AD-00014

A group was responsible for a highly visible process that was becoming a huge bottleneck and point of contention between the company and their government customer.  The process was examined, diagramed, and questioned by a committee for over six months.

They assembled a team representing the customer, process experts, management, and auditors.  Together, they used Meetingworks to brainstorm "breakthrough" actions. 

The list of breakthrough actions was discussed and clarified and finally placed into Cross Impact using "Impact" and "Changeability" as criteria.  In other words, they looked at the action for its possible impact on the problem, and also for how much the group could (themselves) perform the actions.

The Cross Impact results were carefully examined.  There were few items that were both worth the effort (impact) and possible to accomplish (changeable).  They made action plans for each item, assigned owners and due dates.  The items that could have huge impact, but which were out of their control were noted.

Their final report showed the actions they felt could affect the process, along with an estimate of how much process improvement they felt could be realized.