Driving change through
process improvement

Background

A Fortune 100 corporation undertook a process improvement initiative to improve information technology capabilities across the entire organization – from IT strategy through release and deployment management. The goal was to strengthen the role of IT in growing market share, and to institute a continuous improvement process methodology.

The highly visible initiative was piloted by senior executives, who actively participated in key decisions and approvals. The company’s Strategy, Governance and Operations Management office, which oversaw the project, issued guidelines and templates for organizational units to identify improvement opportunities. IT leaders from functional units were assigned to lead process improvement efforts.

Challenges

After several months, executives determined the plan was not producing satisfactory results. While the organizational units were following the guidelines, the results fell short of expectations. The units found themselves focusing more on the process than the intent of the process. As a result, the value of the program was in question. Cooperation among teams was lacking and differing interpretations of the initiative was causing confusion among the units.

Blue River International was then engaged to manage overall improvement across organizational units in close collaboration with the individual units. Among the primary goals targeted by the Strategy and Governance office:

  • Measure improvements and the impact they had on individual organizational units.
  • Increase collaboration among organizational units and consolidating efforts where appropriate.
  • Ensure project progress reporting to the company CIO.
  • Improve management of risk and insure ongoing attention to regulatory and compliance issues.

Solutions

Our consultants began by helping several organizational units to select the right process improvement opportunities. Improvement projects that were already underway were adjusted to better meet business needs.

Process and governance templates were reviewed and suggestions were made to improve them. Working with project teams, continuous improvement workflow was condensed to a few critical processes. Opportunity-based data was collated into process artifacts. Metrics were developed to measure risk, cost and other factors. For each process identified for improvement, BRI helped develop strategy and assign governance responsibilities.

To promote efficiency, our consultants helped identify and combine common improvement efforts among units. For example, the Program and Project Management unit, the Quality Assurance unit and the Compliance unit were all measuring similar programs and projects. Our consultants facilitated the combination of these measurement processes, resulting in a lighter workload for the Compliance Department and a merged quality measurement process that provided stronger insights into project performance. Our client was able to save valuable resources and improve operational efficiency.

Our consultant also identified a consistent set of key metrics that could be used across all organization units. These metrics became the basis for common reporting templates. Our consultant also helped to establish better reporting of process improvement data. The unit data was further condensed into an executive level dashboard to evaluate progress across the company’s entire IT organization.

With the help of Blue River International, the corporation was able to turn this initiative into a successful, highly-productive project.