Process Design

The content in this site is now a Wiley/Wrox book. Drupal: The Guide to Planning and Building Websites

The USAID Knowledge Driven Microenterprise Development (KDMD) Portal is a Drupal-based portal of sites built on Drupal 6.x. My role with the QED Group included both liaising with QED’s web development vendor during the site development process and helping to build internal Drupal capacity among the KDMD team.

In the early 1990's, the VP of TRW's System's Division was strongly encouraging the use of continuous improvement processes (CIP) to improve the way employees performed their work. The goal was to increase customer satisfaction and thus increase the probability of continued business and growth. I was one of the division's process improvement agents at the time. If memory serves me, I was asked to write up a summary of the work my improvement team was doing so that others would be motivated to do the same. Below is what I wrote. I share this with you in fun so please have fun reading it.

The Vice President Information Technology for a major chemical company commissioned a study from Work Smart, Incorporated to conduct a concept study on the implementation and use of an electronic record and document management system (R&DMS) at the company's headquarters. The study would consist of the data collection, document analysis, and conceptual design/architecture phases of Work Smart’s methodology. There are two questions being answered in this study:

• Would a records and document management system (R&DMS) be of value to the company?

This project had multiple components. The first part was to help the client develop a model that represented five phases of a learner moving through a learning environment life-cycle. When defining any environment, you take into consideration all aspects of the environment. This includes the people, their needs, applicable processes, required and optional resources, and some form of structure to help hold it in place.

As a means of testing the model, the next step was to create personas and scenarios that the personas might experience in their learning environment.

As an employee of TRW's System's Integration Group, I volunteered to work with a few other TRW volunteers to create a group level TQM training and facilitation program. We worked together to create a CIP model and five courses, each course building upon the previous.

The goal of the Benchmarking course was to explore how to compare your process and measures to the same type of process and measures used by a 'recognized leader' (either internal or external), focusing on internal TRW processes.

As an employee of TRW's System's Integration Group, I volunteered to work with a few other TRW volunteers to create a group level TQM training and facilitation program. We worked together to create a CIP model and five courses, each course building upon the previous.

The goal of the Tools and Techniques for Problem Solving course was to explore a large number of instruments that could be used to assist in the analysis and measurement of the process.

As an employee of TRW's System's Integration Group, I volunteered to work with a few other TRW volunteers to create a group level TQM training and facilitation program. We worked together to create a CIP model and five courses, each course building upon the previous.

The goal of the Measurement course was to explore the rationale and methods for quantifying various activities within a process, both before and after changing it, in order to determine affect of the change.