Kristine A. Hayes Munson, PMP, CIA, Vice President presented at our SCQAA- San Fernando Valley chapter.

1. Kristine A. Hayes Munson, MBA, PMP, CIA
State Street

2. Photos of Attendees on December 11 2013 at Intuit Office
www.scqaa.net

3. 
You will be able to apply systems thinking to
business process improvement projects after:
◦ Selecting key performance indicators (KPI)
◦ Knowing when to implement change or when to
leave a process “as is”
◦ Determining whether or not proposed changes
will positively or negatively impact the project

4. 
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Managed an user acceptance testing project to
onboard a client to a major system within firm
Project went from greenish-amber to red in less
than a week with no major fires
SVP comment on the project:
◦ The team is working frantically
◦ The team is not working hard enough

5. “There is no such thing as a fact concerning an
empirical observation. Any two people may have
different ideas about what is important to know
about any event. Get the facts!”
—W. Edward Deming

6. 
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Process Improvement Projects Revisited
Key Performance Indicators
Why Change?
◦ Special Cause and Common Cause Variation
◦ The Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle
Seeing is Understanding
◦ Deming’s Red Bead Experiment
◦ Deming’s Funnel Experiment
Understanding My Project

7. 
Change Agent
◦ Identify and articulate the need for a business
process change
◦ Document and vet requirements for the
proposed change
◦ Facilitate the proposed change
◦ Help businesses do their business better.

8. 
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Acceptance & Evaluation
Criteria Definition
Brainstorming
Interviews
Document Analysis
Focus Groups
Observation
Organization Modeling
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Process Modeling
Prototyping
Requirements
Workshops
Risk Analysis
Root Cause Analysis
Scenarios & Use Cases
Scope Modeling
Survey/Questionnaire

9. What are our results?

10. 
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Translate collected data and information
into knowledge
Make the right management decisions and take
the right action
◦ Implement appropriate, planned changes
◦ Allow the process to function “as is”

11. 
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Select 3-5 key performance indicators (KPI)
◦ Understand the overall business objectives
◦ Ask stakeholders what is most important
◦ Identify the impact of not completing the project
Make KPIs “SMART”
Remember may need to be “bad” at some things in
order to be “good”
• Ensure stakeholders including the project team know
and understand the KPIs

12. 
Think about a process improvement project on
which you are currently working.
◦ Identify what are the 3-5 KPIs?
◦ What are you going to be intentionally bad at?

13. 
We observe variation from our expectations

14. 
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How do we decide whether or not to “change,” “fix”
or “improve” something?
How do we determine if a change will positively
and/or negatively impact a project?

15. 
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Common Cause
◦ Fall inside the
control limits
Special Cause
◦ Something that is
special, not part of
the system of
common causes
◦ Fall outside the
control limits

16. 
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Mistake 1
◦ To react to an outcome as if it came from a
special cause, when actually it came from
common causes of variation.
Mistake 2
◦ To treat an outcome as if it came from common
causes of variation, when actually it came from a
special cause

17. When you discover that you are riding a dead horse,
the best strategy is to dismount.
In many companies more advanced strategies are
often employed, such as:
Reclassifying contractors to horseslighter riders
as
Declaring thataseveral dead ride the together to
Providing additional deadso see does impaired’
Lowering to as dead horse study training
Hiring Rewritingvisit other countries todead how
Doingoutside the thestudy riders ‘living not horse
Arranging the standards to that if the horse
Appointing committee horse dead horses
Harnessing the expected performance have
a productivity funding and/or see
Changing
increasetoitincreaseincluded performance
to improve can dead horse’s
fed,theis less costly,horses
dead the performance
wouldberequirements horse’scarries lower
others ride for allspeed
the be dead horses…
overhead, and therefore contributes
substantially more to the mission of the
organization than do some other horses

18. A
D
B
C

19. Experience
Perception of
Cause and Effect

20. Adopt the change, or
abandon it or
run through
the cycle again
Act
Plan
Plan a change or
a test, aimed at
improvement
–Which option
to test?
– What is
anticipated
result?
Beware of
Unintended Consequences
Study the results.
What did we learn?
What went wrong?
Check
Do
Carry out the change
or test (preferably
on a small scale)

21. 
Help Wanted
◦ 3 willing project team members (must be brave)
◦ 2 team leads (must be able to count)
◦ 1 business analyst (must be able to count)
◦ 1 project manager (must be able to add & use
PowerPoint)
◦ 1 senior manager (sets the rules – me)

23. 
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Wrong to rank people
◦ Demoralizing
◦ Really ranking the effect of the process on
people
Futility of pay for performance; rewarding and
punishing the process
Display of bad management; procedures were rigid
No basis to assume that best team member would
be the best in the future

24. 
Help Wanted
◦ 1 will project team member (must be able to hold
funnel)
◦ 1 business analyst (must be able to use a marker)
◦ 1 senior manager (sets the rules – me)
No one gets fired in this experiment.

25. 
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Avoid management tampering
◦ Taking action based on the belief that a common
cause is a special cause
◦ Overreacting
◦ Causes losses – management by results
◦ Increases variation
Sometimes the process should just be left alone

26. 
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What is the most important decision I face right
now because of observed variation?
◦ What long-term consequence do the short-term
issues have?
◦ How does this decision relate to the project’s
3-5 KPIs?
How will we determine if this variation is a special
cause or a common cause variation?
How does this knowledge impact your decision?
How will you test your decision?

27. 
You will be able to apply systems thinking to
monitoring and controlling after:
◦ Selecting key performance indicators (KPI)
◦ Knowing when to implement change or when to
leave a project “as is”
◦ Determining whether or not proposed changes
will positively or negatively impact the project

28. “The truth is often buried deeper than where your
intuition can reach. Uncovering it starts with the
willingness to stop treating your beliefs as facts.”
— Frances Frei and Anne Morriss
“Learning the word ‘no’ is the hardest lesson for
many project managers.”
— Jim Johnson

30. Kristine A. Hayes Munson, MBA, PMP, CIA
kahayesmunson@statestreet.com
+949-932-1476
For SCQAA- San Fernando Valley Chapter
Sujit Ghosh sujit58@gmail.com
818-878-0834