Tag: analysis

Mint tea

Collaboration or Contract: A Decision of Flow

Posted alanPosted in Articles, Methodology, Transformation

Ask anyone who’s been involved in any significant implementation and they’ll have come across the waterfall approach. It typically leads to a contractual relationship between one team who are working on artefacts that are then handed over to a subsequent team. While the flaws of waterfall have been well-documented, this concept of contract versus collaboration extends to many areas of work. Example Let’s use a brief story as an analogy for the concepts of contract and collaboration. It’s an incredibly simple story, but even with the simplicity, we can see the complications that can arise from a contractual relationship. My wife and I walked into a coffee shop. I was left to order the drinks at the counter. So I’d asked what drink did she want. “Mint tea please” She orders a lot more hot drinks than I do, so […]

Revised Revenue Vs Confidence 4 box model

4 box model for deciding on the future – part 2

Posted alan1 CommentPosted in Articles, Innovation, Startups, Strategy

I finished the previous part of this article with a four box model that had two quadrants with the same outcome. With that article, I’d stated that the outcome you may want to choose would probably depend on the lifestyle you want to lead. That still applies, but I want to show what I do with similar four-box models The issue I don’t like when four-box models show opposite quadrants with the same outcome. The reason is that the quadrants are an approximation so we’ve blurred what we do with data points that fall around the centre (like around a bullseye) of the model. Imagine a point of x=49 and y=51, why should that be treated different to x=51 and y=51? or x=49 and y=49? How to interpret What we recognise is that if the diagonally-opposite quadrants are more a […]

Using Four Box Models

Posted alan1 CommentPosted in Articles, Service Redesign, Strategy

What is a Four-box Model? It’s a simplified graph, depicting two axes and the four boxes start at the corners of the graph. There’s an example further down below. Why Use Four-box Models? I love four box models. They’re simple and since they’re simple, they force you introduce clarity where there may have been confusion before. This makes the message easy to convey and simpler to isolate. As such, all 4-box models provide a way of clarifying the problem space. Even if the solution you end up with doesn’t fit into the 4-box model, they’ll have been useful in clarifying the thinking within the group. We’re going to see how they can be useful by looking at an example from CRM. Customer Relationship Management There are two similar models from Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The first model relates a customer’s historic spend with their […]

Kanban prototype for an NHS Acute service

Lean Cost Benefit Analysis of a Quick Improvement

Posted alanPosted in Articles

Last week, I was provided with the short opportunity to improve a service within an NHS Acute Trust. I had 5 minutes to understand the problem and then I suggested a quick improvement. I’d like to take you through how we arrived at a solution and the resulting lean cost benefit analysis of that solution. I don’t get that involved in the individual solutions anymore, instead I’m usually engaged for more strategic issues and end up mentoring others to make the changes across the whole organisation or enterprise. So it was fun to roll up my sleeves and suggest a solution that could work in a hospital. I fully expect the team to modify it to suit their specific needs and I’ll be on hand to help them improve it. So let’s get to the calculations: Lean cost benefit analysis Analysis […]

Fundamentals of Process Mapping – Introducing Subprocesses Part 4

Posted alanPosted in Articles

From what we have seen so far, we’d have 3 separate, but related process models. One for each of the following: Buy a Book Choose a Book Pay for Book Numbering the processes Some of that was getting difficult to describe. The fact that Pay for Book is a process step in one diagram and a whole process was causing some difficulties in describing the relationship. I’d recommend reading through it again, slower this time, checking that you are certain which process step is being to referred to at each point. Some standards help understanding by providing a key to each process step. The most common method is to assign a unique number to each process. The benefit of this is that you can define the process once (e.g. say we define “check stock level”) and then we can use it elsewhere […]

Use Case Diagrams for Documenting Scope

Posted alanPosted in Articles

Use Cases I embraced UML as a communication tool some years ago and have found it successful in being able to convey messages in a simple manner. I don’t use every type of diagram – some are too strange for the average business user. I do use Use Case diagrams. These are great and, with a small amount of education, are suitable for use with business users. Use Case Diagrams for Scope As a communication tool, Use Case diagrams are great at showing who does what at a very high level. They’re good at showing system solution scope, types of actors and ownership of integration points. In one diagram, I can show the scope of the system in a way that users will understand. Now that’s a powerful tool. Depth of the Scoping Use Case Ideally I like to have […]

Mentoring and Training

Posted alanPosted in Mentoring and Training

All of the changes facing every organisation require skilled personnel, either increasing a team’s knowledge in the tools and techniques used for change or by mentoring analysts, providing guidance and supervision. Training Training packages can be developed in the following: Lean Service Redesign Business Process Reengineering Business Analysis Each training package is bespoke, specifically tailored to the client’s needs. Mentoring Mentoring is a longer engagement than training, designed to offer support to your staff in their profession. For those involved in the change profession (change analysts, business analysts, business process analysts), we can provide a mentoring service; either with regular drop-ins or remote via email or onto your organisation’s existing discussion forums. This service should be considered as supplementary to the standard employee mentoring and welfare within your own organisation. It is ideal for SME (Small-to-Medium Sized Enterprises) with one […]