by Neil Potter & Mary Sakry

Cover

  • GoodReads
  • Size: small book (Around 150p, including 45p of annexes).

Outline

  • Make a plan based on business goals, and problems limiting their realization
  • Execute it:
    • sell to the correct stakeholders
    • keep focused on the goals
  • Measure the success of both plan execution and goal KPIs.
  • Cycle

Ideas

  • Focus on goals (Why do I want to improve my process.)
  • 50% of the impacted persons should be aware and OK with the new process before switch
  • Start improvement with small chunks.
  • A way to determine what to start with is defining priority from a benefit / cost ratio.
  • Goals → Problems (they might be common to several goals) → Solutions (common as well)
  • Try out process improvement before going into an edict phase (During which you write the new policies supporting the process).
  • Use the adoption curve to determine the correct persons to start improvement with (Innovators + early adopters). Adoption curve
  • Beware of side effects when measuring and fixing new targets (Getting wrong behaviour from purely targeting better numbers);
  • Process change has to be sold. Resistance to change may come from thinking that proposed solutions don’t fulfill one’s needs, and from fear - try to understand what the issue is, demonstrate new process and outline what the benefits are for laggards.

Other more common stuff

  • Problem with improvement frameworks (CMMI + ISO9001) is that they don’t focus on goal.
  • State stuff clearly and unambiguously. Should be measurable.