Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 39, by Joe Podolsky:
From: uunet!HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com!JOE_PODOLSKY
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 95 12:13:37 -0700
Judy Lewis has been using Tom Davenport as a consultant in her KnowledgeLinks project in PGIS. Davenport, as many of you know, wrote one of the better books on reengineering while he was at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation. He's now a professor at the University of Texas in Austin and head of its Information Management program. Judy gave me an article Davenport wrote, along with Michael Beers of Ernst & Young, titled, "Managing Information about Processes." The article reports extensive research done by the authors in this topic and was published in the Summer 1995 issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems, pp. 57-80. Twenty companies were surveyed for the article, including HP. Seven of the companies were Baldrige Award winners. It's a meaty article, and I won't even try to do justice to it here. But the issues that the article raises are clear, are pertinent to our daily work, and are a compelling call to action. "It is perhaps obvious that information about process characteristics, performance, and outputs is critical for process management. Information suggests both the need for and the direction of potential process improvements...Because customers are typically the recipients of process outputs, information about customer satisfaction with processes can also help an organization to react to changes in the marketplace. "But if these benefits are obvious, they have not yet been translated into concerted action. Even some of the most process-oriented firms in the United States have not fully developed infrastructures for providing process performance information to managers and workers." While Davenport/Beers mention HP's QUODEM (QUality in Order and DElivery Management) system as a successful example of a "conventional" process transaction and reporting system, I think most of us agree that we have a very long way to go in tightly linking our systems and processes. This article provides some ideas and challenges to motivate us toward more effective process management through more effective information systems. First, the authors point out that there are two types of process information, measures and ideas. Collecting measures is tough, but we have some structures for this activity. Quality can be defined in terms of attributes. In HP, the FURPS model (functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and supportability), invented by Sally Dudley, has long been used for product quality. Less well-known is the AART model for process quality attributes, invented, incidentally, by Sally's husband, Chuck Sieloff. AART stands for anticipation, availability, responsiveness, and transitions. This article quotes 13 other attributes from the literature, but the notion is the same: by creating this structure, we can plan performance on given attributes and then measure how well we meet those expectations. Collection of ideas is even harder to do. Ideas are expressed as best practices, improvement possibilities, innovations, etc. Some of these can be placed in flexible databases, but most require extensive personal interpretation before they can be successfully copied in various environments. The authors then refer to Argyris and Shoen's work in double-loop learning. The first loop is the measurement of the process itself, what Davenport/Beers call the "performance loop." "The other loop...requires an evaluation and judgment of the broader goals of the task or process...The second loop might be termed a 'relevance loop,' generating information that describes the relevance of the process to the environment." The relevance loop asks such questions as: " - What is the real purpose of this process? - How does it support our strategy? - To what degree does it meet the real needs of our customers? - What performance objectives should it achieve? - In an ideal world, how should this process be performed? - What aspects of the process could be completely eliminated?" In HP, although we don't usually position it this way, we implement relevance loops through Quality Maturity System reviews. It might be interesting to look at the QMS process more closely and tune it, especially in information systems organizations, toward relevance loop functions. The article discusses four steps in managing process information: identification of the right/best type of information; collection of the information, for example, through sampling, surveying techniques, or from performance-loop processes; distribution of the information to the appropriate people; and analysis and use of the information, including using the information specifically as part of employees' performance evaluation and reward systems. The goal of all of this, of course, is to "effect change through process management." There are "antecedents of focusing on process improvement are cultural. They include an emphasis on the importance of information, the need for openness and sharing, a long-term orientation to process management, and certain values about the importance of people in process performance." Do we in HP, especially in HP information systems have these values? We practice these to some extent in performance loops, but what about relevance loops? When/if we do collect data and create information, what do we do with it? How often do we give it to the people working in the process, and how do we empower those people to make the changes they infer from the information? To what extent do we recommend these actions to business process owners? And to what extent do we apply these measures, not only to business processes, but also to our own internal processes: systems development, support, and operations? Regards, Joe