how do you know bp improvements scqaa

Kristine A. Hayes Munson, MBA, PMP, CIA

State Street

Photos of Attendees on December 11 2013 at Intuit Office

www.scqaa.net

You will be able to apply systems thinking to business process improvement projects after:

◦ Selecting key performance indicators (KPI)

◦ Knowing when to implement change or when to leave a process “as is”

◦ Determining whether or not proposed changes will positively or negatively impact the project

Managed an user acceptance testing project to onboard a client to a major system within firm

Project went from greenish-amber to red in less than a week with no major fires

SVP comment on the project: ◦ The team is working frantically ◦ The team is not working hard enough

“There is no such thing as a fact concerning an empirical observation. Any two people may have different ideas about what is important to know about any event. Get the facts!” —W. Edward Deming

Process Improvement Projects Revisited

Key Performance Indicators

Why Change?

◦ Special Cause and Common Cause Variation

◦ The Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle

Seeing is Understanding

◦ Deming’s Red Bead Experiment

◦ Deming’s Funnel Experiment

Understanding My Project

Change Agent

◦ Identify and articulate the need for a business process change

◦ Document and vet requirements for the proposed change

◦ Facilitate the proposed change

◦ Help businesses do their business better.

Acceptance & Evaluation Criteria Definition

Brainstorming

Interviews

Document Analysis

Focus Groups

Observation

Organization Modeling

Process Modeling

Prototyping

Requirements Workshops

Risk Analysis

Root Cause Analysis

Scenarios & Use Cases

Scope Modeling

Survey/Questionnaire

What are our results?

Translate collected data and information into knowledge

Make the right management decisions and take the right action

◦ Implement appropriate, planned changes

◦ Allow the process to function “as is”

Select 3-5 key performance indicators (KPI)

◦ Understand the overall business objectives

◦ Ask stakeholders what is most important

◦ Identify the impact of not completing the project

Make KPIs “SMART”

Remember may need to be “bad” at some things in order to be “good”

• Ensure stakeholders including the project team know

and understand the KPIs

Think about a process improvement project on which you are currently working.

◦ Identify what are the 3-5 KPIs?

◦ What are you going to be intentionally bad at?

We observe variation from our expectations

How do we decide whether or not to “change,” “fix” or “improve” something?

How do we determine if a change will positively and/or negatively impact a project?

Common Cause

◦ Fall inside the control limits

Special Cause

◦ Something that is special, not part of the system of common causes

◦ Fall outside the control limits

Mistake 1

◦ To react to an outcome as if it came from a special cause, when actually it came from common causes of variation.

Mistake 2

◦ To treat an outcome as if it came from common causes of variation, when actually it came from a special cause

When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In many companies more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

Changing riders Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses

Appointing a committee to study the horse Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included

Reclassifying the dead horse as ‘living impaired’ Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed

Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance

Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance

Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower

overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the mission of the organization than do some other horses

Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses…

A

B

C

D

Perception of

Cause and Effect

Experience

Plan

Do Check

Act

Plan a change or

a test, aimed at

improvement –Which option

to test?

– What is

anticipated

result?

Carry out the change

or test (preferably

on a small scale)

Study the results.

What did we learn?

What went wrong?

Adopt the change, or

abandon it or

run through

the cycle again

Beware of

Unintended Consequences

Help Wanted

◦ 3 willing project team members (must be brave)

◦ 2 team leads (must be able to count)

◦ 1 business analyst (must be able to count)

◦ 1 project manager (must be able to add & use PowerPoint)

◦ 1 senior manager (sets the rules – me)

Wrong to rank people ◦ Demoralizing ◦ Really ranking the effect of the process on

people

Futility of pay for performance; rewarding and punishing the process

Display of bad management; procedures were rigid

No basis to assume that best team member would be the best in the future

Help Wanted

◦ 1 will project team member (must be able to hold funnel)

◦ 1 business analyst (must be able to use a marker)

◦ 1 senior manager (sets the rules – me)

No one gets fired in this experiment.

Avoid management tampering

◦ Taking action based on the belief that a common cause is a special cause

◦ Overreacting

◦ Causes losses – management by results

◦ Increases variation

Sometimes the process should just be left alone

What is the most important decision I face right

now because of observed variation?

◦ What long-term consequence do the short-term

issues have?

◦ How does this decision relate to the project’s

3-5 KPIs?

How will we determine if this variation is a special

cause or a common cause variation?

How does this knowledge impact your decision?

How will you test your decision?

You will be able to apply systems thinking to monitoring and controlling after:

◦ Selecting key performance indicators (KPI)

◦ Knowing when to implement change or when to leave a project “as is”

◦ Determining whether or not proposed changes will positively or negatively impact the project

“The truth is often buried deeper than where your intuition can reach. Uncovering it starts with the willingness to stop treating your beliefs as facts.” — Frances Frei and Anne Morriss

“Learning the word ‘no’ is the hardest lesson for

many project managers.”

— Jim Johnson

Kristine A. Hayes Munson, MBA, PMP, CIA

kahayesmunson@statestreet.com

+949-932-1476

For SCQAA- San Fernando Valley Chapter

Sujit Ghosh sujit58@gmail.com

818-878-0834