Messy Process Management

More common than it should

It is not a difficult task to find inconsistencies in public and private organization’s process management.

For instance, what it is written in the objectives is, sometimes, ethereal, abstract, confusing and instead of providing direction and expressing what the process must achieve and deliver, it is forgotten, misunderstood or unnoticed.

Unclear objectives

With those objectives as a reference for performance, there will be difficulties to define the proper process indicators. Without the guide of a clear objective, to find the right way of measuring performance will need imagination, trial and error, search and will produce indicators that will not allow people to see there the process performance and make the proper decisions. It is often heard that indicators measure nothing and that it is a waste of time calculating them periodically.

Useless indicators

Imagination, nonetheless, produces results: high sounding, attractive indicators get quick approval from those involved and their authorities. But problems arise when it is time of using them. Indicators are based on data, for without them there are not possible calculations and when for the first time process statistics are needed, it is found that there is none, for a variety of reasons: no one records or collects data, they are not the kind of information that the process produces or it is not understood what data are all about or where can they be collected.

The necessary information is not collected

An overview on the process shows that nothing in its instructions states the kind of information that must be collected, or where, or how or who does it. Although it is possible to find long lists of attachments and forms in a procedure, their use remains undefined as well as their relevance and clarity. The process then does not produce the information needed to learn whether it is running as required or not.

Not helpful for managing

In this way, to show a good performance will be hard. People –their authorities included- make efforts to get the expected results, but the absence of a consistent management schema is of no help. When performance is to be reported, it is necessary to look for information and to conduct last minute calculations and analyses. A coherent management schema would have defined all these management elements from the very start in a consistent, relevant and objective way.

Inconsistent managing

The cause of a messy management schema lies in the ignorance of the members about the meaning of defining and performing it, which are its elements and their relations. Order is what it is expected form a management schema. On the contrary, incoherence produces confusion, reproduces disorder in process performance and makes difficult both to obtain the desired results and the presentation before others.