‘It is easy to get success but the challenge is to stay on with it,' the commonly referred quote for personal development, when seen from a business perspective it explains the need for holding on to successes in business and thereon driving growth . In other words it calls for standardization and a smooth flow of activities for running the business.
This is where ‘Process' as a need originates, and acts as a means to repeat success in business consistently. To effectively support this need of an organization, quality management system is defined, which ensure activities go on with ease with proper checks and balances.
In any quality management system three components which comprise the quality triad are - Process, People and Technology. In this triad, process and people perspective forms the solid foundation with technology acting as an enabler.
It is in this context, measurement of process compliance becomes imperative to gauge the health status of the organization. Though quantitative measurement of process compliance by several ways could indicate the well being of the organization, it always falls short of presenting the picture in totality.
As merely looking at a numeric value usually does not provide us with the insight of, ‘What went right or wrong ‘when analyzing from the perspectives of - People, Process and Technology.
Given this limitation, there arises the need for measuring the process compliance with respect to:
- i) Strengths and weakness of process
- ii) Participation level of people
- iii) Technological usage and efficiency
People - sine qua non of Quality Management System
Success of a process management system is impossible without participation of people. Irrespective of models or standards adopted for definition of processes, employees of the organization form the vital component in process architecture .Unfortunately , process nowadays is looked upon just set of activities to comply with standards like ISO , CMMI thereby totally negating the people aspect and letting process compliance and sustenance in jeopardy.
This is where, a matrix representation in the form of ‘Process Compliance -People Participation ‘could be of great utility.
What is Process Compliance - People Participation (P-P) Matrix?
Having defined the quality management system, internal audits, assessments or appraisals forms a critical part of system to measure the process compliance levels.
With the findings of the audit, process compliance index is calculated.
A general way of calculating Process Compliance Index (PCI) when checklists are used as a tool for auditing,
PCI = No of checklists points/process entities not fulfilled
No of applicable process checklists points/process entities
For e.g., after a departmental audit a value PCI = 78% may not exactly reveal a true picture of compliance in that particular department.
The key tasks that lead to non conformance, people motivation, process suitability are few of the factors that could not be unraveled fro this value of 78 %.
This is where a 2x2 matrix that could highlight the process compliance levels against people participation could be of greater use.
How is it to be used?
P-P Matrix could be used for representing process compliance of individual functions, projects, departments and could be consolidated for plotting compliance values at a organizational level.The sources for plotting the process elements in P-P matrix are the non conformances and findings that are uncovered as part of Internal Quality audits, functional audits and project audits.
i. In the above table ‘People ‘and ‘employees ‘are used interchangeably.
ii. High or low level of process compliance indicates the desired results achieved by adopting or not adopting a process
Process Compliance = Expected Performance
- ± Snapshot of process strength and weakness for Senior Management
- ± Quick determination of focus areas
- ± Backed up by objective evaluation
- ± Equal importance to people's role in process implementation
- ± Full-fledged process health check indicator
Example in a Software Project environment