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Table of Contents
2 Roles and Responsibilities. 5
3 Process Improvement Triggers. 7
4 Documenting the Process Improvement. 8
4.1 Problem/Opportunity Statement. 8
Introduction to the Process Improvement Plan Template
Process Improvement is a function of Quality Management. The goal of Process improvement is to provide for continuous improvement of the various processes used to manage the project and product development throughout the project lifecycle. This is achieved by defining and adopting quality management-specific standards and practices, including periodic assessment, monitoring, and correction of the core project management processes followed by the project. The Process Improvement Plan describes how the project will evaluate the overall effectiveness and efficiency of its processes, how it will take advantages of improvement opportunities, and how it will correct deficiencies as they are discovered.
This process improvement template with instructions contains directions for properly completing a Process Improvement Plan. Additional hints, examples and suggestions are included within each of the template tables where key information is recorded.
Template style conventions are as follows:
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Style |
Convention |
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Normal text |
Indicates placeholder text that can be used for any project. |
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[Instructional text in brackets] |
Indicates text that is be replaced/edited/deleted by the user] |
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Example text in italics |
Indicates text that might be replaced/edited/deleted by the user |
As you complete the template, please remember to delete all instructional text (including this section) and update the following items, as applicable:
- title page
- version history
- table of contents
- headers
- footers
Update the document to a minor version (e.g., 1.1, 1.2) when minimal changes are made and a major version (e.g., 2.0, 3.0) when significant change are made.
Project Sample Library:
The CA-PMF has a Project Sample Library that contains real-world project artifacts from approved projects that you can reference to help you complete CA-PMF templates. Visit the CA-PMF website to access the Project Sample Library.
1 Introduction
[The Process Improvement Plan provides a way to ensure that project management and product development processes are operating as designed and expected. The need for process improvements generally falls into two categories – the correction of a known deficiency, or an opportunity to optimize a process that is operating as expected but could be improved. When these conditions are encountered, the Process Improvement Plan provides a structured, disciplined approach to implementing the improvement and communicating the change to affected project participants and Stakeholders. In this section, describe the purpose of the Process Improvement Plan, and its scope and objectives.]
This Process Improvement Plan describes the approach the project will take to ensure its project management processes and its product management processes are operating efficiently throughout the project lifecycle. It provides the methods for optimizing processes and/or correcting deficiencies that are affecting project progress and outcome. Specific methods include problem/opportunity identification, root cause determination, defining the improvement, implementing the improvement, measuring success, and communicating changes to affected project participants and Stakeholders. The objectives of the Process Improvement Plan are to proactively address process-related issues before they affect the project, and to implement improvements that raise the quality of the project’s management and product development processes.
2 Roles and Responsibilities[The following table identifies primary Process Improvement participant roles and responsibilities related to key tasks within the plan. In some cases, a project might have unique requirements that call for additional roles or responsibilities depending upon the project’s size, type, and complexity.]
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Name |
Role |
Responsibility |
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Project Sponsor(s) |
· Provides the necessary support to the Project Manager to ensure that state and vendor resources are available to support the execution of this plan. · Provides the necessary support to ensure that state and vendor resources commit to addressing process improvement efforts. |
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Project Manager |
· Tracks the progress of the process improvement efforts. · Ensures the entire project team (state and vendor) follows this plan when conducting process improvements · Ensures adherence to all other project processes that interact with or provide input to process improvement efforts. · Ensures there are sufficient resources to execute this plan and that process improvement activities are performed in a timely manner. · Assigns owners to process improvement efforts.
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Vendor Project Manager |
· Performs reviews of process improvement work being performed by the vendor team. · Verifies the work complies with the process improvement approach described in this plan and the requirements in the vendor’s contract. · Shares responsibility for identifying process deficiencies and/or improvement opportunities in a timely manner to mitigate and minimize impacts on the project. |
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Quality Manager |
· Responsible for maintaining the overall process improvement effort. · Monitors the conditions that trigger process improvement activities as defined by the project. · Defines the problem/opportunity. · Identifies and assigns an owner to the process improvement effort. · Ensures the process improvement efforts managed by this plan are organized, managed, communicated and controlled. · Ensures that process improvements are implemented in a timely manner in order to minimize impact. · Periodically obtains process improvement status updates from process improvement owners. |
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Process Improvement Owner |
· Responsible for management, administration and documentation of the improvement effort. · Shares responsibility with the Project Manager, Quality Manager, Issue Manager, Risk Manager and others affected by the particular process for ensuring that process improvements are organized, managed, controlled, and implemented in a timely manner that minimizes impacts on the project. · Provides status updates to the Quality Manager and Project Manager. |
[This section of the Process Improvement Plan describes a basic set of conditions that could trigger process improvement actions within the project. The Quality Manager monitors these conditions in order to respond in a timely fashion when deficiencies are identified or opportunities for improvement arise. The following table identifies some sample triggers to be considered. Triggers can be general in nature (such as a Stakeholder complaint) or specific (such as task durations consistently underestimated). The more specific the trigger, the easier it is to hone in on the specific process that may need improvement. The trigger, its description, and the process or processes involved should be noted.
- Trigger – The event or condition that signals a potential process improvement need or opportunity
- Description – A description of the triggering event or condition
- Process involved – The process that may be involved in process improvement activities based on the trigger
This sample table should be modified as needed to fit project needs.]
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Trigger |
Description |
Process Involved |
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Stakeholder Complaint |
Stakeholders expressed concerns that they are not being informed in a timely manner and not kept up to date on project status. |
Project Status Reporting – frequency and content |
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Low quality work products |
Project work products are going through multiple cycles of review and require extensive re-work. |
Quality Management – quality assurance processes |
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Repeated failure |
A specific milestone is continually being missed and pushed out. |
Schedule Management – task duration estimation Staff Management – resource planning |
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Over-allocated resources |
There are not enough resources to allocate the work identified in the project schedule. |
Staff Management – resource planning |
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Task durations consistently underestimated |
Actual task durations are consistently exceeding planned duration. |
Schedule Management - task duration estimation
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4 Documenting the Process Improvement
[Once a process problem or opportunity has been identified, it should be documented so that those involved in improving the process clearly understand the problem, its impact to the project, its root cause, the processes involved, measurements, and the plan to address the issue. In the following sections of this template, describe these attributes.]
4.1 Problem/Opportunity Statement
[Working in conjunction with the appropriate project participants/Stakeholders, the Quality Manager defines the problem or opportunity for improvement based on efforts to monitor triggering events. Quantifiable measures, if known and applicable, should be included to aid in measuring the success of improvement efforts after they are implemented. In the following example, the Quality Manager works with the Schedule Manager to create the problem/opportunity statement]
The Schedule Manager has reported that task durations are consistently being underestimated. Actuals for 60% of the tasks in the schedule baseline have exceeded plan by a minimum of 15%. The Project Manager has applied techniques to overcome this issue, including crashing and fast-tracking portions of the schedule, but available schedule slack continues to shrink. If the problem persists, the project’s critical path will be affected and the project end date will slip.
Improving the project’s estimation capabilities will introduce better accuracy in estimating task durations. Better accuracy will create a more realistic schedule, reduce schedule risk, and protect the critical path.
4.2 Root Cause
[Accurate determinations of root cause are critical to ensuring that improvement efforts are targeted correctly. It is especially important when deficiencies are involved. The process improvement effort needs to address the cause and not the symptoms of the deficiencies. Again, working in conjunction with the appropriate project participants and/or Stakeholders, the Quality Manager analyzes the opportunity to determine its cause. Common sources of problems or opportunities include:
- Organizational – Project resources do not have the required knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform a particular function, or improvements to resource capabilities could result in higher quality outcomes. Steps, such as training, coaching, and mentoring, can be applied to resolve a deficiency or optimize outcomes.
- Process – The process is not clearly defined, is over/under controlled with regard to risk, or is duplicative or in conflict with others. Process refinement could bring clarity, balance between risk and control, and remove conflicts and replicated efforts, leading to better process efficiency, compliance, and outcomes.
- Governance – Policy and standards are lacking, ambiguous, or not communicated effectively. Improving governance creates clarity and helps the project hone and optimize its processes based on clearly stated policy and standards.
- Technology – The technology underlying project efforts is not aligned with project processes, leading to workarounds and extra effort to fill gaps. Aligning supporting technology systems eliminates risks due to individual workarounds, reduces extra effort to overcome lack of support, and enables better process efficiency and outcomes.
Other project-specific sources may exist as well. Describe the root cause here.]
Project team members are responsible for estimating duration for the tasks to which they are assigned. Not all project team members receive estimation training when they join the project. As a result, there is inconsistency across the team in understanding how the project estimates duration. To improve the project’s ability to estimate task durations, estimation training needs to be applied consistently across the team. Common understanding of the project’s estimation process and methods is fundamental to achieving consistently accurate estimations.
4.3 Owner
[In this section, the owner of the process improvement effort is identified.]
The Training Manger is the responsible owner of this improvement plan
4.4 Improvement Plan
[Once the root cause has been identified, an effective improvement plan can be formulated. This section provides an overview of the improvement plan and its objectives. The Process Improvement Owner is responsible for task definition, resource assignments and the timeline. The following narrative provides an overview of the improvement plan and is supported by the table below, which provides the tasks, assignments and timeline for the improvement effort.]
Consistently achieving accurate duration estimates requires that all team members receive the training in the project’s estimation process and methods. Over the next 30 days, all team members who have not received estimation instruction will be required to attend computer-based training sessions. Team members who have taken the training can elect to take refresher training. Within one week, the project’s on-boarding process will be adjusted to require estimation training for all new team members. The Quality Manager and the Schedule Manager will monitor duration estimate accuracy for the next 60 days to determine if the improvement effort is producing the expected result. The Project Manager will assess the effect of the improvement on project artifacts (such as plans) and create and process change requests as needed. The Project Manager will communicate the change and its impact to affected project participants and Stakeholders throughout the improvement process.
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Task |
Assigned To |
Timeline |
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Communicate the improvement effort to affected project participants and Stakeholders
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Project Manager |
Complete by XX/XX/XXXX |
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Modify the on-boarding process to require estimation training for all new team members
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Training Manager |
Complete by XX/XX/XXXX |
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Ensure all team members who have not received estimation training have taken the computer-based estimation training
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Training Manager |
Complete by XX/XX/XXXX |
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Evaluate effect on duration estimates and determine if success criteria have been met
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Project Manager Quality Manager |
Complete by XX/XX/XXXX |
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Submit Change Requests for affected project artifacts
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Project Manager |
Complete by XX/XX/XXXX |
4.5 Success Criteria
[To determine the effectiveness of improvement efforts, they should be compared to quantitative or qualitative criteria. Quantitative measures are usually preferred because they can be measured, while qualitative measures can only be observed. However, not all improvements can be measured quantitatively. In such cases, the process improvement owner will have to determine how to evaluate the success of the improvement effort qualitatively. In this section, describe how the success of the improvement effort will be measured.]
The plan to improve project task duration estimation will be considered successful when the following criteria are met:
- Project duration estimate accuracy increases week over week until no more than 10% of the scheduled tasks in the project baseline are underestimated.
- All current team members have been trained in the project’s estimation process and methods.
- On-boarding processes have been adjusted so that all future team members will receive training in the project’s estimation methods.
- All project artifacts affected by integrating this solution have been updated via the project’s Change Control process.
- Process changes have been communicated to affected project participants and Stakeholders.
