Draw What You Do: A Practical Approach to Process Improvement

This is About Your Process Headaches, Your Problems This book is about you and the things you do – the processes in which you are involved and the way you do them. Everything you do repeatedly in your life is a process and you are involved in lots of processes. If your processes at work or at home are beset with surprises, crises, delays, misunderstandings and other forms of headaches, keep reading. As they say in the headache ads, “Relief is on the Way.” In places where process improvement is regularly practiced, people enjoy their work. They arrive at work every morning knowing precisely what they have to do today and knowing everything they need to succeed will be there when and where they need it. They work through the day with no hassles or crises. They don’t do unnecessary work or any rework on faulty products. They meet their deadlines and cost targets with ease. They go home on-time, free to do whatever they want to do in the evening, with nothing left hanging over from today’s assignments. Is every day like this where you work? If not, it’s time for you to get your processes better organized. This book has been designed to help you start your process improvement program for the processes in which you are involved. It provides a practical, step by step approach that will help you and your co-workers see, understand, and agree on: how your present processes are working now; how your current process problems can be resolved; and how your processes can be refined and continuously matured. The approach avoids the daunting jargon, obscure acronyms, and extensive and expensive documentation of the formal process improvement programs. The seven simple steps involved have been distilled from over 100 successful implementations, and they have been proven to work. This approach will help you get started. It describes the steps that you should follow for each process you choose to address. The approach is simple. It does not take a lot of time or effort and, as you will see in the examples provided, it works. If you do as suggested you will quickly find relief from your day-to-day work headaches, minimize your crises, and make your work experience more enjoyable – maybe even go so far as to make it fun. The approach is summarized below: Draw what you do, do what you draw Find and fix every flaw Track Performance to ensure You’re on the path to be mature. (Repeat as necessary)