Most organizations today say they no longer use the traditional waterfall approach to implementing new initiatives. The current buzz word is continuous improvement. Yet if you scratch the surface of most continuous improvement projects, what you find is shorter cycles of what are really waterfall projects.
With a waterfall approach schedules are established that include milestones such as analysis, requirements, design, development, testing, training, implementation etc. Each milestone is completed and signed off prior to proceeding to the next, but the most valuable deliverables in a waterfall approach are not realized until the end of the project. The most valuable deliverables are why the initiative was launched to begin with. Projects are not launched to create milestone documentation. How many waterfall projects have you seen that successfully completed every milestone on time except the last one?
A true continuous improvement approach recognizes there is unlimited opportunity to improve and works to deliver value in steady recognizable wins. Progress is not measured by milestone documents but by tangible results. Although it can be more difficult to predict which benefits will be produced for each continuous improvement milestone, it is easier to determine if a milestone adds real value compared to a waterfall.
The problem most organizations have with continuous improvement is that they attempt to guide them using traditional waterfall project management. Continuous improvement becomes a series of short duration waterfall projects adopting the worst aspects of both; short projects with more time spent documenting than producing results.
An alternative method of managing continuous improvement is to use workshops as the milestones for establishing progress. Here the definition of workshop is a cross-functional event where decisions are made and knowledge is created. Not a meeting where information is shared. As part of the design of each continuous improvement initiatives a number of workshops are established to manage progress. They could be a current state workshop, future state workshop, gap analysis workshop, etc. Or a requirements workshop, design workshop, development workshop, etc.
With this method the primary outcome of the workshop is not a document but decisions and knowledge concerning the current state, the requirements, etc. There may be an actual document produced or not. The workshops become the focus not the documentation. Workshop participants determine if the milestone was successfully completed and whether they are ready to prepare for the next workshop.
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