gleaned from more than 50 stakeholder interviews—ensuring that the company’s strategy will resonate with local communities.
3. Embrace innovation. The stakeholder interview process gave Twin Metals several innovative ways to analyze the social and environmental impacts of the project. For example, they helped identify partnership opportunities for workforce development and local procurement to ensure that local workers are well-trained for technical mining jobs, and that local sourcing of materials is embedded in the company’s strategy. Engagement with environmental NGO’s gave the company a more holistic understanding of the environmental issues that are important to these stakeholders and the opportunity to develop more effective mitigation techniques.
Impact:
By starting the stakeholder-engagement process early and planning from the outset to incorporate the ideas generated into its sustainability strategy, Twin Metals will be able to build a stronger, more credible strategy. Through this process, the company has identified opportunities and risks early enough to act on them, and the company’s approach is establishing a strong foundation for future collaboration with stakeholders.
Lessons learned:
BSR’s work with Twin Metals revealed that early engagement with a broad range of stakeholders is an essential part of building a strong relationship with stakeholders, especially for a company just launching a sustainability program. Stakeholder views can both strengthen a company’s approach to sustainability and lend credibility to the company within the stakeholder community. This project also demonstrated that it’s possible for stakeholder engagement to provide valuable insight and guidance that will lead to the development of a more sustainable mine.
Exercise 9
Course Manual 10: Researching the Current Process
Why Do a Stakeholder Interview?
• Gather context and history. Many projects come with a history: the origin of the project, known constraints, attempted solutions that were tried before. If you work in a large organization, there is almost always politics at play. Stakeholder interviews can help us uncover and organize contextual variables and historical baggage that accompanies a project, prior to kickstarting it. Having this knowledge upfront will often lead to a more robust design process, save time, and avoid friction.
• Identify business goals. As user experience (UX) practitioners, we focus on our users and their needs. In contrast, our stakeholders focus on the business and its needs. Stakeholder interviews can provide us with data and insights about business problems and can pinpoint business objectives and key results. This knowledge ensures that you track the right metrics to prove project success, both from the business’s and users’ point of view.
• Align on a shared vision. Understanding your stakeholders’ vision, beyond success metrics, is another benefit of stakeholder interviews. You can assess where it differs from your own vision, then align on a shared, collaborative vision for your work and the initiative at large.
• Increase buy-in and communication. Ultimately, stakeholder interviews help stakeholders feel heard. They make them more likely to buy into the project and its output. They also help establish an open communication channel throughout the design process.
When Should You Do Them?
Interviewing stakeholders is never too late, but it’s best to do so as early in the process as possible. Stakeholder interviews should ideally introduce a new stakeholder, launch a project or endeavor, or provide a reset when something goes wrong. They have two advantages if done early in the engagement process: the stakeholder will feel heard, and you will get insight when it is most useful.
How to Conduct a Stakeholder Interview
Set a Goal
You should establish an objective for your stakeholder interview, much like you would for a user interview. What do you hope the stakeholder will teach you? What are they most suited to assist with? Your interview will have structure if you have a clear objective in mind.
Your objective can be to learn more about them, win their support, or learn their preferred methods of communication. Goals can be, for instance:
• Identifying potential concerns or obstacles
• Assessing technological limitations and previous explorations
• Understanding competitors and potential market challenges
• Outlining communication and involvement preferences
• Establishing buy-in and support
• Signing them on as a project champion
• Creating shared success metrics
Prepare inquiries
Unstructured, semi-structured, and structured interviews are the three different forms of interviews. The majority of stakeholder interviews are semi-structured, meaning that a conversation guide will be utilized instead of a script (which is what is used in structured interviews) to provide guidance.
A stakeholder interview guide will guarantee that your questions and subjects are pertinent to your interview objective. A strong interview strategy paves the way for a rich, natural conversation. Outline high-level topics to cover using your interview goal as a guide. If you’re unsure about where to begin, we suggest asking questions about these four broad subjects:
• Success metrics: What success looks like, tangibly, in their eyes
• Priorities: What they know or hear from users or customers and want to address
• History and expertise: Questions that target their unique perspective or role
• Process and workflow: How they want to be kept in the loop
From here, make a list of possible questions to ask your stakeholder using your high-level subjects as a guide. The example below is one we frequently use as a starting point and then modify based on the stakeholder and their role or expertise:
1. [Introduction] I don’t believe we’ve had the opportunity to work together before. Can you tell me a little bit about your role?
2. [Introduction] What are you currently working on here at
3. [Success metrics] What are you aiming to achieve with that work? Why is that important to the organization?
4. [Success metrics] Do you have specific goals you’re trying to achieve or metrics you’re tracking?
5. [Success metrics] What does success look like for you and your team? (You can timebox this for the year, quarter, half year, etc.)
6. [Priorities] What challenges or business issues are currently top priorities for you? Your team?
7. [Priorities] I’m currently
8. [History and expertise] Can you tell me about any constraints related to the work I’m doing that you think would be important for me to know about?
9. [History and expertise] Can you tell me about any solutions to this problem or similar projects you’ve tried before? Could be technical, process-related, people-related, and so on? How did it turn out? Why do you think it succeeded or missed the mark?
10. [Process and workflow] What is your ideal level of engagement in the project?
11. [Process and workflow] What is your preferred communication method?
12. [Ending] Is there anything else that would be helpful for me to know?
Identify Yourself and Establish a Relationship
As you can see, we provided a few questions as part of the introduction above. These inquiries are crucial for establishing chemistry and helping you forge a strong long-term relationship with the stakeholder. Things we like to include are a few sentences about ourselves, the reason for the interview, and a plea for openness and honesty.
Organize the interview
Aim to have one-on-one conversations with stakeholders when conducting the interview. Send them an email to make an appointment. Include the meeting’s objectives, what to expect, and how much time you need. It is beneficial to add one or two sentences emphasizing the importance of speaking with them.
Think about presenting the interview as a virtual (or actual) meeting over coffee. Both parties feel more at ease in the relaxed setting, which increases the likelihood that the stakeholder will reveal more.
Keep an open mind and concentrate on active listening as you do the interview. Interviews will elicit various responses from stakeholders. While some people may be open and willing to offer their ideas, others may require mentoring. To go deeper into discoveries, pose open-ended probing inquiries. Use questions like these, for instance, to elicit further information:
• Tell me more about that…?
• Can you expand on that…?
• Can you give me an example…?
• Can you tell me about the last time that you did…?
• How do you feel about that…?
To explore an underlying idea mentioned, use prompts like:
• Tell me why you felt that way.
• Tell me why you did that.
• Why is that important to you?
• Why does that stand out in your memory?
Stakeholders will all respond differently to interviews. Don’t forget your basic interview etiquette:
• Help the stakeholder feel heard by taking notes, making eye contact, and offering words of acknowledgment like, “I see,” and “That’s helpful.”
• Even if the stakeholder is long-winded, don’t interrupt them. Try not to rush them and ask questions in a calm, relaxed cadence. This attitude helps communicate that you have time to listen.
Finale and Aftercare
We prefer to conclude by asking, “Who else should I speak to?” The response to that inquiry reveals who they believe would be helpful to the project (and potentially an introduction to another key stakeholder). Thank the stakeholder for their time and for sharing their knowledge when you are through asking questions.
We also like to follow up with an email of gratitude. This letter demonstrates that they were productive with their time and opens a line of communication in case there are any questions in the future.
Alternative Method: Emailing the Issues
If your stakeholder is unable to give you synchronous meeting time, try emailing your questions. We advise selecting the top 4-5 questions from the interview guide rather than sending them the entire document.
A stakeholder survey can be made if you are interviewing a sizable number of stakeholders. Data gathering and analysis will be streamlined thanks to a survey. Your stakeholders might not respond as quickly as they might if you sent them each an individual email, though.
Putting Stakeholder Feedback into Use
Stakeholder interview findings can either be lightly and casually analyzed or thoroughly and systematically. When there are five or fewer stakeholders questioned, we observe teams adopt an informal strategy. With such a small group, it is simple to quickly summarize key trends and issues throughout the group and communicate them to the immediate team. Usually, a simple document is used to collect these high-level ideas.
In contrast, teams may need to perform more thorough data analysis utilizing thematic analysis when 5 or more stakeholders are interviewed. By marking individual observations and quotations with the right codes, thematic analysis is a systematic approach of dissecting and arranging data from qualitative research to make it easier to identify key themes. The immediate team members will identify problems, success measures, and ideas presented by several stakeholders using the information from their stakeholder interviews.
The conclusions drawn from this analysis should guide all aspects of your project, including stakeholder engagement strategies, priorities, timelines, and user experience (UX) research.
Conclusion
We can define success criteria, shape the design process, and ultimately meet stakeholder expectations by conducting UX-stakeholder interviews. By reducing redundant work, they help us save time and resources and build the groundwork for strong connections with stakeholders.
Observation of current workflow
Workflow Analysis Fixes the Holes in Your Business Processes
Workflow analysis: What is it?
Workflow analysis is the process of dissecting a workflow’s performance and looking for opportunities for improvement. Business users can adjust workflows for maximum effectiveness and workplace productivity by examining workflows at the task level. Workflow analysis frequently identifies redundant work, bottlenecks, and areas where additional automation is possible.
If you are in charge of ensuring organizational effectiveness, you’ve definitely given workflow management, business process management, and automating redundant operations some thought (see Business Process Automation). Since they don’t want to miss out on any of the nebulous “benefits and advantages,” many people simply jump on the workflow automation bandwagon.
However, sometimes it just seems like these efforts aren’t working as they should. The cause? Workflow analysis was not done.
Without a clear understanding of the advantages you hope to gain and how your current workflows may be enhanced, there is no purpose in putting up an automated workflow. However, you may utilize workflow analysis to uncover a number of simple ways to enhance what you already have, provided you have sufficient hard data and feedback from stakeholders.
Why Is Workflow Analysis Necessary?
Your industry and surroundings are always changing. You run the danger of being unable to meet the ever-changing needs of your customers and employees if your workflows can’t scale and/or keep up with internal and external improvements.
Additionally, the majority of the of a standard workday could be spent by your staff working on business-critical operations including hiring new employees, processing purchase orders and requisitions, dealing with vacation and reimbursement requests, etc., for example.
When you agreed to implement workflow automation, workflow analysis ensures that the advantages you anticipated actually materialize. It enables you to identify operational bottlenecks and painpoint areas, as well as measure and manage your workflows. Workflow analysis’ high level of precision enables you to manage each workflow as efficiently as possible. This involves customer happiness, staff engagement, regulatory compliance, and productivity in company processes.
Workflow analysis advantages include:
1. Enhanced productivity
2. Better employee engagement
3. Competitive advantage
Four easy methods for conducting your own process analysis
The following methods will assist you in doing your own workflow analysis:
Step 1: Gather hard data
Take note of the workflow you want to investigate. Determine which statistics are performing as needed and which ones aren’t simply by analyzing the actual data.
What kind of information is required? List these first:
• Number of items in that workflow initiated over a period
• Number of items completed
• Number of items rejected
• Average, min, and max time is taken to complete each task
• Number of times a task is sent back or rejected
• Number of times an item requires extra clarification
Look for thorough workflow analysis tools that can provide you with all of this data, which enable you to act on the information before the problem becomes out of control.
Step 2: Collect Soft Data
A workflow analysis requires more than just numbers. Engage those who most regularly use the workflow tools. Begin with those who submit some type of a form, for example. The submission of 80% of the expense reports falls under the purview of your sales staff. Recognize the following:
• Are they pleased with the ease of the form?
• Do they have any complaints about submitting their requests?
• Are their reimbursements getting approved on time?
Your vice president of sales might occasionally lack the information required to authorize the request. For further information, sending emails to the sales representatives may require some time before they hear back.
This method allows you to advance your study because workflow analysis tools typically just concentrate on the hard facts.
Step 3: Pose Difficult Questions
Some processes are designed to reduce errors. Others are intended to hasten the process. When doing a workflow analysis while keeping the big picture in mind, you can pose questions like:
• Is this step really needed?
• What is its purpose?
• Who is it supposed to serve?
• Can it be converted from approval to a notification?
• Does everyone have enough data to perform their task?
• How can we bring in more automation?
You can find the ideal solution by combining workflow analysis tools and in-person discussions.
Step 4: Put the Changes into Practice and Follow Up
Implement each modification that emerged from your workflow analysis once you have listed them all. Any changes should be communicated to all stakeholders, who should be informed whether there will be any downtime and how to manage items that are already in a modified workflow.
Workflow analysis is useful for more than just determining whether a workflow needs to be changed. Additionally, you may create valuable reports and determine which processes and certain components of processes are assisting your firm in developing. It’s crucial to regularly review and enhance your workflows.
Excellent workflow analysis templates or tools guarantee that you can easily obtain all the data required to carry out the analysis, all the while saving you time, effort, and money.
You can tell which procedures are working well and which ones require improvement with the aid of a smart tool. You can proceed and determine where to make modifications and where not to so you can cut costs using that knowledge.
Case Study: Supporting stakeholder engagement and communication
Facebook:
More than three billion people worldwide are given the tools by the Facebook (Meta) company—including the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Portal, and Novi—to form communities, exchange ideas, provide assistance, and make a difference. Facebook is continually improving, resolving issues, and collaborating to further connect and empower these individuals all across the world in order to achieve this.
The company’s operations thereby cross numerous social, economic, environmental, and legal boundaries. Since their industry is intimately linked to a wide range of policy areas, they must interact with a wide range of stakeholder groups, from industry associations and think tanks to academics and government agencies. The scope and magnitude of the engagement provide a challenge in and of themselves, but the level of complexity increases significantly when combined with ongoing innovation that results in ground-breaking goods and services.
Supporting stakeholder communication and engagement:
Facebook has teams for both stakeholder engagement and policy topics spread across its offices.
Understanding recent advancements in topics important to the stakeholder engagement team, such as economic recovery, social impacts, sustainability, and innovation, is crucial. In order to fully understand the problems at hand and contribute to the development of a shared vision for the future, it is crucial that they interact with a diverse variety of stakeholders. In their collaboration with White, Facebook’s stakeholder engagement team in Brussels helps White gain policy insights and use their stakeholder engagement know-how to interact with their multi-stakeholder environment in fresh and valuable ways.
They provide general strategic advice and support for the stakeholder engagement team’s stakeholder engagement strategy, stakeholder mapping and engagement, background research and analysis, briefs, narrative building, general communications support, the creation of digital, print, and audio-visual materials, as well as event monitoring and support for event organization.
Exercise 10
Course Manual 11: Documentation of Project
Purpose and benefits of Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
BPMN is intended to provide participants and other stakeholders in a business process with an understandable, visual depiction of the processes in order to increase understanding. At a deeper level, it is directed at those who will carry out the process, providing enough information to allow for accurate execution. It gives all stakeholders such as business analysts, process participants, managers, technical developers, as well as outside teams and consultants, a consistent language that they can all use. This includes both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Ideally, it closes the gap between process intention and execution by giving enough specificity and clarity regarding the order of business operations.
Diagrams or graphical representations can often be more simpler to understand than narrative prose. Areas of priority are easier to visualize even at a high-level. Furthermore, it facilitates the communication that results in the XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents required to carry out various activities. BPEL, also known as Business Process Execution Language for Web Services, is one of the key XML standards.
BPMN 2.0 diagram elements and symbols
These four element categories are represented by BPMN in business process diagrams:
1. Flow objects: Events, activities, gateways
2. Connecting objects: Sequence flow, message flow, association
3. Swimlanes: Pool or lane
4. Artifacts: Data object, group, annotation
The specific components and their applications in defining a business process are as follows:
Events
A catalyst that initiates, alters, or concludes a process. Some event type examples are message, timer, error, compensation, signal, cancel, escalation, and link. Depending on the nature of event, they are represented by circles with various symbols. Depending on how they are used, they can be either “throwing” or “catching” objects.
Activity
A specific action taken by a person, system, or task. A rectangle with rounded corners serves as the indicator. Subprocesses, loops, compensations, and many instances can cause these to be a bit more intricate.
Sequence flow
Demonstrates the necessary actions in order. An arrow and a straight line are used to depict the directional flow. It may display a default flow or a conditional flow.
Message flow
Depicts communication that crosses organizational barriers, such as departmental borders, or “pools.” It shouldn’t link activities or events that take place in a pool. It is shown as a dashed line with an arrow at the end and a circle at the beginning.
Association
It links a text or artifact to an occasion, activity, or gateway and is represented by a dotted line.
Pool and swimlane
Major players in a process are represented by a pool. Even if it may be in a separate organization or division, the process may nonetheless involve another pool. A pool’s swimlanes define who is responsible for what steps in the process by outlining the actions and flow for each participant or role.
Artifact
Additional details that developers add to the diagram to provide the desired amount of depth. Artifacts can be categorized as data objects, groups, or annotations. A data object displays the information needed for a certain action. The actions of a group are logically grouped, but the flow of the diagram is unaffected. A component of the diagram is further explained with an annotation.
Who does the actual business process modeling?
Simple, hand-drawn diagrams can be used for business process modeling (not recommended), as well as more complex ones with expandable sections that provide enough implementation information. At its most advanced representation, BPMN is carried out by qualified analysts. The OCEB 2 designation, which stands for OMG-Certified Expert in BPM 2.0, is one of five BPMN 2.0 certifications offered by the Object Management Group (OMG). The business track is one, and the technical track is another. In the same manner that Unified Modeling Language (UML) standardized software modeling, OMG hopes that BPMN 2.0 will standardize business process modeling.
BPMN demands time and effort, but the benefits in terms of improvement and knowledge can be enormous. Version 2.0 improves on earlier iterations by offering a more comprehensive standard set of symbols and notations, enabling additional information for those that require it.
The premise underlying business process management is the creation of a cycle of continuous improvement. The steps are model, implement, execute, monitor, and optimize. Standard BPMN diagrams highlight these steps at a minimum.
Sub-models within a BPMN diagram
Both non-technical and technical audiences can be instructed by using the diagrams. Sub-models make it simple for the various viewers to distinguish between the diagram’s numerous portions and identify the ones that apply to them the most. The several sub-model kinds are:
• Private business processes: These are internal to a specific organization and do not cross pools, or organizational boundaries.
• Abstract business processes: These occur between a private/internal process and another participant or process. The abstract process shows the outside world the sequence of messages needed to interact with the private process. It doesn’t show the private/internal process itself.
• Collaboration business processes: These show the interactions between two or more business entities.
Other diagram types
There are three additional diagram types in BPMN 2: Collaboration, dialogue, and choreography.
• Choreography diagram: Shows interactions between two or more participants. It also may be expanded with sub-choreographies.
• Collaboration diagram: Shows interactions between two or more processes, using more than one pool. All combinations of pools, processes and choreography may be used in a collaboration diagram.
• Conversation diagram: In general, this is a simplified version of a collaboration diagram. It shows a group of related message exchanges in a business process. It may be expanded with sub-conversations.
Key tips for business process modeling
1. Clearly describe the process’s scope and give it a start and finish.
2. Before using BPMN to model a better process, you should first map the present business process to identify inefficiencies.
3. Even if the page is poster-sized, as some are, try to keep BPMN diagrams to one page.
4. Arrange horizontal sequence flows. Vertically display associations and data flows.
5. Depending on the level of information required for each stakeholder’s function, you can construct separate versions of the diagram for them.
6. Organizational hierarchies, functional breakdowns, and data flow models cannot be modeled using BPMN. Even if some information flows in business processes are depicted by BPMN, it is not a data flow diagram (DFD).
Resistant to Change
Why does resistance occur?
Although we know what resistance to change is and who could be more prone to exhibit it, we still don’t know why it happens.
People’s fear of the unknown and the uncertainty that comes with change is the first and maybe most evident cause. Outside of the office, this is a typical human reaction, but at a company, the dread of the unknown can signify employment uncertainty and unpredictability. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” as the adage goes; therefore, employees who do not adequately comprehend the change will perceive it as a threat to their employment and sometimes reject it.
Similar to how employees will become resistant when they feel out of control, they will also reject any changes if they believe that they are being imposed on them against their will. Employee buy-in will be boosted by ensuring two-way communication between change managers and staff members. This approach will also show them that their opinions are valued and that they will then be considered to be “in the know.”
On the other hand, a lack of effective communication will breed opposition to change. Employees will either reject the change or lose interest if they do not feel that they are a part of the process, are being kept informed, or are included in how a project is progressing.
Both of these responses are undesirable when attempting to bring about change since you need cooperation and buy-in on all levels. Employees will not feel the need to oppose change if the change process is clearly explained to them and they know how it will benefit their daily lives, in addition to why the change is taking place.
Last but not least, we are all products of our past experiences. Employees may transfer their worries onto the current workplace if they have had negative experiences with organizational change in the past. To prevent such behaviors from being made again, change managers must exercise caution and pay attention to the experiences of their staff. Employees will be more open to change and less likely to resist it when they believe their opinions are being heard.
How to identify resistance to change
The manifestations of resistance to change can take many various forms. Missed deadlines, broken promises, absences from meetings, and a general air of indifference are all indications that staff members are not invested in the company.
It’s also possible for resistance to change to manifest in more overt ways. When a change is taking place, keep an eye on how your employees are feeling in general, whether there is more gossip than usual, and whether they are responding to demands with sarcasm or wit.
In some circumstances, a person chosen by the workers may speak out against the change. This could take the shape of a formal union or simply be a group of people who support the change and believe that there is strength in numbers.
In addition to speaking for the staff, this representative will serve as a line of communication for management. To counteract these indications of resistance, management should employ such people to filter supportive information about the transition to the group.
The surprising benefits of resisting change
Contrary to popular opinion, resistance to change is not always a bad thing. In fact, it might even be advantageous.
First of all, it makes management pick their battles wisely. Employee resistance raises the question of whether this shift will result in considerable growth. To put it another way, is it worthwhile? This makes that resources aren’t wasted on projects with unclear returns.
It also promotes communication and preparation. Management must determine the areas where resistance is most likely to appear and develop a strategy to curtail it.
Now that we are less resistant to and fearful of change, let’s look at the best ways to handle people amid organizational transition.
Understanding the causes of change resistance is essential for effective change management. You may then address the main worries of your staff from there.
Top strategies to overcome unproductive resistance to change
Listen First, Talk Second
Communication is the first step in overcoming change resistance. You have already established that communication is of utmost importance. However, consider allowing your staff start the conversation. Giving people the chance to express their ideas will help lessen the frustration they feel about the circumstance, since people, in general, want their opinions and/or viewpoints to be heard.
Additionally, the ideas, concerns, and suggestions of your employees will be incredibly helpful in guiding your transformation effort. Understanding them will at the very least enable you to identify the source of employee resistance to change.
Communicate the Reasons for Change
The next tactic to combat change resistance is to explain the what, why, and how. Create a communication strategy that goes beyond merely telling your staff what to do. Each audience is segmented and targeted in effective communication, which focuses on the information they need to know and care about. Explain how this change will be beneficial to them.
Get Excited
The amount of change resistance you will encounter greatly depends on how you explain the change. Your conviction will spread if you explain the reasons for the change with positivity. The operation will be hampered by any perceived hesitations.
Make it About the Employees
Make sure that changes are viewed from the perspective of the employee because change is only achievable with the support of your human resources (HR) division. If you are implementing a new software system, consider user adoption while planning your project rather than just concentrating on the technology. What the user can accomplish with the aid of this new technology is what matters, not just what the technology itself is capable of.
Delegate Change
Counteracting resistance with culture is a terrific way to get through reluctance to change. First develop team members who have leadership potential. They will act as mentors and motivators for the rest of your staff.
Show Them the Data
Although resistance to change is typically emotional rather than logical, using some cold, hard facts as a backup tactic can be useful. Allow your staff to examine the facts on their own. This is a fantastic method to show openness and the need for development at the same time.
Implement in Stages
Any kind of shift in operations takes time, whether it be wholly digital or not. The transition has to be properly planned out, with ample advance notice and involvement from staff members at all levels. Employees will be able to handle the change one step at a time and learn the new and pertinent skills as they go if the plan is implemented in stages.
This is a lot simpler approach to process the change and will seem less severe to individuals picking up new knowledge and abilities, making them less likely to object to the current adjustments.
Practice Change Management Exercises
Fear and a sense of threat are two common emotions that fuel resistance to change. There are some easy activities that workers can use to imitate the experience of change to assist overcome this. These exercises, which involve folding your arms one way, then the other, or bouncing balls to demonstrate companies’ “bounce back,” are also a little amusing and non-threatening, in contrast to how true change can be. The purpose of these exercises is to demonstrate how rapidly one can adjust to a new situation, despite the fact that change can be uncomfortable at first.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
There are numerous strategies for overcoming change resistance, yet circumventing change resistance is routinely attainable. By implementing the aforementioned tactics, you can encourage your staff to embrace change and ease the transition for everyone.
Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)
Categories of Cost of Quality
Preventative costs, assessment costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs are the four subcategories of quality costs:
Preventive Costs – Preventive costs are expenses associated with efforts specifically created to stop the production of subpar goods or services. Therefore, associated efforts are concerned with averting failures.
• Quality planning
• Contract review
• Trainings
• Quality audits
• Supplier evaluation
• Market research
• Process capability studies
Appraisal costs – Appraisal costs are the expenditures associated with efforts that are carried out to find subpar goods or services. In other words, the costs of testing, measuring, and auditing are tied to appraisal costs. The assessment cost is more concerned with problem discovery than defect avoidance.
• Incoming goods inspection
• In-process inspection
• Supplier inspection
• Laboratory testing
• Final goods inspection
• Calibration
Internal failure costs – Internal failure costs are a result of faults being found before a product or service is delivered to the customer. Additionally, these are the expenses incurred when a product doesn’t meet the necessary quality standards.
• Rework
• Repair
• Internal scrap
• Re-testing
• Efforts spent on failure analysis
• Raw material rejection
• In-process rejection
External failure costs – When clients reject a product or service after delivery, external failure costs result. In other words, external failure costs are the expenses incurred when a good or service doesn’t live up to expectations and the problem is discovered after the consumer receives it.
• Warranty claims
• Customer visits
• Penalties
• Replacements
• Investigations
• Loss of goodwill
When to utilize Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)
Organizations use COPQ to identify areas where internal and external failure costs can be reduced while still improving quality; basically, by way of boosting prevention-related spending.
Steps in implementing Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)
• Define the organization quality goals and objectives
• Estimate the current capabilities of machines, systems, and processes
• Collect data for prevention cost, appraisal cost, internal failure cost and external failure cost
• Validate the quality cost data with finance
• Pareto the quality costs and prioritize the actions
• Implement the corrective actions such as automate the quality audits, streamline the inspection process, implement Poka-Yoke (mistake-proofing), etc.
• Compare the quality costs before and after process improvement (as shown in the below diagram)
• Finally, present the quality cost improvements to top management.
Example of utilizing Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)
An organization’s success depends entirely on quality assurance. Utilizing Six Sigma and other lean methods enables businesses to reduce waste (raw materials, logistics expenses, and idling man hours), which boosts their bottom line.
Imagine you are in charge of a DMAIC project. You want to determine the cost of poor quality during the define phase. You start by defining what a fault is, then you count how many defects your process has per million opportunities.
Example: Imagine making televisions and finding that 2% of each million units were defective. In total, 20,000 TV’s. If it costs $100 to build each item and those damages could not be repaired, it would cost your business $2 million.
That’s not all, though. On a re-inspection, warranty repair, supplier evaluation, etc., how many people would you employ on these tasks? The breakdown of various costs is shown below, as an example:
With an additional $10 per unit spent on quality expenditures, the total material cost per unit is $100. That comes to $200k at 20k units. The corporation would incur a total cost of $2.2 Million!
Case Study: Nokia
The Nokia Firm was founded in Finland and became the first company to create a cellular network, making it the world’s leading manufacturer of mobile phones. Nokia became the industry leader in the creation of mobile phones. More than 130 countries are home to Nokia. The corporation was initially split into four business units: networks, company services, multimedia, and mobile telephone. The business was compelled to make changes, though, as a result of fierce competition from recent market entrants like Samsung and Apple. To develop phones using the Windows operating system, the company combined its phone production with Microsoft. The business also altered its operations to concentrate on telecommunications infrastructure.
Nokia had a sharp decline in sales, from over 100 billion euros yearly to only 15 billion. The company created a booster program known as the Nokia Booster Program, which was put into effect in 2008. The program aimed to consolidate the company’s internet customers as well as its strategic growth. The corporation created this complex strategy to meet the demands of taking advantage of the worldwide market. As a result, the management strategy was centered on assessing the constantly evolving needs of consumers and the requirement for the company to produce cutting-edge technology in comparison to its rivals. Nokia had to provide a single point of contact for both its domestic and foreign customers.
The company required a communication architecture that could keep up with the modern marketplace. Nokia has designed the Booster program as a challenging program for organizational development. This program was launched with 100 new jobs in just one week. The former Nokia employees have been kept on board with the introduction of new jobs, while other positions have remained unchanged. These employees only experienced one shift, which was the reorganization of their teams. This team reconfiguration is done in order to competently and swiftly reconfigure its human resources to address ever-changing client requirements and requests.
Nokia probably faced a range of dangers and difficulties as it implemented organizational reform. The employees’ resistance is one of the risks. A review of the reporting procedure, a change in departments, and a change in responsibilities could result from the execution of the change. It would be dangerous to put the modifications into effect if the staff disagreed with the decisions. Explaining how the change will be executed is essential to allay employee fears and reduce risk (Lamberg et al., 2019).
Nokia use a variety of strategies to deal with problems. Employees may have been made aware of the transition and told of its importance. The staff could assist their supervisors when they educate them of the change and assist them in overcoming their fears and anxieties. Resignations may have been controlled once the modifications were made by offering incentives and benefits. Staff members must embrace the move forcefully and threaten to lose their jobs if they are not ready to make changes.
Exercise 11
b) We discussed the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) earlier in this course manual, can you give an example of COPQ? This can either be hypothetical or something you have personally experienced in business.
Course Manual 12: Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Lack of communication (and the resulting lack of stakeholder involvement) is known to be one of the major reasons behind project failures.
Communication with stakeholders is so important that research shows project managers spend about 90% of their time communicating with stakeholders. Due to the large investment in this activity, as you progress in your project management career, it is essential that you are effective and efficient with your communication.
Communicate Regularly and Be Proactive
When a project runs smoothly, no one pays attention, but as soon as the scope, schedule, cost, and/or quality start to deviate off course, everyone pays attention! So regular contact is essential. You should give status updates, establish expectations for the future (both positive and negative), and address problems early on when the cost of change is minimal. The attitudes of the major stakeholders toward the project are what define its success. In order to achieve the right amount of engagement and the right attitude toward the project, you should try to actively communicate with your stakeholders.
Three Classes of Communication
It is not enough to complete a project on time, on budget, and in accordance with the specifications; if the client dislikes it and uses none of the results, the project is still a failure. Gaining the support of stakeholders requires successful engagement, which is fueled by good communication. In stakeholder management, there are typically three types of communication: reporting, marketing, and purposeful communication.
Reporting
Reporting fulfills two useful purposes: First, it demonstrates you are running your project properly. As a project manager, you are expected to produce reports, have schedules, etc., so issuing reports shows you are conforming to expectations. Second, providing reports to a key stakeholder keeps you in touch with them, which is important when more significant communications are needed. The information in the reports is typically pushed (sent directly to) to recipients. While this creates a consistent set of information shared universally in a time-series, reports are not direct communication on an issue, although information in a report can be used as a supporting part of purposeful communication.
Marketing
Marketing is a communication strategy that is sometimes underutilized and undervalued. All of the communications required to inform the larger stakeholder community about your project should be included in marketing. This is your chance to spread the word about the project’s importance and stop information “Black holes” from growing, which can cause the spreading of rumors and false information. A marketing campaign is a crucial communication activity to increase support and enthusiasm for the project and its deliverables. On practically every assignment, I think the effort is well worth it! Making a favorable initial impression on your stakeholders is much simpler than attempting to change a negative image that has already been made. This is critical, in my experience, if your project is intended to alter how individuals carry out their tasks. The change manager will appreciate it and your project will face far less resistance.
Purposeful Communication
For me, purposeful communication is all about starting with the end in mind and putting yourself in the shoes of the stakeholder. Purposeful communication needs to be planned, which means you need to know precisely what effect you are seeking and then work out how to achieve the desired effect(s). This usually means you want the stakeholder to start to do something, do something differently or stop doing something. Purposeful communication should address WIIFM (What’s In It For Me), be directed towards a network of key stakeholders, and be delivered incrementally and regularly.
Review the Demographics of the Stakeholder Community
The stakeholder community needs to be continuously reviewed, just like risk management (changing levels of interest and influence, new or existing stakeholders, etc.). The goal is to reevaluate the relative importance of each stakeholder, determine whether your communication efforts are working (and, if not, change strategy), and determine how to effectively concentrate your communication effort moving forward. You must keep in mind that your project is being carried out in a dynamic context; as a result, stakeholder and communication management should be an ongoing process that is routinely reviewed, updated, and improved.
The culture of the stakeholders needs to be considered while designing effective communication. You must communicate inside the stakeholder’s paradigm, which entails understanding how they function and what is typical for them. A systematic approach is needed to create this kind of communication environment, which is intended to assist project success. The reward? A more active stakeholder community and less time spent on “putting out fires” as well as responding to sporadic questions will promote project success, adoption, and improvement.
Standardizing to Scale
Sign-off Sheet
Maintaining thorough records contributes to the success of any organization. Proper use of sign-off sheets and other business documents can help you keep employees accountable, clients satisfied and finances accurate. If you’re interested in using better record-keeping practices in your organization, you might benefit from learning about the many uses and benefits of sign-off sheets. In this section of the course manual, we review what a sign-off sheet is, explain who should use them and when and list the steps to creating a sign-off sheet for your business, demonstrated with a template and examples.
What is a sign-off sheet?
A sign-off sheet is a business document that confirms two or more parties agree on the status of a project or goal. Sign-off sheets require signatures from the relevant individuals, or stakeholders, to acknowledge they have both reviewed the matter at hand and are satisfied, which is similar to what happens at tollgate touchpoints in the DMAIC process. Organizations save sign-off sheets as proof that they have fulfilled obligations to employees, other businesses and clients.
A sign-off sheet can also mention any concerns stakeholders cannot seem to resolve at present. For instance, a company might wish to end its employment of a consultant early. If the consultant therefore couldn’t finish parts of the project, they might mention it on the sign-off sheet so there’s a record acknowledging the consequences of ending the consultant’s assignment on the project early.
When do you need a sign-off sheet?
You need a sign-off sheet whenever you reach a milestone in a larger project or complete one in its entirety. Consider using a sign-off sheet in any situation where signed documentation could settle a future dispute, particularly if the dispute might have unwanted consequences for your organization. Here are several instances where sign-off sheets are highly useful:
Project sign-off: Your business can use sign-off sheets to confirm the client approves a completed project. If the client requires further services, you can renegotiate the terms of service since you confirmed the initial project’s completion. These are required for the design history file when documenting development on a FDA-regulated medical device in the United States, for example.
Deliverable (or project phase and/or project change) sign-off: If a project has several stages or components, a sign-off sheet can keep stakeholders and clients informed of progress. If a necessary design change has been identified mid-project, a sign-off from applicable stakeholders is usually necessary also. This helps you avoid any major issues toward the end of the project.
Training sign-off: Training sign-off sheets document when your organization is confident that it has adequately instructed employees how to fulfill their responsibilities.
Who reviews sign-off sheets?
It’s important that the correct stakeholder reviews sign-off sheets to avoid any miscommunication between your business and the client. At the beginning of any project, clarify who has the authority to confirm your company’s work. There might be several acceptable stakeholders who can approve work, or you might correspond with a single project lead. Typically, the primary stakeholder on the client’s side is the project’s sponsor and/or product manager.
Within your organization, it’s equally important that sign-off sheets receive proper review before they’re presented to clients. Whoever in your organization has the most direct knowledge of the project’s status can help ensure sign-off sheets are accurate. You might choose to gather signatures from multiple stakeholders within your company, but consider empowering only a few people with the ability to give final approval, as a time-saving measure. Keep in mind, acquiring sign-offs can create project delay bottlenecks. It is best to also look at electronic sign-off mechanisms for streamlining this necessary (and usually recurring) approval process.
How to create a sign-off sheet
Here are the steps to creating a sign-off sheet for your business:
1. Identify the project(s)
Your company may have several projects to monitor, so it’s important you can easily organize your sign-off sheets. Create a header where you can fill in the project name and type of sign-off sheet. Provide spaces to specify the client, project sponsor and project manager as well. Sometimes the client and project sponsor are the same, but it might benefit you to have space to specify if not. If the sign-off sheet is for training, replace client name with employee name, project name with training type and project sponsor with trainer name.
2. Include relevant dates
Make sure your sign-off sheet includes fields for all relevant dates. Include the project’s start date, its planned completion date and the actual completion date, or training start and end date. Some project sign-off sheets also have sections to write the total project duration and days past the planned completion date so that it’s easier to read quickly and understand the rate of progress.
3. Detail budget status
The budget section follows the same logic as the dates section. Create fields for planned budget, actual budget and the variance between the two. Clients and your team likely appreciate not having to compute the difference when browsing sign-off sheets. You might omit the budget section for a training sign-off sheet.
4. Specify goals
Goals sections apply to both training and project sign-off sheets. They detail the desired outcome for your organization and client. Goals should reflect what the result would be if you achieve all deliverables as intended. Stakeholders gain further context by comparing deliverables or training progress with the description found in the goals section.
5. Define deliverables
Create a field to describe the exact deliverables this sign-off sheet addresses. If concluding a project, you can define the deliverable as project completion. This section is critical as it clarifies exactly what work your company has completed and secures client approval only for what you list. In a training sign-off sheet, deliverables might describe the tasks or policies you explained to an employee.
6. Create a comments section
A comments section is helpful for any sign-off sheet. It allows stakeholders to communicate any outstanding concerns. Some issues you might address for the client later in the project, or the client might handle the issue independently. In training situations, a manager can detail any follow-up the trainee requires. Comments sections also may simply help you organize notes about each deliverable. For instance, if a sign-off sheet includes multiple deliverables, you might write the different dates of completion in the comments section.
7. Make signature and date sections
Make at least two distinct signature sections, one for the client and one for your company. If your sign-off policy involves multiple stakeholders’ signatures, you might create multiple signature fields. Add space for signees to print their names and write the dates they signed.
Tips to keep in mind
Sign-offs are an indication that stakeholders agree with and approve the requirements that have been elicited and documented. Though they provide a detailed view of requirements and consistent expectations of what the final solution will deliver, there are other reasons why business analysts seek stakeholder sign-offs. In some cases, it is not always clear whom it benefits.
While methodologies (such as agile) do not involve a formal sign-off phase, requirements sign-off does add value. Here are 3 quick tips to keep in mind:
1. Ensure that stakeholders understand the Requirements Specification Document (RSD).
Though you might be lucky enough to get a stakeholder to sign off on the RSD without understanding its contents (yes, some people still sign documents without reading them), the ethical thing to do is to seek their understanding and cooperation before asking them to sign. To further ease the sign-off process, stakeholders should be asked to sign off on only those requirements that relate directly to them. This is more likely to result in a successful outcome and have a lasting positive effect on the project.
Business analysts should avoid insisting on getting sign-off from stakeholders on RSD’s that stakeholders have not read, or have read but do not understand. They should instead, seek to gain their understanding and commitment to the project.
Key takeaway: If you are planning to get a sign-off on your RSD, make sure stakeholders understand its contents. Discuss the contents of the document, note their concerns, answer their questions, seek their opinions and make them feel involved. This will help to build trust between you and your stakeholders and ensure you get a “knowing” sign-off rather than one that is given in ignorance or under duress.
2. Avoid spending an excessive amount of time on getting the RSD signed off.
Sign-offs have the drawback of taking time. The majority of the time, analysts must use important business time to spend explaining the RSD to stakeholders; after all, they must comprehend the content before approving it. This can cause the project to be significantly delayed, especially if the stakeholders are hard to find or are in another part of the world. How does the analyst defend delegating lower priority to other business analysis tasks in order to track down stakeholder signatures?
Where stakeholders have not sought the change, getting sign-off is extremely more difficult to achieve. How can a stakeholder approve a requirement that wasn’t created by them? A stakeholder’s designation as “process owner” does not imply that they are prepared to bear the accountability or change that comes with approving the requirements.
Technical issues, legal requirements, or requests from other departments can all lead to the need for change initiatives. Expect stakeholders to be difficult to work with unless the advantages are evident or the consequences of approving requirements pose minimal risk.
Key takeaway: Get all the relevant stakeholders involved as soon as you start the project. The more involved they are from the beginning, the more cooperative they will be when it is time for sign-off. Sign-off is also easier to obtain when requirements have been developed and documented in a collaborative fashion (using wikis, for example). In addition, requirements review sessions should be held where possible to confirm general consensus and get the RSD signed off on time.
3. Avoid idle time while awaiting sign-off
Some businesses forbid developers from writing any code before the criteria have been approved. Developers (and business analysts) who have been recruited to perform the task may be left with idle time if the sign-off procedure is delayed. Before the requirements are approved, developers may have already begun their work in some circumstances. But doing so can be wasteful. Project cancellations are just one effect; nevertheless, it is possible to counter that just because the RSD has been approved does not necessarily mean that the project cannot be cancelled.
Key takeaway: Maintain continual communication with stakeholders to speed up the approval procedure. When sign-off is delayed, it’s crucial to consider how significant the project is to the stakeholders. When all else fails, resorting to greater authority may promote the desired behavior.
There are benefits to be achieved when sign-offs are sought without political overtones and with the best intentions. The sign-off procedure ought to be viewed as a chance for discovery that enables interested parties to enquire about and receive clarity on their areas of concern. Having stakeholders sign off on requirements shows they are dedicated to seeing the solution implemented and in use.
Case Study: Unilever’s large-scale change and transformation
Unilever is a fantastic stakeholder engagement example of large-scale change and transformation, with its products including a long list of well-known food and beverage, cleaning, and beauty brands.
Unilever developed its Sustainable Living Plan, a road map for a sustainable company, in 2010. The objectives were to improve global health, well-being, and livelihoods while reducing the negative effects on the environment. They sought to alter entire systems and contribute to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations by bringing about transformative change in these areas outside the bounds of their own organization.
This required a multi-stakeholder approach to better understand and address the obstacles preventing society from experiencing lasting transformation. Shareholders, employees, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO), and civil society organizations are among Unilever’s project stakeholders. They were aware that they needed to collaborate with important parties in order to “achieve change at scale.” However, they should also involve their staff through programs like leadership development, management training, employee surveys, and sustainability training.
Unilever’s plan is still in progress, but they have already seen some encouraging outcomes, such as continuous growth for products that most closely connect with sustainability. And they have received recognition for their efforts in sustainability.
Exercise 12
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Current State process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Building Awareness of the Need for Change
02. Voice of the Customer (VOC)
03. Successful Change Management
04. Business Process Management
05. Project Management
06. The DMAIC Model Introduction
07. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Define Phase
08. The DMAIC Model as it relates to Current State: Measure Phase
09. Stakeholder Roles
10. Researching Current Process
11. Documentation of Project
12. Stakeholder Communication and Validation
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Operations
- Employee Utilization
- Capacity Planning
- Process Improvement
- Systems Understanding
- Involved Commitment
- Rising Productivity
- Clear Assignments
- Personal Effectiveness
- Overcoming Inertia
- Negative Entropy
Management
- Engaged Workforce
- Increased Trust
- Heightened Teamwork
- Productive Meetings
- Idea Generation
- Role Clarity
- Tasking Formula
- BOP Understanding
- Strategic Direction
- Shared Vision
Human Resources
- Improved Morale
- Reduced Conflict
- Infrastructure Knowledge
- Management Processes
- Managing Change
- Heightened EQ
- Transparent Systems
- Team Building
- Change Culture
- Solution Ownership
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.