The purpose of Organizational Process Focus (OPF) is to plan, implement, and deploy organizational process improvements based on a thorough understanding of the current strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s processes and process assets.

The organization's processes include all the processes used by the organization and its projects. Candidate improvements to the organization's processes and process assets are obtained from various sources, including measurement of the processes, lessons learned in implementing the processes, results of process appraisals, results of product evaluation activities, results of benchmarking against other organizations’ processes, and recommendations from other improvement initiatives in the organization.

Process improvement occurs within the context of the organization’s needs and is used to address the organization’s objectives. The organization encourages participation in process improvement activities by those who will perform the process. The responsibility for facilitating and managing the organization’s process improvement activities, including coordinating the participation of others, is typically assigned to a process group. The organization provides the long-term commitment and resources required to sponsor this group and to ensure the effective and timely deployment of the improvements.

Careful planning is required to ensure that process improvement efforts across the organization are adequately managed and implemented. The organization’s planning for process improvement results in a process improvement plan.

The organization’s process improvement plan will address appraisal planning, process action planning, pilot planning, and deployment planning. Appraisal plans describe the appraisal timeline and schedule, the scope of the appraisal, the resources required to perform the appraisal, the reference model against which the appraisal will be performed, and the logistics for the appraisal.

Process action plans usually result from appraisals and document how specific improvements targeting the weaknesses uncovered by an appraisal will be implemented. In cases in which it is determined that the improvement described in the process action plan should be tested on a small group before deploying it across the organization, a pilot plan is generated.

Finally, when the improvement is to be deployed, a deployment plan is used. This plan describes when and how the improvement will be deployed across the organization.

Organizational process assets are used to describe, implement, and improve the organization's processes (see the definition of “organizational process assets” in the glossary).

Refer to the Organizational Process Definition process area for more information about the organizational process assets.

Specific Goal and Practice Summary

SG 1 Determine Process Improvement Opportunities

SP 1.1       Establish Organizational Process Needs

SP 1.2       Appraise the Organization’s Processes

SP 1.3       Identify the Organization's Process Improvements

SG 2 Plan and Implement Process Improvements

SP 2.1       Establish Process Action Plans

SP 2.2       Implement Process Action Plans

SG 3 Deploy Organizational Process Assets and Incorporate Lessons Learned

SP 3.1       Deploy Organizational Process Assets

SP 3.2       Deploy Standard Processes

SP 3.3       Monitor Implementation

SP 3.4       Incorporate Process-Related Experiences into the Organizational Process Assets