Achieving Long-Term Impact Through Incremental Change

Shannon is an enterprise portfolio leader with extensive experience in portfolio and project management, strategic planning, and process optimization.

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Topics: Agile, Change Management, PMO, Stakeholder Management

In continuous improvement (CI), incremental changes over time yield substantial long-term impacts. These smaller adjustments help mitigate change fatigue and foster quicker, positive engagement from stakeholders and customers than large-scale projects, which often require extensive time, resources, and costs.

A common question from groups I’ve collaborated with is, “How do we get started?” Despite understanding the methodology’s benefits, initiating the first steps can be challenging. Here, I outline a phased approach to problem-solving that has consistently led to successful outcomes.

1. The ideation phase is particularly engaging in systematic problem-solving, as it captures the voice of the customer. Brainstorming to identify potential root causes energizes participants, producing a fishbone diagram and Pareto chart to visually represent and prioritize issues. Stakeholder concerns about the time commitment for completing these diagrams can be alleviated through a structured process.

For example, using the nominal group technique to initiate brainstorming ensures that all voices are heard and input is balanced. By presenting the problem and requesting three areas for improvement, responses can then be grouped—often by the areas of technology, people or processes—and prioritized to create both outputs in about an hour.

An example…

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