August 28, 2000

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Process Management
Getting An Edge On The Competition

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More on project management:

sidebar: Some Common Mistakes In Web Development Continuous Process Improvement (8/21/00) The Joys Of Project Management (6/19/00)

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Much like implementing a methodology, standardizing processes across all parts of a company requires massive cultural shifts. Managers, developers, businesspeople, and sometimes even business partners and customers must adjust to a new way of developing systems. Project managers and leaders must learn new tools and techniques, which can take time and temporarily slow projects. Users must get used to a new structured approach.

Because of this cultural shift, process management presents some unique problems, from a business perspective. From top to bottom, managers and staff must believe that it's necessary to implement structured processes, within and beyond the IT organization.

Specific problem areas that may be encountered during a process-management project include:

• Goals: Without clear goals across organizational units, process management fails. Goals need to be inspirational, measurable, and publicized continuously.
• Commitment: Clear support from the top, middle, and base of the company is required. The creation of commitment and ongoing reinforcement keeps everyone engaged during the tough times. Responding to change is hard, but it's critical to reach completion.
• Focus: Process management efforts that lack focus are called "stuck in a rut," "going in circles," or "analysis paralysis." Companies must work to keep the project on track and deal with roadblocks along the way.
• Rewards: Changing processes is about changing culture and roles in the company. Clear rewards during and after a project is completed ease the pain of change.

Many process-management projects have focused on reducing cost and head count through technology alone. These efforts always fail. Companies must address cross-functional process implementation, collaborative culture, new roles and responsibilities, sharing and reuse, integrating technologies, and, ultimately, customer value. Successful projects often begin with a pilot of limited scope that clearly identifies the problems to be solved and extends the rollout in a deliberate manner.

Collaboration and shared processes offer developers, IT personnel, and even users the ability to work together in a seamless workflow path that speeds development. IT productivity is increased because of the reuse of best practices. Precise measurements help companies continuously improve, which means that customers will be better served by higher-quality systems that will gracefully evolve to meet rapidly changing needs in the new economy.

Process management helps companies create useful, precise measurements that let them learn from projects (and mistakes) and improve estimating and planning for faster, cheaper projects with better results, reducing the rate of defects upon delivery.

Process management also has a hidden benefit related to the IT staffing shortage. A standard approach to development reduces the learning curve for entry-level and experienced hires, because the systems development process is well documented, and automated tools let IT staff perform project-management processes more quickly and efficiently. Standard processes also reduce uncertainty about "what to do next" on large, complex projects, reducing the failure rate of such projects.

To realize the benefits of process management, companies often have to fundamentally change how they develop systems. IT and users must work together cohesively as a unit. IT staffers in particular must learn to share best practices and learn together to continuously improve the development process.

These new characteristics and practices create certainty surrounding the development process, add mandatory return-on-investment calculations and justification processes, and provide a foundation for knowledge management. As a strategic partner in E-business, IT must provide leadership and skills in the development of shared processes, flexible work structures, information sharing, and continuous improvement. These skills are increasingly necessary as businesses work together to become E-businesses.

A process-based approach is key to establishing a strong foundation for new business ventures and technology. Successful process management can change the way a company functions and move the company from older, traditional business practices and bad habits to a more productive, learning business.

Process-management tools must provide the facilities to connect IT staff and let users become an integral part of the development process. The tools must let IT organizations capture, share, and deploy best practices across the company.

Some features typically provided by process-management tools include a library of processes stored on a common server; the ability to manage and improve the library contents; features to define and capture metrics; the ability to tune processes to improve estimating, planning, scheduling, allocating, and tracking work; and workflow processes to allow all members of the development team to work together.

These features must be flexible, easy-to-use, and provide the ability to quickly adapt processes to the rapidly changing IT landscape. A process-management tool must also have the ability to bidirectionally integrate with project-management tools such as Microsoft Project. Companies that can't afford to purchase completely integrated process-management tools may find affordable alternatives that provide methodology automation, estimating, and metric-processing capabilities.

Process-management tools and techniques have the ability to fundamentally transform a company's IT processes. Implementing a standard approach to systems development helps experienced staff and new hires to be more productive, because they spend less time wondering how to do something and more time doing it.

This transformation can be hindered by cultural issues as developers face increased work structures. However, as companies are pressed to do more with less, and as E-business requires companies to speed up the development process while improving quality, process management will become an increasingly valuable asset.

Charles Trepper is CEO of the Trepper Group, a Minneapolis consulting firm. He can be reached at chtrepper@trepper.com

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