“Delivery Excellence” is
the essential buzzword for every company. It becomes more prominent in the IT
industry but also manifests in different format in other industries with
industry specific definition of “Delivery”. Every organization is claiming to
be working towards achieving Delivery excellence. There are multiple models
built by various industry bodies, universities, governments like ISO, CMMi,
Malcom Baldridge Award, Shingo Prize, etc. which are used by corporates to achieve
and project delivery excellence to the external world. Many large corporations
have built their own Delivery Excellence frameworks based on some of best
practices of these models and their experience of delivering to customers. The
whole idea of these initiatives is to build a framework within the organization
which will help “auto-pilot” delivery excellence. The framework is a
comprehensive set of Policies, Procedures, forms and templates which define
what should be considerations while doing a specific work, how to do it, what
are the tools available for doing the same and how to monitor its progress, etc.
However, if one observes keenly across the spectrum of organizations, the aim
of “auto-piloting Delivery Excellence” is not really seen to be successful. Corporations are not really able to achieve excellence, which is defines as “Excellence
is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what
one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and
professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously
moving upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence”, in their
delivery function. The corporates do not admit this but continuously refine the
framework and do several other things to achieve the same. They set up a focus
group to ensure that the organization continues to march on the “Excellence”
path.
When one observes
corporations / groups within the corporations who seem to be successful in
achieving delivery excellence over a longer period of time and those who
struggle or show intermittent success, we see a few points which make all the
difference. These are
1
Has the team on the ground understood the Spirit of framework?
Many a times it is seen
that a corporation has nice and comprehensive framework, it is available easily
to every one to refer, there is a constant communication about need of its
usage and team also uses it to the letter, there are no non conformity found
in the audits but we do not see Delivery Excellence. The prime reason for this
is the team does not understand the spirit behind each step in the framework.
They really do not think deeply about why
they are doing a specific step and what the business benefits are likely to be
achieved by doing a specific step. The result is blindly following the steps
mentioned in the manual. Over a period of time the team totally forgets why and
just follows the framework to its letter. So it is critical for every
organization to device means to ensure that the spirit of the delivery
excellence framework is understood correctly by the team. This could be done by
devising training programs which are more focused on deeper understanding and
its relevance to business rather than overview. More and more case studies of
benefits could be shared in discussion mode. The best method of keeping this
journey of excellence perpetual is significant participation of senior and
middle management.
2
Involvement of Senior and Middle Management
When an organization is
building up a culture, then deep, convincing and demonstrated involvement of
Senior management is mandatory. When organization observes keen interest and
actions in specific tenets of culture or values demonstrated through actions;
it starts adopting the same as their culture and their values. So it becomes
critical that Senior management visibly demonstrate through their actions that
they want a culture of delivery excellence in the organization. Many a times we
see that Senior management sets the parameters predominantly on financial
aspects, talk a lot about the same in various meetings, set up review process around
it. There is not much of discussion on HOW portion of those achievements. The
HOW aspects are directly linked with things like Delivery Excellence, which are
vehicles to achieve financial goals. Clear and visible interest in these in
terms of setting goals for their direct reports and reviewing of the same in
meetings sets the right tone. When Senior management connects the comprehensive
framework which has been built by the organization to business goals the
cascade effect is a positive spiral. Taking cue from the senior management
team, the middle management is critical in terms of implementation of this
values system and if organization sees sincerity in the actions, their belief
in what senior management is preaching strengthens. Is the middle management
allowing the team to go through the full life cycle of any activity or they are
looking for some shortcuts from the team. This speaks volumes to the team about
real value system. Thus the joint effort helps in converting the delivery
excellence framework to auto pilot mode. Simple things like how the middle
management or senior management reacts to the mistakes made as well as defects
conveys a lot to the organization in terms of what values the organization
really cares for.
3
How defects and defect generator is treated?
It is critical for success
of any framework that there is an encouragement to make mistakes, learn from
them and improve continuously. If the defects are not treated well and defect
generator is punished without giving opportunity to improve or actions are
taken on personal basis rather than on issue basis; the tendency to hide the
mistakes increases also culture of “Passing the Buck” or “Save Ones Back” takes
front stage. This encourages team to play safe and follow the framework to the
letter (not to spirit). Also many a times defect finder is not considered a
good team member by the team, which slowly gives rise to a culture of “I
scratch your back and you scratch mine” i.e. “I will find nominal mistakes in
your work and you find nominal mistakes from my work”. So the process is
followed, there are defects, there will be some Root Cause Analysis, some
actions for correction and prevention will be taken. However there is a high
chance that we have overlooked the real opportunity for improvement and which
shows up as a blot in the customer feedback.
4
Is the customer party to the excellence process?
Another way to give a clear
message to the organization is to involve customer as a partner in your
Delivery Excellence process. There is a tendency in the organization to
showcase only the end product to the customer and not the entire process. Many
a times companies like to wow the customer or they do not want customer to
understand the realities on the ground or companies want to continuously
improve and keep most of the gains from improvement to themselves. Many times
customers also will have their own Delivery Excellence processes and gives rise
to conflict in terms of which framework to follow. If the corporation
successfully sales the idea and benefits of the delivery framework it has and
excites customer to participate in the same, be open with the customer about
all the efforts teams are taking. This really gets the team pumped up as they
see the importance of the framework and since customer is directly involved in
to this, the WHY portion of the framework is addressed meaningfully giving a
better chance to auto pilot the framework.
So if Senior management
sponsors the delivery excellence framework and participates in to it actively
coupled with appropriate implementation at middle management through a positive
improvement oriented approach the chance for auto-piloting delivery excellence
increases. If customer participates in using the delivery excellence framework then
chances of auto piloting increase exponentially.
