Too many steps spoil the process. This might seem like a weird distortion of the original idiom, but it is in fact true. The more the steps involved in a process, more are the people working on it, more are the people to monitor them.
Process improvement calls for reduction in the number of steps involved in implementing a process. One of the ways to do this, is to make everyone aware of the entire progression to be followed. Rather than keeping one team involved with just one of the steps, getting everyone to see the whole picture can make the process mistake proof.
Then again, more steps don’t necessarily mean the success rate is high. In fact it is the opposite. If 1 step is correct 90% of the time, statistically, 5 such steps would only be correct 59%, and 10 such steps would be correct just 35% of the time.
A process can be made more efficient, if the monitoring and controlling check points are reduced. This means that the person who needs process improvement should check it. This works best for small projects for which multiple checkpoints robs off the valuable time.
Getting the senior management to monitor the control dashboard will also motivate the team to perform better, as they are now answerable to a much senior team member. This not only can make the process mistake proof, reduce the number of resources who otherwise hold the control points, but also makes the process flow much smoother.
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