How to select processes for PI assessment

We have thus far gained an overall understanding of the PI (process improvement) road map that will take us through the journey, visited the first building block of establishing objectives and strategy and taken an inventory of the organization’s processes that aid in the delivery of goods and services. In this module, we will examine how to prioritize the processes for a comprehensive process improvement. Keep in mind that the overall goal is to focus intensely and continuously on those aspects of the organization’s process chain or value chain that will lead to the ultimate nirvana of realizing a delighted customer.

While it is redundant; it’s important to emphasize that the assessment of the process maturity and the impact the process has on organizational objectives, or for that matter any other aspect of the PI assessment, should be done across the entire organization at all levels involving all stakeholders, including the customer. The word “organization” refers to all levels of the organization, with the cell / department at the lowest level and the overall organization at the highest level and all levels in between.

The key steps in this phase of the PI journey are:

• Identification of all significant processes within an organization

• Assess impact process has on attainment of objectives

• Assess the current maturity of process

• Involve key stakeholders, including the customer, to perform an objective assessment

• Confirm & publish results with all stakeholders, including customer

o Identify processes with high impact & low maturity

o Goal: move processes to high maturity, focusing first on those that have the highest impact on organizational objectives

Identification of all significant processes within an organization
The first step is to identify the organization’s significant processes using the process inventory document completed in the previous phase – Identify Process Value Stream - of the PI journey.

Assess impact process has on attainment of objectives
The next step is to assess the impact each process has on the attainment of organizational objectives. These are the objectives highlighted in the first phase of the PI journey – Establishing Objectives & Strategy. The assessment of the impact the process has on the attainment of the objectives is best accomplished using the input from all stakeholders, especially the customer. By engaging the customer and the associates involved in the process, you will capture the voice of the two most critical stakeholders. You can identify the impact as “High”, “Medium” or “Low” or preferably on a six point scale with “0” being no impact, “1” being low impact and “6” being high impact. I prefer to use a numerical scale as it becomes easy to plot the results in a chart.

Assess the current maturity of process
In this step, obtaining the input of all stakeholders, especially the customer, is also very important. We can assign either a qualitative (High, Medium, Low) or a quantitative score using a six point maturity scale. A score of “1” would indicate low maturity and a score of “6” would indicate high maturity. I prefer a quantitative approach for the reasons noted above.

Involve key stakeholders, including the customer, to perform an objective assessment
As mentioned above, it is very important to engage all stakeholders and not just the associates involved in the process when assessing the impact and maturity. It is especially important to engage the customer(s) as they are the ones whose voice ultimately matters. When assessing the score, it is good to get everybody’s “blind” input, ensuring that no one person influences the results and then using some form of averaging, identify the final value of impact and maturity.

Confirm & publish results with all stakeholders
In this final step, the results of the impact maturity exercise are documented through the completion of a Process Impact Maturity chart (PIM Chart), updating the process inventory document and sharing the results with all stakeholders. A key element of PI is the active sharing of all results of the PI assessment through visual organizational PI Boards that are strategically placed within the organization. We will cover this in a subsequent blog.

Shown below is an example of an updated Process Inventory document and a completed PIM Chart for the six processes in the example:

Updated process value stream document

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Completed PIM chart for the six processes in the example

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The PIM Chart above shows the current health of each process by identifying their respective impact and maturity scores and shows processes with high impact & low maturity, which become the initial candidates for a rigorous PI assessment. The eventual goal is to move all processes and especially those that have a high impact on objectives to high maturity, keeping in mind that there is always room for continuous improvement no matter what the score.

So now that we know the processes that have the highest impact to the objectives and those that are the least mature (processes "F" and "E” in the chart above), it becomes convenient to objectively select the processes for a rigorous PI assessment. The goal is to move processes “E” and “F” to a process maturity closer to “6.0”. This impact and maturity exercise allows us to prioritize our PI work.

In the next blog, we will review the steps to start collecting the health of the process, which will form the basis for subsequent PI steps.

Finally, for those who are just joining the PI discussion, to recap, we have reviewed the following topics in the PI journey thus far:

• Process Improvement Road map / Framework
• Process Improvement – Introduction
• Establishing Objectives & Strategy
• Identify Process Value Stream

If you have any questions or comments or need help in implementing PI, please contact me via email.