by Lee Fried, on 05 Jul 2008 12:50 pm
The Journey | Tags: Process improvement; project management; management by
Projects vs. Process Improvement
As an organization we are still living with a slight hangover from our long history of Management by Objective (MBO). One of the areas that this is most visible is in the mental models that we still all hold about how to bring about improvement. This is a subject I have often brought up in the past so you can tell it is one that on a daily basis I see the organization struggling with. I decided to write about it again this week after having conversations with several of my team members who are trying to teach leaders how to break out of the mentality that “all improvement is done in projects and most improvement is led by project managers.”
One does not need to look very hard to make this challenge visible. One glance at our strategic plan and you can see numerous projects underway within the organization. Most of these projects are point interventions where a small group of people have identified where a process or system needs to be added or changed and now they are working hard through change management issues to get these changes adopted by the operating units. As you can imagine this creates all sorts of challenges including:
- Difficulty identifying cause and effect. By taking a project as opposed to process improvement approach it is very hard to make performance visible and understand the effect improvement interventions are having or will have.
- Projects are typically point improvements that can often lead to sub-optimization, because we do not understand the impact the change will have on the entire process.
- Projects have a start and end date while the processs is always there. Teams that get accustomed to improvement through projects often view improvement as an “addition to the job” as opposed to teams that are focused on process and the improvement of the process on a continious basis.
- Projects are typically managed and implemented by people outside of the areas that are impacted. This means that often there is strong resistance and little ownership for long-term sustainability and improvement. This is a dangerous challenge for an organization, because it creates a system where only a small group of specialist are responsible for improvement. Everyone else needs to do their job.
I am sure many of you can add additional bullets to this list. As we move forward with and organization and teach people how to see their processes it will be important that we move away from these mental models. This will be a long-term change…
on 07 Jul 2008 at 2:11 pm 1.Eric Wade said …
Great, thought-provoking post: the process of improvements process itself can be improved. Mind expanding on a Monday!
on 08 Jul 2008 at 2:29 pm 2.Sean Sessions said …
I’m seeing this very issue with project-based work following my last RPIW. We came out with such a large implementation plan that spin-off groups were required to manage work determined necessary during the RPIW. The good part is that local method owners are responsible for the work, but the work is still being managed using the same historic mental model. We (facilitators) knew the process going into the RPIW very well, but didn’t know that there was a lot of overhead with decisions made up the value stream that impacted resources and timelines and made quick, rapid wins during the RPIW difficult.
Another situation, seperate from my own experience is that of the recent ELT approval of the Medicare PPO expansion. Knowing that current, daily claims volumes state-wide have exceeded 53,000 in queue, many of which are PPO, I wonder how our resources can continue to improve the claims process given the new contracts being sold up the value stream. We continue to add contracts to the mix, despite the difficult and often manual claims adjutication processes that our systems don’t yet know how to automate.
on 08 Jul 2008 at 3:48 pm 3.Pete Adams said …
Wonderful observations, Lee. Just getting started on our own lean journey, I appreciate your distinctions between a process approach and a project approach. I will need to remain vigilant to my own schema!
on 11 Jul 2008 at 7:43 pm 4.Erika Fox said …
I think the challenge of project vs process improvement is tricky. I’m living the same challenge as Sean in the Primary Care call management work (i.e. large scope RPIW followed by large-scale implementation = project). Some of it has to do with how we spread an improvement across the delivery system in a standard way. If it is a complex process that touches multiple departments, requires resourcing, capital, technological changes or support, lots of change management etc, it is hard to move away from a project implementation model and have ownership for those details decentralized. All the challenges you described are accurate.
However, I think the solution might have more to do with how we select improvements in the first place. If we begin with value stream mapping, then will we be less likely to suffer under this project-based approach.
And I do believe it is a change in thinking as well as a change in the way we do our work. But some days it feels a bit like the chicken and the egg. Which is first? I like the idea that we act our way into a new way of thinking, but that also implies that we are going to take a while to get to the ‘thinking differently’ part because the ‘acting differently’ part is going to be fraught with problems and take a while and we’re learning as we go. But that’s gold, right?
thanks for this post. thoughtful and insightful as always.
on 15 Jul 2008 at 1:36 pm 5.Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Management Improvement Carnival #39 said …
[...] Projects vs. Process Improvement - “By taking a project as opposed to process improvement approach it is very hard to make performance visible and understand the effect improvement interventions are having or will have.” [...]
on 25 Dec 2008 at 2:53 pm 6.avodartus said …
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