How to assess operations - a three part guide

A common cause of failed transformation projects is poor quality understanding of the current state of operations.

It may sound counterintuitive that an organisation may not understand how it operates, but a variety of factors contribute to this:

• Employees operate in silos, no one understands the entire operation
• Employees change over time, information is lost:
  • Often complex processes in partially automated systems aren't well understood
• Process/data/systems debt builds up - features are added, but never rationalised or cleaned up
• Growth by acquisition without integration or rationalisation. Business units operating in completely different ways.

The need to understand operations is critical for most types of transformation:

• Continuous improvement
• Organisation restructuring
• ERP systems
• Reporting models
• Outsourcing.

I've spent a lot of time over the years on assessment. The approach is often different depending on the type of project. There's an opportunity to gather lessons learned from across different areas and create a more consistent approach. I've written a detailed guide broken into three parts:

Part 1: General walk through

Part 2: Technical notes