Ensure continuous improvement of the process in fulfilling the relevant business objectives of the organization.

The purpose of this generic practice is to select and systematically deploy process and technology improvements that contribute to meeting established quality and process-performance objectives.

Refer to the Organizational Innovation and Deployment process area for more information about selecting and deploying incremental and innovative improvements that measurably improve the organization’s processes and technologies.

Optimizing processes to be agile and innovative depends on the participation of an empowered workforce aligned with the organization’s business values and objectives. The organization’s ability to rapidly respond to changes and opportunities is enhanced by finding ways to accelerate and share learning. Improvement of the processes is inherently part of everyone’s role, resulting in a cycle of continual improvement.

Subpractices

1.    Establish and maintain quantitative process improvement objectives that support the organization’s business objectives.

The quantitative process improvement objectives may be specific to an individual process or they may be defined for a broader scope (i.e., for a set of processes), with individual processes contributing to achieving these objectives. Objectives that are specific to an individual process are typically allocated from quantitative objectives established for a broader scope.

These process improvement objectives are primarily derived from the organization’s business objectives and from a detailed understanding of process capability. These objectives are the criteria used to judge whether process performance is quantitatively improving the organization’s ability to meet its business objectives. These process improvement objectives are often set to values beyond current process performance, and both incremental and innovative technological improvements may be needed to achieve these objectives. These objectives may also be revised frequently to continue to drive the improvement of the process (i.e., when an objective is achieved, it may be set to a new value that is again beyond the new process performance).

These process improvement objectives may be the same as, or a refinement of, objectives established in the Establish Quantitative Objectives for the Process generic practice, as long as they can serve as both drivers and criteria for successful process improvement.

2.    Identify process improvements that will likely result in measurable improvements to process performance.

Process improvements include both incremental changes and innovative technological improvements. Innovative technological improvements are typically pursued as efforts that are separately planned, performed, and managed. Piloting is often performed. These efforts often target process factors that a process-performance analysis has determined to be key to significant measurable improvement.

3.    Define strategies and manage the deployment of selected process improvements based on quantified expected benefits, estimated costs and impacts, and measured change to process performance.

The costs and benefits of these improvements are estimated quantitatively, and actual costs and benefits are measured. Benefits are primarily considered relative to the organization’s quantitative process improvement objectives. Improvements are made to both the organization’s set of standard processes and defined processes.

Managing the deployment of process improvements includes piloting changes and implementing adjustments as appropriate, addressing potential and real barriers to deployment, minimizing disruption to ongoing efforts, and managing risks.