We recently began looking for companies to take part in a beta test of our new policies and procedures management system. We’re giving companies like yours the opportunity to be in on the building process, so the result is something you’ll be able to use intuitively from the start (we hope).

As much as we listen to our customers, we have to translate what we hear into fields on a screen so that software engineers know what to build. Think of it this way: when you say, “I want to easily adapt Bizmanualz procedures for each of my clients”, that could require a bunch of screens.

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Companies are using a wide variety of intranet software solutions to develop policies and procedures for multiple departments.  Common policies and procedures software solutions include editing in MS-Word, publishing in PDF, and managing files in SharePoint.  You can try putting most of your information on a wiki, but a wiki can be an inefficient solution for keeping documentation up-to-date and under control.  Adobe has a product called RoboHelp that’s good for maintaining a single source and distributing various versions and revision changes to a mixture of channels.

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If your company is like most, you’re storing your policies and procedures on a file server. Perhaps your working drafts are in one folder, approved versions are in another folder, and previous versions are archived in yet another folder. Some companies will create folders for the different clauses of ISO 9001 or arrange documents according to functional areas or departments. A lot of these companies aren’t even practicing the most basic security techniques, like limiting “read-write” privileges to a select few.

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Policies and procedures need to be managed, not simply collected, as we oftentimes tend to do.  Add in the offspring of policies and procedures — records — and you have the making of a problem common to business…a lack of control.

Control of records and documents is critical to compliance.  ISO 9001 requires document control, record control, and specific procedures that clarify how you are maintaining control.  HIPAA requires access control.  Sarbanes-Oxley requires access and revision control.  Document and record control are at the heart of many of the various compliance schemes businesses encounter.

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Project Execution, Project Monitoring & Control, and Project Review & Close

The first phase in any project management process is Project Initiation.  The second phase is Project Planning.  Together the first two phases represent the seven “Ps” of planning:

Proper Prior Planning Prevents a Pretty Poor Program.

But you are not preparing planning for planning’s sake, you need the deliverables.  The next phase – Project Execution – is the area most people spend most of their time.

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The first phase in any project management process is project initiation, where the goal is to uncover the project’s scope — the boundaries for resources, expectations, results, feasibility, the team, and your requirements — and produce a project charter.  Now that you know the project’s goals and scope and you have a project charter, what’s next?

Project planning is the second phase of any project management process and consists of developing the core planning elements.  The output of this phase is a set of project management documents, or plans.  The most important one is the project plan itself.  (Figure 1 shows the table of contents for a project plan.)

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Today, everything is a project with more and more people finding themselves in a project management role of some type.  You don’t have to have the title of Project Manager to manage projects.

A Project is a temporary collection of related tasks to achieve a desired and usually unique result.

What do you think? Do you find yourself managing a collection of related tasks to achieve a desired result?  If so, you qualify as a project manager.  Businesses today are evolving, downsizing, and pushing more work down the organization chart.  You may be a project manager and not know it.  But what if you haven’t been trained as a Project Manager with the necessary skill and tool sets?

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The process maps we described in recent weeks are tools for you in your role as data collector and analyst: your role is to craft and communicate a story for change and improvement that people understand, accept, support, and will ultimately act on.  As you move from gathering data about the current process to improving it, you need tools to help communicate your improvement plan and train participants on the new process,

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In our series on process maps which wraps up next week, the maps we have looked at are descriptive. They help us capture and display information about the current state.  Each map depicts the entire process, though from different angles.  For example, swim lane maps stress roles, responsibilities, and hand-off points, whereas document maps list documents and records generated throughout a process.

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Start by considering what the product is that you produce as an organization and what core processes are needed to produce that product.  In the case of education, the product is learning or a change in behavior as a result of learning something.

Now look at quality in light of behavior change.  What do you design and develop that causes behavior changes.  Certainly that would include teaching methods, but also the curriculum, course length, how the day is structured, homework, grading, extracurricular activities, grade levels, meals served, etc.

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