Continuous Improvement & Process Improvement Plan

Post date: Jun 9, 2014 11:32:48 AM

In order to build a consistent context for a process improvement plan it is important to establish a frame for continuous improvement starting at the organizational level.

In order to do this an assessment of the commitment to critical success factors is needed and the most important part of it is the set of questions to be evaluated with regards to continuous improvement such as:

• the success criteria used to evaluate the achievements in an organizational strategy, the means to track these for future reference and the roles and responsibilities associated to the people performing the aforementioned activity
• what are the techniques used to identify organizational areas needing improvement
• what are the techniques used for overall organizational risk management and who is in charge to define contingency plans
• what are the means to identify threats and opportunities to the achievement of organizational strategy and when was such an analysis conducted
• who is responsible to define high level actions meant to achieve the organizational strategy
• how is continuous improvement tailored to projects, programs and portfolios

Once continuous improvement is assessed at organizational level, process improvement plans can be defined for the entities underneath. A possible concise template for this purpose would have the following structure:

• Project/Program/Portfolio title
• Current Date
• Process boundaries (starting point, inputs, ending point, outputs)
• Process Owner
• List of stakeholders implied in the process
• Process metrics & their control limits
• Targets for improvement
• Process improvement approach
• Graphical illustration - process diagram (activity, control flow diagram)

Once such a process improvement plan has been established it needs to be continuously analyzed, monitored and evaluated across the whole life cycle of the different projects, programs and portfolios.