Enablers
- Assess existing organization continuous improvement framework.
- Plan continuous improvement methods, procedures, and tools.
- Recommend and execute continuous improvement steps.
Deliverables, and Tools
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Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement (CI) can be defined as an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes.
- Effort can look for small incremental improvements or large "breakthrough“ improvements.
- Institute of Quality Assurance's definition of continuous improvement includes improving business strategy, business results, and customer, employee, and supplier relationships.
- Continuous improvement is a business strategy that is developed at the organizational level for projects to adopt and use.
- Might also be implemented by an organization's Project Management
- Office (PMO).
Culture of Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement has been used in business for nearly three-quarters of a century. W. Edwards Deming was an early leader in the field of process improvement, beginning with his work in post-World War II Japan. He taught four concepts that have been the foundation of the continuous process improvement movement:
- Better design of products to improve service.
- Higher level of uniform product quality.
- Improvement of product testing in the workplace and in research centers.
- Greater sales through global markets.
Deming's philosophy was that improving quality would reduce expenses, increase productivity, and thus increase market share.
Quality Theory Methods
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Continuous Improvement Approaches
Agile project management contains small development cycles that are used to develop the product by feature and receive client feedback on each feature.
Kaizen
- Improvements are based on many small changes.
- Small changes are less likely to require major expenditures of capital than major process changes.
- Ideas come from the workers themselves, rather than from expensive research, consultants, or equipment.
- All employees should continually try to improve their own performance.
- Workers should be encouraged to take ownership of their work, thus improving worker motivation.
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Continuous Improvement Tools
As discussed in earlier lessons, the following tools can be used to facilitate continuous improvement:
Lessons Learned Registers – is an important component of each project.
- Use it as a source of improving the processes in other projects.
- Avoid filing it away at the end of a project and not referring to it.
Retrospectives
- Common in agile projects at the end of each iteration.
- Help the team look back at an iteration and plan improvements for the next one.
Experiments provide a way to improve team efficiency and effectiveness.
- Some techniques include AB testing and team feedback to identify improvements.
- Perform experiments one at a time to isolate the results.
Update to Process and Standards
- Lessons learned at the project level can apply to the organization's continuous improvement process, in addition to the project management processes.
- These lessons should be escalated and evaluated for consideration at the organizational level.
Guidelines to Execute Continuous Improvement Steps
- Review the organization’s continuous improvement strategy.
- Develop a continuous improvement approach for your project, keeping in mind the project goals and the expectations of the stakeholders.
- Use lessons learned from your project, as well as from other projects, as sources of continuous improvement.
- For agile projects, use retrospectives as opportunities to improve the next iteration of the project.
- Use lessons learned at the project level to improve the organization’s continuous improvementprocess.