How Project Managers Can Benefit from Knowledge Management Systems
Project Managers Have to Learn to Deal with Uncertainties and Risks Project Management is the art and science of balancing competing interests, prioritizing the resources and their deployment, and is also situational in nature meaning that project managers often have to respond to evolving situations and circumstances. This means that uncertainty and unpredictability are the […]
Evaluating Decision Support System Projects
Why do we determine whether a computerized decision support system application is worth considering or not? Why is there a need to predict the actual impact of a proposed DSS? In short, the question is – why is it necessary to evaluate a decision support system project? The answer is simple. It’s done to assess […]
Inventory Management and Just In Time (JIT)
Introduction Supply-chain management plays a pivotal role in ensuring goods, and services are delivered on time to customers. Within supply-chain management, inventory management plays a central role. Inventory involves various cost, investment, space management, etc. Also there are chances that stored inventory may get damaged or get stolen adding to extra cost to the company. […]
Information Technology as Driving Force for Innovation
Introduction Last two decades have seen great stride in information technology. The development in information technology has changed the way business is getting conducted. One of the striking points about information technology is innovation. Information technology has been a driving force for product, service and process innovation. Innovation in Last Decades It has brought forward […]
Open Systems Approach to Project Management in Organizations
When organizations have “flat” structures and consist of coalitions of people coming together with multiple loyalties, intersection of the organization with its environment being characterized by shifting boundaries; the informal nature of the work processes makes use of “open” systems approach towards organizations. The point to note here is that external environments both shape and […]
Business Process Improvement projects are ideally suited for every business operation, especially to augment the process efficiency, to implement process changes and to take the business operations to the next level and meet with the Business demands and Customer expectations.
For any BPI project to be successful, the leadership and the ownership of the Business Head concerned as well as the senior management is essential. Only when the sponsorship of the BPI project demonstrated and communicated by the senior management, do the employees get aligned to the objective of the project and the BPI team will be able to move ahead.
Once the EIT (Executive Implementation Team) & PIT (Process Improvement Team) teams have been formed, trained in BPI Concepts and equipped with the tools to help them with problem solving can the ball be set rolling. The PIT team members would start the work with capturing the process in ‘AS IS’ condition. The process details would need to be captured in detail and mapping using flow charts that best depict the entire process.
The next significant phase of the project begins with understanding and review of the process in detail with reference to its characteristics. Process flow, effectiveness, efficiency and the cycle time are the basic process characteristics that the process has to be measured in the current situation. Apart from the above characteristics, the process would need to be measured on other parameters such as quality of output, cost of output and any other measure that is specific and relevant to the business operation on hand.
The process review would need to be done in detail by walking through the process and examining each and every task in minutest detail as well as checking the process documentation to identify the discrepancies and gap between the process that is currently being followed with reference to the detail given in the process documentation.
It is not enough if the PIT team captures the process using flow chart, examines the tasks in detail and reviews the documentation. They might measure and map the current process using the process characteristics to peg the process at a base line. However most importantly, the process has to be reviewed with reference to the most important resource that is instrumental to the process which happens to be the ‘People’ who make the process work.
At this stage, it is important for the PIT team to recognize that the Organizations as well as Business operations are not about procedure, documentation, infrastructure, systems and targets, but it is the people who make things happen. People are the drivers of the process and every individual is different. With each individual being unique in terms of their skill sets, attitude, understanding and capabilities, the process is subject to variations.
Once the ‘People’ dimension has been understood and assimilated into the process mapping or understanding, the PIT team can better understand the dynamics of what makes the process works, understand the problems and identify the root causes better.
In many cases, the problems can often be very simple to solve. Process may not have been understood by the individuals or the individuals concerned may not be aware of what is expected of them. In such cases, training the people concerned can improve the process efficiency and solve major problems. There are be several other reasons relating to people that can be the cause of process inefficiency. When a group of people are working in tandem on a single process, a non-alignment or misbalancing of the required skill sets of the individuals can hamper the process output. There can be other practical reasons like language problems, absence of right infrastructure or tools etc that may not have been noticed by the supervisors and hence the process output might suffer.
Spending more time with the people involved in the process, understanding the various dimensions involving people and viewing the process along with the human element and dimension can help the team immensely in problem identification area.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
