Adaptive process improvement approaches

Abstract

There are many practices for organizational process improvement in order to achieve various business objectives. Most of such take form of time capped initiatives or drives to bring focus & energy. These intense team efforts are characterized by implementation of guidance based on standard process reference models. It is observed that majority of the cases, though the intent starts from business objectives, most of the processes outcomes and evidences start aligning to requirements of standards, than business impact so are not sustained. This paper compares summary of existing popular methodologies and proposes few mix-n-match approaches to bring process performance closer to ongoing business goals and objectives. Also discussed are related topics: keeping the processes lightweight & dynamic, leveraging simple tools & techniques, re-calibrating the processes based on changing business trends and importance of teamwork (people & passion). Though majority of this observation is based on automotive, can be applied across industries. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.