Keri ThomsonHillcrest, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
What are some of your process improvement success stories? I'm interested in the approach, particularly around business process automation and IT involvement, but also in the skillset of the team and the project management methodology chosen. Saving Changes...
Ravi DubeyVice President Engineering| Truminds Software SystemsNew Delhi, Delhi, India
We have been working in telecom software projects and one of the great things that comes with this is the humongous spectrum of technical skills that have to be acquired
As a Competency process improvement, we had introduced something called the "Continuous Competency Development" (CCD as we call it). Salient steps 1. We have identified technologies that are necessary for execution of this project (and we keep this addition of tech open to add any other tech that come during the execution). 2. Rate every individual on a 1 to 5 scale (1 being minimum and 5 being a Expert) - for emotional reasons, this value may / may not be directly shared with the team mate. This is the "as-is" condition". The "to-be" number is 3 for most of the areas. 3. Rate the current skills of the team mates for his / her "identified areas of working" 4. Based upon these ratings, draw a competency development chart for him / her. This chart could include self driven training OR someone else in the team helping on this (and during these self driven ones, we even give time-off to the engineer)
5. Run the individuals and then through some evaluation means (verbal or otherwise), rate him / her again after 3-4 weeks (or whatever frequency is needed). If a team mate is at 3, only then let him / her contribute to the project. If Not, then again run this CCD cycle.
6. As we say, technologies keep changing and many a times, we ourselves would want to give different flavors to team mates, so CCD is applied for team mates who want to have a technology shift as well. They may be a 4 or 5 in few other areas, but if they are a 1 in some newer area, they also go through CCD. Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
I've had a few initiatives to help business groups take their long-running manually driven processes (paper pushing, document emailing, no document management) to a system-managed process with workflow, system-driven notifications, and document management.
Additionally, to assist with processes within the team, I developed a 'mini-PMO' by instilling guiding project management processes and standards to help with our pipeline and delivery. Saving Changes...
Discover the weak areas in your processes and resolve the problems.
One company I worked for decided to improve their software development process. I was a business analyst. My colleagues and I were trained in requirements analysis and inspection methods. I'll never forget the first project where these methods were used. Typically, when the release went to QA, they found problems and we had lots of cleanup and long hours to resolve the issues and meet the schedule. This time, when the release went to QA, all was quiet. Very quiet. We all got to leave for home at reasonable hours. No heroics. It was amazing! As these process improvements were solidified, our products improved and we left our competitors in the dust. Someone who worked for a competitor begged me to explain how we surpassed them. He said: "You guys are killing us!" Saving Changes...
Love can sweep you off your feet and carry you along in a way you've never known before. But the ride always ends, and you end up feeling lonely and bitter. Wait. It's not love I'm describing. I'm thinking of a monorail.
