Process Improvement Methodology
Process Improvement Best Practices
Reference
Process Improvement Best Practices
Overview
This reference is intended to capture best practices Process Consultants identify from external sources or while working
on process improvement projects.
Involve Employees: Organizations who involve employees in the process improvement process realize greater success.
Employees are critical because they are the best resource for knowing how to increase value to customers. They know
where problems exist and often have valuable improvement recommendations. Furthermore, when they are involved in
selecting and implementing changes, they can better understand the need for and internalize the changes. They become
your greatest champions for improvement when they are a valued part of the solution, as opposed to being isolated and
resistant at having misunderstood changes forced upon them.
Put in Place Just Enough Process: A process-mature or process-capable organization is not one that necessarily has
lots of processes and detailed information about them. A process-mature or process-capable organization is one that for
any given situation can answer the question: "How much process is enough?" In so doing, it can avoid overburdening
itself with processes that do not add value (over and above their costs) and avoid unnecessarily detailed processes and
procedures. Therefore, such organizations expend just enough control and management time to ensure compliance.
Measures: Measurements need to support business goals such as:

Managing costs

Meeting technical requirements

Improving productivity

Managing and improving process effectiveness
These measures must be precise and robust, suggest a norm, relate to specific product or processes, and indicate an
improvement strategy. They should also be simple, predictable, and a natural result of the process. Each process analysis
effort requires decisions about the measures, process, storage, analysis, reporting, and feedback. Effort to collect
measurements must be done efficiently.
Modeling: To capture a process using industry-standard Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), there are
established best practices, including:

Keep line-crossing to a minimum.

Keep diagrams neat and as consistently-organized as possible.

BPMN does not ascribe significance to whether a sequence flow enters an activity from left, right, top, or bottom.

No significance is given whether pools and lanes run horizontally or vertically.

It is common practice to draw the flow left-to-right with sequence flows entering activities from the left and exiting
from the right.

How the process starts and ends, and whether a participant is inside or outside the process, is a matter of
perspective; therefore, there is no one single correct approach.

BPMN can be applied to a business process of any scope, so clearly establishing the scope of the process being
modeled at the start of the project is essential.

Use multiple end events to identify distinct end states.

Draw a message flow from an external requester pool to an event.
Reporting to Stakeholders: Emphasize future state and roadmap. Include just enough current state to provide context.
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Information and Technology Services
Process Improvement Methodology
Process Analysis Best Practices
Reference
References:

BPM101 Course Materials

Silver, 2009, BPMN Method & Style, Aptos, CA

Gartner, 2010, Top Six Foundational Steps for Overcoming Resistance to ITIL Process Improvement
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Last updated: 11/12/2010