Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

CHAPTER 15

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, Ph.D. President, Enterprise Information Insights, Inc.

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 ...