If you have experience managing a project, you know the importance of the project initiation document (PID), but were you aware of the importance of a similar document when initiating a business process improvement (BPI) effort? While you may not consider a BPI effort as large a project as a system implementation, you do need the same kind of information if you want to stay on track and avoid scope slippage.

In BPI’s work, I call this document the Scope Definition Document (SDD) and consider it the most important step towards successful process improvement.

Whether you lead a regular information technology type project and use the PID or a process improvement project and use the SDD, you should consider these reference documents as key tools that you never miss.

A PID includes information such as the business case, deliverables, time, risks, budgets, and resources.

In BPI’s work, the SDD provides the blueprint of the process you want to improve and provides you with a vehicle to reach an agreement in the following areas:

  1. Process owner: person responsible for the process from start to finish
  2. Description: definition or purpose
  3. Limits: amplitude (start and end)
  4. Process responsibilities: main tasks delivered by the process
  5. Client / Client and needs: audience of the process and what is important to them
  6. Key stakeholders and needs: other areas or departments affected by the process and what they require
  7. Success measures– what the company should measure to ensure that the process meets the needs of the customer / customer / stakeholders

Several of the SDD components deserve additional information.

Description: When writing the description, pay special attention to the terminology used and avoid using technical, unusual or cultural terms without explaining what the word means; after all, a definition must define, not confuse. How often have you found yourself thinking that one word meant one thing, while another person had a totally opposite understanding? This becomes more of a problem when you work for a global company whose employees reside in different countries.

It may sound easy, but I have found this task alone to be very time consuming. Use an example if you need to further define a process, and if you want specifically Exclude Something from the scope of a process, this is a good place to identify exclusion.

Limits: Clearly identify the limits It will save you time later in the project and help prevent scope slippage. The limits may seem obvious to you, but once a project team starts talking about where the process begins and ends, you will appreciate the clarity that SDD brings to the work.

There is no right or wrong answer as to where a process begins and ends. It all depends on the project team’s discussion and the sponsor’s approval of the process boundaries, so you can stay on the right track. The decision of “limits” becomes evident when you move on to mapping the process.

Success measures: When identifying measures of success, focus on customer / customer needs and identify measures that address those needs. At this point, focus on what to measure, not how you are going to measure it. Save the “how” for later (step 7 of the 10 steps). If you spend time at the beginning of a process improvement project on how to measure something, the project team will deviate from concern about the difficulty of the metric itself.

The scoping document should fit on a single sheet of paper so that everyone can use it as a quick reference guide. The temptation to add a second page will surface, but the effectiveness of the document is its apparent patent, while actually providing considerable depth!

Laying the groundwork by developing an SDD is the second of ten steps to improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability of your business processes, so take some time to focus on it. Create the blueprint to guide your work.

Copyright 2012 Susan’s Page

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *