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January 15, 2006

Measuring process improvement

Events become notable and interesting to business primarily because of their outcomes.

While outcomes range across the spectrum of pursued to avoided, desirable to undesirable, or benefitsto damages, they generally all figure into operations by the same path. That is, the impact of the event is studied for whether that impact is (or can be) repeatable; whether the repetition is (or can be) intentional; and finally whether the intention is (or can be) manageable.

In that light, four areas of measurement are associated with all managed events, and the manageability is ultimately what distinguishes an operations event from an operations process.

1. The impact itself is compared against some standard of expectation or some qualifying definition.

2. The likelihood or frequency of the impact’s repetition is tracked against elapsed time and/or a range of different conditions.

3. The intent to repeat is proved against evidence of supporting commitments made.

4. The manageability of the intention is modeled in terms of responsibility and authority.

These four types of measurements – comparisons, trends, proofs and models – provide the terms for establishing both the bases of process development and the deltas of process improvement. Each type of measurement refers to some defining aspect of the operations environment, and that environment is therefore the context of the measurements.

Process improvement is usually thought of in terms of the difference between the earlier outcomes generated and the outcomes gained consequent to a modification of the process. But this is an erroneous attitude. Outcome improvements are of course highly important, but they are different from process improvements.

Instead, process improvements always assume that a target outcome is achievable, and the process improvements are concerned with how to engineer and assure the achievement.

Given the above, the difference between the initial circumstances of a process and the improved circumstances for the same process is the critical difference to be determined in a process improvement initiative. Effectively, the following is pursued by the initiative:
1 - establish definitions and standards
2 - establish continuous event monitoring from multiple perspectives
3 - establish commitments to prerequisites and/or causes underlying the dynamics of events deemed pertinent to goals
4 - establish models of proprietorship for the commitments

These factors make it more obvious that process improvement is essentially a matter of managing corresponding organizational changes. These changes include, for example, the strength, state and pace of an organization’s adoption of:
1 - taxonomies and vocabularies
2 - reporting and analyses
3 - approvals, allocations and priorities
4 - assignments and authorities

Given alignment of those changes, the organization acquires the capability to literally do things differently for the better, and the groundwork exists for shifting focus to production technique that will be evaluated as a quality factor in execution.

Improvements in technique are again a different matter from process improvement but they manifest the ability to reliably conduct the process on demand, and therefore point attention towards improved competency as opposed to improved capability.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at January 15, 2006 11:53 PM

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