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Times are a changing

5/30/2012

If you have visited us before you will notice that we are redesigning this site. This part used to be called the DIY Blog but we are now expanding it to be even better, a true Process Hub for everything you need to know to analyse and improve a business process.

So, give us a another week or so and more content will appear as we create The Process Hub. The place you know you can come to for practical advice on analysing and improving business processes.

We are expanding the blog to include articles and research on topics relating to analysing and improving business processes, and we will have sections specifically on:

Process Analysis
Activity Analysis
Process Performance
Process Improvements
Implementation Planning
Managing Change
Shared Services
Outsourcing
Offshoring
BPM

Tell your friends and make sure you visit us at least once a week to get your process improvement fix.

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What influences a process? – part 13

5/23/2012

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20. Do people get trained?
A funny question? It is surprising what people don't get trained on but are expected to know what to do. People must be trained and have the right skills for the process.

21. What is the skill level of the people?
The quality of your labour will impact both the cost and quality performance of the process. It can be better to have fewer, higher paid, higher skilled people than lots of cheap unskilled labour because as we all know you get what you pay for.

22. Are the working hours appropriate?
If someone is working regular overtime they are either:

Milking overtime rates, or
Have to much work, or
Do not have the right skills or training

There are also two other reasons to know the working hours:

If you are comparing your process against someone else, do they work the same hours as you?
If people need to contact others as part of the process are those people available (ie: if borders are crossed are there time zone changes)

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What influences a process? – part 12

5/15/2012

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19. What IT systems are used?
Systems can cause process issues. They can be:

Old with limited functionality
Highly customised so they become hard to maintain and upgrade
Simple, small or not able to scale up to the volume of activity required
Complicated with users not able to take advantage of what is there
Strictly structured without the flexibility the organisation needs
Structured in such a way that the organisation needs to redesign its process to fit the system. Fine if the organisation is prepared to do this, but more often than not the organisation tries to adapt the system to fit it
Locked down with users not able to access areas they need to see to do their jobs
Costly to implement and maintain. If you opt to implement one of the gold plated solutions you had better have deep pockets. Their functionality is great but their cost is high and they need focus to get the most out of them.

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What influences a process? – part 11

5/10/2012

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17. Is performance measured?
To understand and improve a process its performance needs to be measured. You need to know what is happening to the process and what the people involved are doing. But don't get carried away. You don't need to measure everything.

18. How good is the process?
Is it simple and easy to follow? If the process is time consuming or difficult to follow people will not complete it properly or try to find ways around it (guaranteed).

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What influences a process? – part 10

5/3/2012

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16. What is the leadership style?
The culture of an organisation and the atmosphere of a team come from its leadership. But unfortunately not everyone is a born leader and not everyone who thinks they are a good leader really is.

Micro managers can drain the initiative from a team and make people nervous about making decisions.
Temperamental managers have people ducking for cover
The “my best mate” managers can find dealing with poor performance difficult.

People can be trained to be better leaders and managers but often people are promoted into manager roles and left to sort it out for themselves.

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The Process Hub is a mix of process improvement advice and weekly Blogs on things we find interesting. It has lots of useful information - and its free (but there are ads - its a small sacrifice for access to so much useful information).