Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, 7th Edition

Chapter 16

Establishing and Managing a Continuous Process Improvement Program

Become addicted to constant and never-ending self improvement.

—Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

We're supposed to be perfect our first day on the job and then show constant improvement.

—Ed Vargo, major league baseball umpire

Continual improvement is an unending journey.

—Lloyd Dobens and Clare Crawford-Mason, Thinking About Quality

In today's business climate, there is no difference between standing still and going backwards.

—Robert K. Wysocki, PhD President, EII Publications, LLC

CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• Understand the differences between project management processes and practices
• Know what process and practice maturity is all about
• Be able to explain the five levels of maturity
• Understand and be able to construct the Process Quality Matrix (PQM) and the Zone Map
• Have a working knowledge of the Continuous Process Improvement Model (CPIM)
• Know the benefits of having a CPIM
• Be able to diagram a business process
• Know how to use and interpret the eight tools for business process analysis

Once an organization implements a project management methodology and even takes the next step by putting a Project Support Office (PSO) in place to support it, the road to a mature project management environment has just begun. I have never had a client who put a project management life cycle (PMLC) model in place and didn't quickly come to the realization ...