The Role of A Business Analyst in Process Improvement

1. The Role of A Business Analyst in Process Improvement May 2005

2. Introduction/Welcome • What is Process Improvement? • Key Concepts • How do Companies Deploy PI? • Role of a BA in PI • Challenges for the BA • Questions / Wrap Up

3. What is Process Improvement? • Business Process Reengineering • Lean / Lean Enterprise • Six Sigma • Kaizen Events • Transactional Process Improvement • Cost reduction, Just in Time, TQM, ??????

4. Quality • The source of defects is almost always linked to variation – which means that customers will not get what they want • Sigma levels measure defects per million opportunities.

5. Quality: Is 99% Good Enough? s s 3.8 6 Product or Service 99% Good 99.99966% Good 20,000 Articles of mail lost per hour Seven One minute per 15 minutes per day Unsafe drinking water seven months Incorrect surgical procedures per week 5,000 1.7 Short or long landings at Two per day One every five years major airports Wrong drug prescriptions 68 200,000 per year

6. Key Concepts • Cross-functional • Process View • Data Driven • Continuous Improvement

7. Key Definitions + • LEAN: a set of management principles, tools and best practices modeled after the Toyota Production System (TPS) designed to identify and eliminate WASTE in all processes. • SIX SIGMA: a set of principles, statistically based tools and best practices emerging from the quality movement designed to identify and eliminate VARIATION in a process. Six Sigma focuses on improving the value adding processes. • LEAN ENTERPRISE – the application of best practices in both Lean and Six Sigma to eliminate waste and variation across the entire organization. =

8. Lean and Six Sigma How Lean and Six Sigma work Together: • Eliminate Waste (non value added activities) • Standardize work; stabilize processes • Reduce Variability for greater efficiencies (why reduce variability on non-value added activities?) • Lean Enterprise is much more than tools or projects…it is a new way of thinking and behaving….a cultural change.

9. Kaizen - Definition Kaizen, or “blitz effort”, is to quickly & immediately make improvements in an isolated area. Kaizen Events are extremely efficient in eliminating waste and beginning to drive culture change.

10. How do Companies Deploy PI? • Company-wide • Department Specific efforts • Disguised as other initiatives (e.g., new system implementation) • Individual initiatives

11. Role of a BA in PI • Document current state and other stuff! • Analyze current practices • Develop / document future state • Determine steps / gaps • Implement solutions – quick hits, longer term

12. Document Current State and Other Stuff • What’s Key? • Good listening skills • Ability not to assume – capture the facts, issues, measures – all the information known today • Broad thinking • Ability to capture current state accurately on paper

13. Process Mapping Exercise • A young couple, Mary and Tom, have recently moved into their first home. It’s an older home and they are eager to remodel it. Every month, they tackle a new project (e.g., paint the guest room, wallpaper the bathroom). At the first of every month, they make a list of items that they will need to purchase and then make a trip to the local Menards to buy the supplies they will need for that month’s project. • On one particular month, they go to the store and begin their shopping. Their typical approach is to walk up and down every aisle and choose the items that are on their list. While browsing the paint section, they are approached by a sales associate asking if they have any questions or need assistance. They ask a few questions and continue on with their shopping.

14. Process Mapping Exercise • Upon checkout, the clerk asks if they found everything that they needed. Mary quickly reviews the list. Upon review of the list, they discover they forgot an item. Mary continues with checkout while Tom goes back to retrieve the forgotten item. • They complete checkout, load the items in the car and head home.

15. Current Process Map - Example

16. Analyze Current Practices • What’s Key? • Ability to ask “why” and ask it 5 times! • Question the status quo, tribal knowledge, etc. • Throw away paradigms

17. Develop / Document Future State • What’s Key? • Think out of the box • Creativity before capital – technology should be a last resort • Through words and pictures, create a vision of the future

18. Ten Challenges for Process Improvement • Preempt or eliminate non-value added activities • Outsource or insource • Leverage supplier or customer • Minimize hand-offs • Convert serial processing to parallel • Restructure the organization • Change the physical layout • Automate manual processes • Use existing technology more effectively • Use alternative technologies

19. Determine Steps / Gaps • What’s Key? • Ability to assess current and future and document steps required to get from one to another • Ability to develop a time phased work plan • Identify short term or quick hits

20. Implement Solutions • What’s Key? • Ability to document standard operating procedures • Ability to follow a project plan

21. Challenges for the BA • Doesn’t need to be pretty – balance of time versus value • Separating yourself from IT/IS • Convincing the business community of your value

22. Questions?

23. Reference Materials • The Basics of Process Mapping by Robert Damelio • Mapping Work Processes by Dianne Galloway • Improving Performance: Managing the White Space on the Organization Chart by Rummler and Brache

24. Reference Material

25. Reference Materials • www.isixsigma.com • www.lean.org • www.rummlerbrache • Note: great search results on Google using process+mapping

26. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You use PowerPoint to prepare the grocery list

27. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When Before you order your meal you ask the waiter to list the restaurant's core competencies

28. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You refer to dating as pilot testing

29. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You can spell paradigm

30. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You actually know what a paradigm is

31. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You understand your airline's fare structure

32. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You include executive summaries in your love letters

33. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When Your St. Valentine's Day cards include bullet points

34. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performance review

35. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities"

36. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You refer to your vacation plan as a "vision" statement

37. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When When dining out, you order "low-hanging fruit" for dessert

38. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You can explain to somebody the difference between reengineering, downsizing, rightsizing, and firing people

39. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You actually believe the explanation you gave for the difference between reengineering, downsizing, rightsizing, and firing people

40. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You talk to the waitress about process flow when dinner arrives late

41. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You think of your subtracting strokes from your golf score as creating a "balanced scorecard"

42. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You naturally think of a collection of strangers on an elevator as a "cross-functional team"

43. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You're planning a family reunion and begin to identify a list of "critical success factors"

44. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You offer “constructive feedback” to your dog

45. You've Worked on Process Improvement Too Long When You missed the entire break because you stayed in the room to read every one of these slides