A Measurement Approach for Process Improvement

Abstract

Many organisations today have embarked on a process improvement or re-engineering project. They do so through planned rearchitecting of their processes to engender higher magnitudes of improvements. However, in almost all the organisations undertaking process re-engineering, they do so blindly without any means for checking the efficacy of the newly introduced processes. This paper introduces a blue print measurement approach for gauging the effects of newly introduced processes called REFINE. Whereas most existing measurement approaches are used in the measurement of software processes, REFINE is used for the measurement of business processes. The paper looks at the history of measurement and the definition of measures, and then presents some of the early measurement approaches like the Statistical Process Control approach, the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model, the Goal Question Metrics (GQM) Paradigm and the AMI approach to process evaluation and improvement.


LBS Management Review Vol.4(1) 1999: 29-48