Paul Meagher wrote:
> I will soon be taking over the position of production manager for a small
> company that develops buisiness oriented websites. As far as I can tell
> there are two major problems with the company as it currently exists -
> lack of project management and a poorly defined process for creating
> websites.
Paul, I am sure you will be innundated with very practical suggestions on
how to create effective process designs.
I would try and get together a cross section of all the stakehoders in the
process including trhe customers if possible (or maybe involve them as a
second stage).
Working as a group:
1. Get the group to map out the current process and breake it down into key
stages e.g. specfication, creative design, technical design, development
testing etc.
2. for each stage brainstorm and discuss the following process issues, people
and skill issues, structural issues, technology issues, communication issues,
assumptions, any other issues
3. for each of the stakeholder gropus involved idenitfy and prioritise their
key requirementso of the process - assess how well the process meets those
requirements currently
4. Using the stakeholder requirements define new objectives for the process
5. Identify assumptions that you want to overturn
6. Define the objectives for the new process
7. braistorm improvement ideas
8. form into teams and set each team a different perspective e.g. customer,
designer, etc. and give them a challenge e.g. fastest process, highest
quality, lowest cost, etc.
9. ask them to identify a vision and outline flow of the process from their
perspectives
10. have the groups present back their process ideas and vote on the one
which they feel best fits the overall set of stakeholder requirements
11. take the preferred option and refine it - don't define it in detail -
just determine key steps and some basic input and output requirements
We do this on a lot of projects and depending on the process it takes 1-2
days. The level of involvement and resulting ownership is very high.
Because people have been through the process they also have a much deeper
understanding of the 'why' as well as the 'what' and and 'how' - as a
result you very rarely need detailed, restrictive prescriptive process
designs.
I'd be happy to provide you with examples of workshop materials we use to
guide such events and also on how to prepare for such events.
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>