Improve
Tools to help you improve the process to increase performance
Solution Mapping
Solution mapping is a process tool for idea creation, problem solving, knowledge sharing, and value and strategy processes. It’s a flexible tool that supports a process in which ideas, problems, and dilemmas are tested, solved, and discussed through the involvement of the desired stakeholders.
How to use it and helpful resources:
How to Solve Your Problems Visually Using a Solution Map
Instructional videos:
Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a powerful technique to help you visually develop and organize ideas and information, and see how it all fits together.
How to use it and helpful resources:
A Powerful Approach to Note-Taking
Instructional videos:
Six Thinking Hats Technique
Six Thinking Hats is a way to understand and explore different types of thinking, by getting you to look at a problem in six different ways while encouraging different perspectives to be shared, seen and discussed as part of the decision making process.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Facilitate the conversation (wearing the blue hat) and have your team brainstorm different ideas within each hat.
- White hat: Present the facts of the problem.
- Green hat: Generate ideas on how the problem can be solved.
- Yellow hat: Evaluate the ideas by listing their benefits.
- Black hat: Evaluate the ideas by listing their drawbacks.
- Red hat: Get everybody’s gut feelings about the alternatives.
- Blue hat: Summarize the discussion and agree on conclusions (facilitator).
- Review the responses and look for common themes that can be grouped together.
- Have your team members vote on the top three to five ideas they would like to discuss further
Instructional videos:
5S
5S is a workplace organization method that uses a list of five “S” words. The S’s stand for “sort”, “set in order”, “shine”, “standardize”, and “sustain”. The purpose is to improve efficiency and eliminate waste.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Sort/simplify: Go over the area you are 5S-ing and remove all the clutter or items rarely used.
- Set in order: Establish locations for tools and materials that support the process. These should be in logical order and in easy locations for all to access.
- Shine: Clean and sanitize the workplace.
- Standardize: Create processes to keep areas decluttered and clean, such as a regular cleaning or maintenance schedule to help with upkeep.
- Sustain: Make 5S a regular part of the process by forming habits to continually implement the first 4 S’s.
Instructional videos:
Poka-Yoke (Error Proofing)
Poka-yoke is a Japanese term that means “mistake-proofing” or “inadvertent error prevention”. A poka-yoke is any mechanism in a process that helps avoid mistakes and defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Isolate the process or product you want to improve.
- Run a 5-whys analysis or use the A3 problem-solving technique to understand why the process is failing or might fail.
- Choose between taking a shutout approach (i.e., the process stops if a stage is missed) or an attention-based approach (i.e., when an alert or warning sounds.)
- Next, refine your approach. Decide whether a contact (i.e., detection based on physical attributes), constant number (i.e., warnings and alerts), or the sequence method (i.e., project stops if a stage is missed) is best, depending on your purpose.
- Test it to see if it works.
- Make sure you have the right tools and checklists to follow the process consistently.
- Train your team to follow the process and use the necessary tools.
- Review performance and improve it further if needed.
Instructional videos:
Kaizen
Kaizen is a strategy where employees at all levels of a company work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements to a business process.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Set goals and provide any necessary background.
- Review the current state and develop a plan for improvements.
- Implement improvements.
- Review and fix what doesn’t work.
- Report results and determine any follow-up items.
Instructional videos:
Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart is a useful bar chart that illustrates a project schedule to show activities, tasks or events displayed against time. It allows project teams to see what the activities are, when each activity (as well as the project) begins and ends, and how long each activity is scheduled to last.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Review the scope baseline (scope statement, work breakdown structure (WBS), and WBS dictionary) that includes 100% of the project scope.
- Break down each WBS into activities and identify important milestones and deadlines.
- Sequence the activities in the right order while determining the correct relationships between each activity.
- Estimate resources (i.e., labor, materials, equipment).
- Estimate the duration (start and end) of each activity.
- Develop the schedule!
Instructional videos:
Force Field Analysis
A force field analysis is a decision-making tool that organizations utilize in determining the importance, impact, and influence of various factors before implementing changes in business processes. Once the objectives and goals are defined, this method helps put corresponding values to the forces driving the change and the forces against the proposed change.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Define the objective of your change project.
- Identify and list all driving forces for the change that will support the expected outcomes you desire, including internal and external forces.
- Identify and list forces or factors pushing against the change that will make it harder for you to attain your desired outcomes. These can also be internal and external.
- Assign each force an impact score. For example, one (weakest) to five (strongest) will help show which forces have the most impact.
- Propose a solution to postively influence the forces. Make your driving forces stronger and your weaken your restraining forces!
Instructional videos:
Storyboard
Storyboards are also useful for building group unity and agreement, and teams that use them tend to find it easier to make decisions.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Write out the steps that you must to take to accomplish your goal or what you’re trying to achieve.
- Put your steps in order.
- Create a sublevel storyboard for more involved steps of an action.
- As each step is put into your storyboard, encourage your team to look for “holes” or problems in the process.
Instructional videos:
Communications Plan
A communication plan is a strategy used during project implementations to reach the target audience and inform them about pertinent information that may or may not affect them. It defines the main message to be communicated, the target audience it needs to reach, and a strategy of how your message would be delivered to the selected audience.
How to use it and helpful resources:
- Determine Your communication needs.
- Determine the communication goals for your team.
- Identify key stakeholders, clients, and team members.
- Create a communication schedule for the project that outlines who will be communicate with, when, in what method, and by whom.