To plan, implement, and deploy organizational process improvements based on a thorough understanding of the current strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s processes and process assets.
Establishes organizational expectations for determining process improvement opportunities for the processes being used and for planning, implementing, and deploying process improvements across the organization.
The organization’s processes include all processes used by the organization and its projects. Candidate improvements to the organization’s processes and process assets are obtained from various sources, including the measurement of processes, lessons learned in implementing processes, results of process appraisals, results of product and service evaluation activities, results of customer satisfaction evaluations, results of benchmarking against other organizations’ processes, and recommendations from other improvement initiatives in the organization.
Process improvement occurs in the context of the organization’s needs and is used to address the organization’s objectives. The organization encourages participation in process improvement activities by those who perform the process. The responsibility for facilitating and managing the organization’s process improvement activities, including coordinating the participation of others, is typically assigned to a process group. The organization provides the long-term commitment and resources required to sponsor this group and to ensure the effective and timely deployment of improvements.
Careful planning is required to ensure that process improvement efforts across the organization are adequately managed and implemented. The results of the organization’s process improvement planning are documented in a process improvement plan.
The “organization’s process improvement plan” addresses appraisal planning, process action planning, pilot planning, and deployment planning. Appraisal plans describe the appraisal timeline and schedule, the scope of the appraisal, resources required to perform the appraisal, the reference model against which the appraisal will be performed, and logistics for the appraisal.
Process action plans usually result from appraisals and document how improvements targeting weaknesses uncovered by an appraisal will be implemented. Sometimes the improvement described in the process action plan should be tested on a small group before deploying it across the organization. In these cases, a pilot plan is generated.
When the improvement is to be deployed, a deployment plan is created. This plan describes when and how the improvement will be deployed across the organization.
Organizational process assets are used to describe, implement, and improve the organization’s processes.
Organizations may choose to purchase an organizational process focus process and procedures rather than develop them. Using the Causal Analysis and Resolution process, they can tailor the process to fit their organization.