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Next Week: Development
Have you ever had the opportunity to watch the construction of a large building? The daily progress from foundation to top floor is truly amazing, and if you’re like me, you wonder “how does it all happen?” The answer: it takes a lot of planning.
The Planning Phase
A complex construction job clearly requires planning in excruciating detail to orchestrate materials and manpower. Inadequate planning can result in waste, delays and a shoddy end-product.
Building an effective management system is equally dependent on executing a strong planning phase. This article is the second of five that describe how to build such a system in your organization.
Writing Procedures
The planning stage is arguably the most important step in any large-scale project. If you fail to plan properly, everything else will likely follow this failure.
Just as a construction contractor wouldn’t dare start ordering materials or pounding nails without a plan, your firm must avoid moving too quickly into the actual development phase of writing procedures that are the basis of an effective management system.
Business Assessment
Using the construction analogy, the first step is typically a survey of the parcel of land on which to construct your building. You’ll examine such conditions as utilities, roads, property grade and soil. In a management system development project, we call this step a GAP Analysis, because it articulates what the “gap” between current reality in your organization and your stated objectives. Recall that the objectives and measurable effectiveness criteria were established in Phase I – Discovery.
The results of the Gap Analysis are used as inputs to produce a project plan.
Planning the Project
The Project Plan details the materials and tools that will help management control the project as well set budgets and schedules. Most of us are familiar with the components necessary to manage the conversion of a bare piece of land into the architect’s vision: drawings, bids, permits, contracts, work orders, and inspections. But what is required to develop a management system?
Your project planning phase includes producing these components that will greatly ease the Development and Implementation Phases (III and IV, respectively) and make for an overall solid structure:
• Project roles and responsibilities
• Organization chart
• Activities, resources, dates
• Reviews structure
• Status reports
• Document control and format
• Process map
• Compliance requirements
• Training, implementation, testing and audit plans
Review the Process Map
Before concluding the Planning Phase, a review is conducted of each component with emphasis on the process map and effectiveness criteria to ensure alignment with identified organizational goals. This check will help eliminate project drift in the coming phases.
The Planning Phase takes from 2-4 weeks.
Part Two: http://www.bizmanualz.com/articles/01-18-05_Systems_Planning.html?src=ART43
Part Three: http://www.bizmanualz.com/articles/01-27-05_Systems_Development.html?src=ART44
Phase Four: http://www.bizmanualz.com/articles/02-04-05_Systems_Implementation.html?src=ART45
Now we turn the corner to our final phase: Re-Discovery.
Last year marked the 200th anniversary of the expedition of Lewis & Clark, and much has been written about their remarkable journey up the Missouri River and onto the Pacific. This band of explorers was aptly named The Corps of Discovery. In reality, The Corps made two trips, the second being their return. It is likely that the unheralded return journey was more revealing and insightful than the outbound leg, offering them a chance to re-discover with clearer vision what they had already seen.
It is in this frame of mind that your organization will embark on the Re-Discovery Phase of building an effective management system.
Management Policies and Procedures
The Re-Discovery Phase completes the loop of the entire project, and then overlaps with The Discovery Phase of the next year. Therein lies the "never-ending cycle" of the project. The Re-Discovery Phase allows your organization to migrate from a "fix it and done!" mentality to one of continuous improvement for your management policies and procedures. In Re-Discovery/Discovery Phases you will always be reviewing and assessing your organization for ways to improve performance, compliance, and effectiveness.
As in all Phases it is wise to identify a Project Leader to manage document controls, lead the audits and report to management.
Review the Audit Results and Process Measures
When we pass down a street for the first time, our minds are focused on reaching the destination. Upon returning, we are able to notice things that were previously missed. Returning allows us to go through the same path of the original Discovery Phase in this different light.
This will involve reviewing audit results, process measures and customer satisfaction to determine possible adjustments to the mission, objectives and action plans as well as effectiveness criteria. You will want to asses the appropriateness of these elements now that you have completed your "outbound journey" through the Planning, Development and Implementation Phases. What will you see differently? How will you prepare for the cycle to begin again next year?
Culmination of Policies and Procedures Project
In Phase I, we learned how your organization specifies the project mission, objectives and effectiveness criteria. Phase II entailed setting requirements for project tools, budgets and schedules to manage your project. Phase III taught us about identifying and testing processes within the system. And in Phase IV we learned about learning. So now the Re-Discovery Phase will culminate the project that started 6-12 months ago (time certainly does go by quickly, doesn’t it?). And with these five phases completed, you will have undertaken perhaps quite a long process – but also one that will lead you to building (and maintaining) an effective management system.