Performance Measurement Systems
How do performance metrics and maturity models converge?
- "The two should be peanut butter and jelly, in my humble opinion."
I ask, if the organizations strategy and core value statements indicate they are committed to quality?
- We understand the quality management systems and the purpose of the certification a company aspires to meet indicates fewer rather than more.
- More equals higher volume of error in any defects
- More human touches equals greater defect weaknesses-Based on my experience, until a day proves what I have seen every case and in every project.
- More in any case with evidence of waste using the 7 waste types; the volume isn't a factor alone for performance nor would it be applicable for maturity.
- The proposal published as the rule in OMG - Infers a defect by design at any point in the process a metric can be applied and rules overridden to attain performance measures in the maturity model.
- How does an organization explain using a volume metric for maturity levels 1-4?
- In business process scenarios more generally equals in-efficiency
- Fewer technical or systemic features causing lower value in technical delivery systems.
Volume To Defect
Management by objectives (MBO), using volume based metrics can be detrimental to operational efficiency and therefore you are promoting more cost to the bottom line.
More means greater number of threats by people who produce less quality than your competitor.
Think about the volume from the people perspective;
- How many transactions? Transaction rows = people making decisions
- How many keystrokes?
- How long does each entry take each person?
- How much does the time factor into the person skill?
- How many people?
- How many transactions on the top 10 creators?
Measuring the process from;
start to finish
Every entry from start to finish between each decision
- How many sources contribute to the decisions?
- How many times can an error be entered?
Audit and Risk based on defects and corrective actions- random sampling with acknowledgement of a problem and something to warrant a corrective action.
Re-engineering 3 Page Guide
The procedure used to introduce mass change with significant - much like Lean or strategic transformation for a variety of purposes.
Design Thinking
People
The human side of change; a recent article was published which tells a very different story about the value of architecture. If we listen to the author in this article he tells us about debunking the iterative marathon project model.
In re-design type projects;
You actually don't need to adopt a quality management system to re-engineer or re-design a process.
You can converge these practices in this process, as the model you promote indicates the voice of the customer or process benchmarking for the human side of the change.
Who can use this article?
Actors who lead or support the following;
- Lean and six sigma
- Total Quality Management
- Continuous Improvement
- A Business Person or Leader facing barriers to your organizations success
Let me share my secret sauce-sizing and scaling my audience in this observation benchmarking task.
I use system reports on the users who enter information request.
I collect the transaction dimensions; including the who (user) What (offer) Why (customer or supplier) when (in/out) and the where (source for the transaction history-the file).
The common objectives in any of these scenarios; you have to understand the "as is" for the people (not just a single person) you must understand the users, I use a system operating report from the system of record. Not a sampling of the "proposed" or assumed systems. Get to the operational applications, acquire history and create a few pivot tables to see the visual patterns of fewer columns and rows using the variables that explode to many columns and rows-this is your worst case scenario. Then get the values to be very consistent and few, this is the dimensions you will likely move to. organizational opportunity
simply a strategic problem solver you need to get to your users.
1) How many organization leaders, felt the architecture value met the project expectations?
Only 8% were able to recognize an architecture re-design therefore attributed to architecture value.
2) How long was the project in terms of months?
None were likely to extend the project beyond 6 months.
Physically observing the process in action has been considered the most reliable and most effective benchmarking elicitation practice.
This activity has the following outcomes or value to the overall re-design task;
- You get a baseline
- You get the voice of the customer live in a 1:1 setting where people are more likely to engage in open dialogue without the burden of the user needing to learn how to create a process model.
- When you have to do the work, it's painful to sit and learn something that will either be sugar coated for the audience in the room or the group dynamics have a stronger hierarchy than the organization hierarchy itself.
- You get to ask questions
- You get to watch the person instead of hoping they understood your request.
What does this mean to us?
People have actions they must execute in a daily routine, imagine someone hiding your cell phone. Or what if they allow you to have your phone, but your operating system isn't working.
the human behaviors that only champions within these user groups can truly lead the types of projects with greatest likelyhood to succeed in return on architecture value. Sure, the odds are against you. But a design thinker isn't going to see things "as impossible", if its causing pain or hindering the fields and/or the tools used to support the customer
In a worst case scenario; you start a new job in sales. Before the introductions could be made the sales people circle the person leaving the role and like a herd of Rhino they charge toward the very efficient Program Manager.
iterative delivery and the chaos and uncertainty that people don't seem to understand.
Perhaps we might say the process re-engineering also known as re-design has identified tremendous cost savings, as a result of a proven quality management methodology using one of the seven quality tools.
The Kaizen Blitz can be very effective if your not a sigma type person.
Revisiting Time and Motion Studies - Voice of the Customer mixed with a Physical Observational Process Benchmarking
Constraints
You may fail to execute "IF" you attempt to execute change of this type without involving the business users who must perform the change from what they do today to something different.
The most effective way to enable change would engage the people in a process, to inspire more effective ways to meet the customer expectations.
When the employees performing the work engage in the process re-engineering or re-design the bottom line and/or margin would be the beneficiaries.
There have been technologies designed to implement business process activities in a host of systems, these can only be beneficial with the people in the process, not put on a shelve when IT or Business have a new technology. BPM technology would be a vital part of the ongoing care and feeding, addressed in each release of software project, to ensure consistency in the people and process to technology.
Hence my earlier comments about the time and motion or process benchmarking at the lowest level of the organization. Your opportunity to identify non-value add activities or decisions that may not be required has the greatest opportunity to target those processes working directly with the champions.
Quote from ASQ Process Work
Quote
"Process orientation and process re-engineering help companies review their assumptions and use information to develop customer-focus business strategies."
Business process re-engineering (BPR) BusinessDictionary.com
Definition
Thorough rethinking of all business processes, job definitions, management systems, organizational structure, work flow, and underlying assumptions and beliefs. BPR's main objective is to break away from old ways of working, and effect radical (not incremental) redesign of processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical areas (such as cost, quality, service, and response time) through the in-depth use of information technology. Also called business process redesign.
The activities a person may perform in a task by way of either people, process and technology. In order to converge any waste identified using any number of industry standard quality methodologies; each should be based on a foundation using the most inclusive of an end to end Total Quality Management Methodology. This may be accelerated by way of six sigma belt projects in any case where a strong set of champions lead these systems your organizations measurement systems.
Reference(s): Process Re-engineering BusinessDictionary.com
TQM vs. BPR 2003
ASQ - Process of Work
