Did That Process Change Work?
Four Steps to Better Processes, Step 2

by Alan S. Koch, Certified ITIL Expert, PMP, CSM, CTM

In the last post we began the discussion of how to manage process change and focused on the importance of clearly defining the requirements. Once the requirements are clearly defined and agreed upon by all stakeholders, we begin the next step in managing process change which is to define the metrics for evaluation.

2. How will we measure it?

After we have established the goals and requirements for a process change, our next step is to identify the metrics that will tell us if we have achieved what we set out to do. How will we be able to objectively judge how effective the change was?

For each goal and requirements, we must decide how to measure success. For example: 

• If our goal was to improve communication, then we might measure the number of bungled hand-offs per month or the frequency of disagreements about prior decisions.
• If our goal was to make fewer technical mistakes, then we might measure the number of person-hours expended in rework.
• If our goal was to comply with a given standard, then we could measure the number of compliance issues each week.

Here, we don’t want to focus only on our primary goals. Each requirement should be supported by a metric to help us to determine if we are achieving it. This allows us to measure not just the immediate result but also the downstream results of the process change.

We are halfway through my recommendations to help you achieve better processes. In the next post we’ll discuss how we measure the improvement through metrics. In the meantime, I’d like your feedback: what are some of the various metrics you have used to measure the impact of a process change?