Doing More for Less

 

Delivery: 2-day workshop or onsite coaching

When the economy gets bumpy, it is natural to tighten budgets, make cuts and expect the organization to work harder so that more can be produced with less. Memos and emails are sometimes used to announce that reductions in cost are needed and that any extra effort by staff will be appreciated. The impulse to send a memo is understandable and can help, but might only have a temporary impact on the organization while the "save money" request is still fresh in people’s minds.

For example, let’s suppose the initial "save money" memo causes the group to delay buying hardware and software upgrades (e.g., $30K), stop printing emails on paper (e.g., $30/month) and reduce travel expenses (e.g., $10K/month). These are good ideas, but there is more that can be done to save money long term. A systematic series of improvements is needed to produce more for less consistently over time. These improvements need to address inefficiencies that happen every day in projects in addition to cutting hard expenses.

 

Below we list a few example savings. Some of these are recurring and others are one-time only.

  • Spending less time transitioning between multiple tasks
  • Identifying and removing non-value-added tasks and documentation
  • Spending less time on rework
  • Reducing the amount of defects and problems that enter an unavoidable bottleneck
  • Spending less time looking for documents
  • Reducing email and meeting time
  • Merging similar documents together and increasing the use of each document
  • Replacing inefficient processes

In this workshop, teams will analyze a portion of their work and organization. They will determine areas where work is unnecessary, time consuming, and delay-prone. These improvement areas will be prioritized during the class and a draft improvement plan will be created.

Audience

  • Senior managers and their direct reports who want to find ways to reduce costs while continuing to meet or exceed delivery deadlines.
  • Project managers and their team members who want to determine what could be improved to shorten schedules and reduce costs.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will have:

  • A list of prioritized improvements focused on saving time and money.
  • A draft action plan
  • An approach to finding additional opportunities for doing more with less

The techniques presented are applied in the session to your current project work. A briefing to management at the end of the workshop is suggested.

Agenda

Introduction

  • A Process for Doing More for Less
  • Example Savings

Define Scope

  • Determine Current State

Identify Non-value-added Activities

  • What do your customers want?
  • What activities can be eliminated?

Simplify the Work

  • Reducing Rework
  • Finding Streamlining Opportunities
  • Planning for Cycles of Learning
  • Looking for Organizational Gaps
  • Re-engineering Cumbersome Processes
  • Dealing with Continual Emergencies

Identifying and Addressing Bottlenecks

  • Looking for Queues
  • Looking for Waits

 

A related article is at http://www.processgroup.com/pgmininewsjan08.pdf

 

THE PROCESS GROUP

The Process Group principals have conducted workshops for companies in the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, Canada, India, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Singapore, China and Japan. We are authorized SEI CMMI appraisal leaders and provide consulting services that enable you to operate your organization more efficiently and profitably. We also offer public speaking engagements that help management and employees understand the various techniques for -- and benefits of -- improving the development process.


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