Only 30 percent of performance improvement initiatives succeed. So why do these initiatives fail so frequently? Research reveals the #1 reason is lack of management support. Surveys of C-level executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit concur — they say lack of leadership buy-in and support can stop the success of many strategic initiatives.
Evidence from the Juran Institute reveals that company leaders just don't have good access to the kind of information they need. Research from the American Society for Quality actually shows the higher people rise on the corporate ladder, the less frequently they receive reports about metrics (over half get updates once quarterly or even less!).
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Scattered, inaccessible project data makes it difficult to piece together the full picture of improvement initiatives and their impact in a company. An array of applications is often used to create project charters, process maps, value stream maps and other documentation. Keeping official project records current and accessible to all key stakeholders becomes a very time-consuming job in and of itself. On top of that, inconsistent metrics across projects can make it impossible to evaluate results in an equivalent manner.
But successful strategic initiatives are built on a foundation of planning and good communication. So what do you do? Here are our top three suggestions.
Using one platform to track milestones, KPIs and documents addresses redundancies of gathering key metrics from various sources needed to report on projects, saving teams hours of valuable time. Looking past the current project at hand, one platform can also make it easy to quickly replicate processes, such as roadmaps and templates that were useful in previous initiatives, in the future.
A tool like Minitab Engage can be used to centralize your storage and make all relevant documents accessible to appropriate team members and stakeholders. As teams grow and projects become more complex, having all team members aligned can be a huge benefit as it can prevent confusion, assist with version control, help keep metrics consistent and reduce the number of back and forth emails.
Visibility into the progress of your project facilitates the day-to-day management of tracking results and addressing any challenges. Dashboards show your project's progress at a glance.
Looking to set up your projects for success? Talk to Minitab >
Achieving the efficiency, consistency and visibility needed to successfully manage projects is a common challenge we hear from our customers. Engage was created to tackle these issues head-on based on our customer feedback. For executives, managers and stakeholders, Engage delivers unprecedented and unparalleled insight into the progress, performance and bottom-line impact of the organization’s entire quality initiative, or any individual piece of it.