Introduction
For many companies, process improvement is a beast – they hire consultants or Black Belt employees, train employees on Lean Six Sigma tools, manage multiple projects at once, manage teams and resources, reinforce company/employee buy-in, continually encourage employee participation, develop and analyze new ideas, and initiate new projects. If the planets align, projects get done.
Enterprise-level project management requires a lot of moving parts. For many companies, these parts get tangled together, lost, misplaced or misappropriated to the point where the actual improvement actions are impeding the progress the improvement is supposed to make. There is a real need to track, focus and house ideas and progress timetables in one place so that tasks, ideas and operations don’t get lost.
What if there was a way to do just that? Find a single place where all ideas can be housed, all projects can be tracked, in real time, and analyzed, robust reporting features make reporting simple and not time consuming. All players in the improvement process can input their tasks completed in real-time for the project managers to see. What if we could put improvement on autopilot?
Overview
Putting process improvement on autopilot requires a lot of steps: top management buy-in and a company culture that encourages and rewards innovative improvement ideas, motivates employees to participate and reiterates the importance of improvement for the overall health of the company.
With the corporate mindset firmly established, the next step is to implement an enterprise project management system, like the COMPASS QMS, that can keep track of all these moving parts. With a one-stop system that all players can access, see real-time updates and analyze on their own, many process improvement “brick walls” are removed – allowing for continuous flow of information into the improvement system.
“Adoption of organization-wide application of performance improvement. This system allows scalability to grow and expand with the knowledge-base. Universal value add by all users deployed thus far in the system.”
Raymond S
Your Solutions-Driven Management
A culture of improvement paired with an enterprise project management tool leads to success
A significant challenge for project managers is wait time: waiting for updates on project tasks, waiting for management to review and give feedback for a project, endless meetings about projects. Not only does the wait time slow down the improvement process, the frustration of project managers over wasted time has lead to rapid turnover is many companies. An enterprise project management software can address these problems.
Central location for all ideas
The project management software can act as a repository of all ideas small and large. Better yet, these ideas can be scored based on company objectives, feasibility of the idea, ultimate outcome projections – automatically! Once company objective parameters are set up, ideas can be categorized and prioritized easily and efficiently. An idea pipeline can be maintained. There is no need for multiple spreadsheets, worksheets, different people keeping track of different ideas on different computer hard drives. A centralized location, accessible by all parties involved, streamlines ideation and puts the process of idea gathering and scoring on autopilot.
Automate updates to authors and project managers
Because all players have access to the enterprise project management software, project managers and management can review and task project ideas. The authors of these ideas can receive automatic emails every time a new update has been made to their project. This way, authors can keep track of which projects are getting the most traction, allocate their time accordingly, and prep for the task at hand .
Management Feedback becomes automated
Finally, a project manager doesn’t have to wait for management to meet with them for feedback. Management can review and comment, in real-time on a project and the project manager does not have to chase management for their input. It’s all done in the enterprise management software. No more endless meetings, committees, or feedback delays. A project manager can easily see what management wants and act on the task without leaving their desk.
Keep all stakeholders informed
Rather than sending all parties a spreadsheet they need to mull through, the enterprise management software is accessible by everyone who is involved with a particular project – from the project manager to the people assigned to do tasks for the improvement project to the CEO of the company. All stakeholders are continuously informed, without having to exert any additional effort. It’s automatic.
Summary
Project managers know that the actual process of implementing the project can, in itself, be frustratingly inefficient. So many companies struggle with process improvement because of so many factors. Companies strive to find the balance needed to cleanly and efficiently implement their projects.
Streamlining process improvement is a dream for many project managers. To do this, a company culture that encourages innovative ideation, management that is 100% behind process improvement, and a robust enterprise management software implementation to manage the minutiae of all ideas, tasks and projects are the keys that will ultimately unlock the door to putting process improvement on autopilot.