About Enterprise Architecture (AboutEA.com) - An Information Technology Weblog

Begin Building Process Roles and Responsibilities in the Define Phase

The identification of Roles and Responsibilities for a business process, a very critical step in any process improvement methodology, begins early on in the Define phase of the Six Sigma methodology when the Project Charter is being drafted and the Project Stakeholders are being identified. And it carries all the way through to the concluding Control Phase, when process documentation and other assets needed to Control (Monitor) the process are being developed and diseminated into the organization. Being able to see where you can postitively impact the end of a process improvement project with some smart work up from seems like something worth writing down.

It seems like a good technique to use when doing the early brainstorming of Project Stakeholders would be to categorize them into Process Stakeholders and Project Stakeholders. Process Stakeholders would be the list of 'Roles' that are involved in the process, while Project Stakeholder mostly would have a stake in the successful completion and tracking of the process management / improvement project. At this point, validate these Roles against the enterprise list of Roles to make sure all is copious with your architecture...if there are any descrepancies or changes that need to be made in these enterprise Roles or their definitions, see if this will be something the project itself will further define or whether you can suggest an immediate 'quick win' to update the enterprise Role list.

Back into our Define phase, the list of Process Stakeholders (Roles) would then be the 'seed' of brainstorming on the process' Suppliers and Customers, which are critical elements of the first process detail diagram in Six Sigma, the SIPOC. I would think that the SIPOC would contain all those Process Stakeholders in either or both Supplier / Customer columns. Any additional Roles in the process that were discovered during SIPOC development would be added to both the SIPOC and to an updated Project Charter's Stakeholder list.

Futher detailing of sub-process maps below the SIPOC level would then begin to associate the more detailed process activities to one of the Supplier / Customer Roles, building the list of the Responsibilities for each of the Roles. And there you have it...Roles & Responsibilities...start to finish...spend time up front!

Process Asset Library Key to Consistent Process Orientation

I was looking up General Dynamics Six Sigma for some very covert reasons...hehe...but stumbled onto this GD Advanced Information Systems Powerpoint "A Process Framework for Enterprise-wide Integration" which illuminated another looming issue for someone moving their enterprise to a Process Driven Methodology (utilizing Six Sigma or any other process methodology)...Process Asset Library.

I'm thinking that in the same manner that we need to plan measurement dashboards and metric repositories, we need to enable the actual running of those processes by the process owners and service providers. They will all need access to the diagrams, procedures, forms, checksheets, etc. need to complete the process and they will need to access this information in a way that integrates with the actual performance of the service.

I'm thinking this needs to be integrated tightly with the dashboards displaying the status and trends of the process...have everybody from management to process implementor using the same Process Portal.

To see how GD went from integrating multiple process improvement programs (I think SOX-compliance would be a good one to include on slide 8's bullseye diagram) to a Process Asset library providing access to process documents from the highest value stream to the lowest function and checksheet, check out the presentation, especially starting at Slide 10, seeing how the Value Chain is represented in the on-line Process Portal, enabling drill down to the level of process information needed. Cool.

101 Things A Six Sigma Black Belt Should Know

101 Things a Six Sigma Black Belt Should Know: Why couldn't it just be a top-10 list?!

Webinar on Six Sigma for HR

Also, I just viewed a webinar on How Six Sigma Techniques Can Improve HR Processes and it's available (after a free registration) to anyone.
http://www.peopleclick.com/knowledge/webinar/051705.asp

There is quite a bit of introductory information regarding Six Sigma, but it might give HR folks some idea how their peers are viewing Six Sigma (there are several surveys during the webinar) and I came away with a couple of points:

Q: How to measure Quality of Hire?
A: There was a suggestion that Quality of Hire could be measured 60 to 90 days after hire, with a survey to the Hiring Manager with the following questions:
* Did the hire meet / exceed / not your expectations?
* Did the hire meet / exceed / not the skill set needed for the job they were hired for?

Q:How many approvers are needed for requisitions and offers?
A: SOX compliance indicates that 2 levels are required and that these are not able to be changed (I didn't understand the last part of that answer at all).

The Enterprise as an Elephant as viewed by blind men

The Blind Men and the Elephant: Cute poem came up today in reading a book explaining what an enterprise architecture looks like to the enterprise...many different things...and no one really sees what it is.