A very common term that is heard around in every business, across
all industries, is “Process Improvement”. Senior management wants to focus on
Process Improvement to increase the productivity and efficiency of already
existing processes to perform better than their competitors. But are we doing
enough to really improve those processes? If we are then, why some companies
within the same industry performs better than others? Why not all the processes
are efficient and productive as we want them to be? These are very thought provoking
questions which are around for quite a sometime.
Let’s not consider two competing organizations instead let’s
take a closer look inside an organization. In any organization there are
different departments (Marketing, Software Development, Quality Assurance etc).
Some departments have better processes in place that are highly productive and
efficient while some departments unfortunately struggle to deploy new and
improved processes. Why not all the departments have those productive and
efficient processes in place? Why some department finds it easy to introduce
new processes?
Solution to this problem lies within the new or improved
process. The way in which the process is introduced has a big impact on the
success of that process. Some departments are able to implement those highly
productive and efficient processes because the manner in which those processes
were introduced convinces the team members that the process will not only help
the company to perform better but at the same time it’ll make their life easy
and help them to grow professionally. Productive and efficient processes can be
complex and sometimes confusing at first look. The very basic human nature is
to avoid change and we are very good at it. We are happy doing stuff in 5 hours
when that can be done in less time using a better process. But if we are able to communicate across board that all changes are not painful then introducing a new process can be a cake walk for us.
Process improvement doesn't always means to discard the
already existing process and implement a completely new alien process. So the question is, are there any well
defined procedure to devise and introduce a more efficient and productive process?
And the answer is No. The procedure for improving a process depends on number
of different factors and among them the most critical factor is the acceptance
of change by the team members. The focus should be on the VALUE that the improved
process will bring to the team. If the team realizes the VALUE in the new/improved
process then easier it becomes to change the already existing process.
But from where we will get these improved and efficient
processes, In short how can we improve the processes that are already in place?
Simple answer to this question is just by analysing the existing process. A
simple way to analyse is to draw the existing process on a white board and then
start marking the parts that are strong and need not/cannot be changed. In the
end of this analysis you’ll get the parts of the process that are weak and can
be changed for a better process. So now you have a very well defined area that
you have to focus on. This is when you will start experimenting different
options. An improved and efficient process is not created at once but it gets
evolved over a period of time. All it takes is innovation and thinking out of
the box. The important thing to remember here is never try to force the
new/improved process onto the team but instead ask for their input and
recommendation. You don’t want to end up looking in a different direction than
your team. I have personally experienced a strong push back from one of my team
when we were trying to introduce an improved QA process. In the start of that
initiative whenever we conduct presentation/ work session the team looked
completely disengaged. We were struggling to engage even a single member of the
team. At that time, we realized that solution to this disengagement is to
engage some team members on one-to-one basis understand what they think is a
problem and show them the solution is in new process. This was the game changer
for us, some of the team members started using the new process and they
acknowledge that now they can work more efficiently. Seeing this rest of the
team also started making efforts to adopt this new process. In a very short
span of time we were able to engage the whole team and successfully introduced
the new and improved process. The process that we introduced not only increased
the productivity of team but also helped each individually to grow
professionally.
Many organizations do
not realize the value of a Process Improvement Analyst or consultant, who can audit
the processes periodically and introduce changes whenever needed. With process
improvement we cannot only achieve better productivity but also we can engage
employees more effectively. So with process improvement techniques in place an
organization can grow with a healthier work environment.
