Built-in measurement leads to process improvement
The administration team for Rode University's Engineering Faculty has adopted the processes developed at Wellow University and is successfully running the administration of students, courses, awards, and modules using those processes. When the Vice-Chancellor announces that 5% of funds will shift from administration to teaching, yet more savings have to be found, and the Faculty administration team turns to the Theatre in which they play their processes.
As part of the initial Riva-based process definition work done for them by Co-ordination Systems, each process for dealing with a different type of work item has been defined in terms of the activities of a set of roles and the collaboration between those roles. Those processes are now playing in the Theatre.
Thanks to the way Riva has grouped their work into 'case processes' and 'case management processes', it's easy to identify where to insert 'measurement probes'. The collection of data about the performance of the processes immediately becomes automatic.
Some extra analysis activities are added to two management roles and within days, performance hot-spots become visible and point at opportunities for process improvement. Almost invariably these occur at boundaries with other, non-Theatre processes owned by other groups, where collaboration can break down all too easily and impact performance. With diagnostic data to hand, the Faculty's processes are extended into the other groups and more reliable collaboration is soon in place, with cost savings following.
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Managing
globally distributed and auditable
processes