PDF of this tutorialAs with all other endeavors, selecting the right tool for the job will make the job easier and produce better results. Business process revolution is not about using universal process templates or packaged processes. These, by their very nature, can only produce a copy. They can never produce the innovative industry-leading process engine required of a market leader.
The correct process revolution methodology requires a toolkit that has the capability of dealing with the many unique process issues in each company. It identifies the processes critical to a company’s success. It systematically defines how success will be measured so that everyone will know when it has been achieved. The toolkit comprehensively identifies nonvalue-added efforts as well as obstacles that impede success and provides the means to eliminate them. The correct process revolution tool also continually challenges and reinforces commitment as the environment around it changes.
Business as a Process
As discussed earlier, internal processes are the engines that produce the products and services of a company. A process simply involves the steps that must be accomplished to complete a task. For example, the steps in a process to develop a software product might be the following:
- identify customer requirements
- design and code
- test
- install
- confirm customer satisfaction
In companies that have long time-to-market cycles, this process typically functions as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Obstacles Inhibit Smooth Process Flow
Obstacles exist between the process steps. Overcoming these obstacles takes time and effort in the daily functioning of this process—effort that can be better spent elsewhere.
When the obstacles are removed, the process flows smoothly, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Seamless Process Flow
Transition from step to step is seamless and effortless. Obstacles do not exist, and the time to deliver the product to market is reduced.
To see a business as a process is to recognize that individual process steps are linked and dependent on each other for success. Dramatic improvement will only occur when the individual process steps and the links between them are the focus of improvement efforts. Often, the largest obstacles exist between process steps, at the links, requiring a holistic process view and cross-functional cooperation to effect improvement.
Measuring Success
The cliches are well known: "If you don’t measure it, it’s just a hobby;" "If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it." They ring true, however, when applied to initiatives intended to revolutionize business processes. The process improvement toolkit provides a method of defining the steps in a process and, therefore, the boundaries—which are key measurement points.
Selecting the right measure is directly linked to the criteria used to select and characterize the critical processes. That criteria is the need to improve the results delivered by the processes. Results are the first category of measures. They are the high-level metrics (EPS, revenue, return on investment [ROI], customer satisfaction, etc.) that are essential to the business. However, because they are at a high level, focusing improvement efforts on them is equivalent to trying to swallow an elephant whole. This is why a second category of measures, drivers, is the correct focus of improvement efforts.
Drivers are called such because they are the measures that, when improved, drive improvement in results. Drivers are selected at a level in the process that is actionable by the team tasked with improvement. They are designed to reflect changes made in the process in near-real time. It is important to note that one driver measure is not sufficient to characterize process improvement, as one measure can be too easily manipulated. For example, project cycle time can be shown to improve by reducing feature content of the product. However, features are essential to customer satisfaction. Therefore, both cycle time and feature content are drivers to be measured in this project example. In many cases, multiple drivers are required to have a truly comprehensive measurement program. Examples of drivers are time, yield, requirement stability, and cost.
As crucial to the success of process improvement efforts as is the right selection of measures is the setting of improvement goals. As Yogi Berra said so eloquently; "You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there." Goals allow companies and individuals to measure success and progress toward it.
Remember, however, that this is a revolution. Revolutions are not waged for incremental improvements. The American Revolution was not fought for a lower tea tax; it was fought to change the way an entire country was governed. When setting goals to accomplish revolutionary process improvement, one must make them aggressive.
There are several ways to determine what the right aggressive goal should be. One way is to set it at a level equal to the best process performance achieved in emergency or fire-drill scenarios. The reason for this is that in these situations, obstacles tend to be knocked down, and everyone pulls toward a common objective. Unfortunately, the obstacles go back up as soon as the emergency is over. Other ways to set goals include determining what it takes to meet customer expectations or what is needed to best the competition. Whatever method is used, remember that the objective is to cause a revolution in how business is conducted.
Knocking Down the Obstacles
So, in what state is the implementation process? The process and process steps are characterized, the measures are in place to drive results, and the goals seem almost unattainable. What stands between today's performance and the goals are obstacles. These obstacles must be removed to enable processes to operate at the target level. To remove obstacles effectively requires a disciplined, methodical approach. The approach is outlined as follows:
- From the measures, identify the gap existing between current performance of the process and the goal. This is the opportunity gap. As obstacles are removed from the process, the gap will close.
- Identify the obstacles in the process that prevent it from operating at the goal.
- Prioritize the list of obstacles to be removed. It is important not to try and fix everything at once. Work on those that have the most impact on the measure and are easiest to remove first.
- Assign a small team of those most familiar with the issue to remove the obstacle. Clearly communicate what the obstacle is, the scope of the team’s responsibilities, and the time allowed to complete the task.
- Monitor the performance of this small team to ensure that they are making progress.
- Subsequent to removal of the obstacle, review the measure to see if the removal action improved the measure and progressed toward the goal.
- Repeat steps one through seven until all obstacles are removed, and the process is at the desired performance level.
One thing to note in this approach is that even though obstacles are being removed, measures may not show any improvement. This can result from removing obstacles that were not truly obstacles in the process or from having the wrong measure. The correction of this problem requires a reassessment of the measure and the prioritized obstacles.
There is one last interesting issue to consider relative to obstacles. In the workplace, ways to accomplish tasks will often be found in spite of the obstacles. To do this, processes and systems that circumvent the established processes are installed because they work when the processes do not.
However, processes that circumvent obstacles must also be removed (see Figure 7). In the optimized process they are now nonvalue-added efforts. To quote Peter Drucker, "There’s nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
Figure 7. Processes That Circumvent Obstacles Must Also Be Removed
