Issue Documentation and Impact Assessment

• Understand impact of the issues.
• Techniques for impact assessment.

Issue Register

• Provides a more detailed analysis of individual issues and their impact.
  • Determine how and to what extend each issue is impacting on the performance of the process.
  • Quantitatively = Time/money lost.
  • Qualitatively = Perceived nuisance (hinder) to the customer or risks that the issue entails.
• Fields:
  1. Name of the issue
     • Short, 2-5 words, understandable by all.
  2. Description
     • Short, 1-3 sentences, focused on the issue itself.
  3. Priority
     • A number, stating the relevance relative to other issues.
  4. Assumptions (input data)
     • Any data used or assumptions mad in the estimation of the impact of the issue.
     • ex. Number of times a given negative outcome occurs.
     • ex. Estimated loss per occurrence of a negative outcome.
     • Over time these assumptions/estimates will be replaced with more reliable numbers.
  5. Qualitative impact
     • Description of the impact in qualitative terms.
     • ex. Impact of the issue on customer/employee satisfaction, long term supplier relationships, company reputation.
  6. Quantitative impact
     • Estimate of the impact of the issue in quantitative terms.
     • ex. Time loss, revenue loss, avoidable costs.
• Evt. extra possible resolution field in the view of process redesign.
• Examples, see page 200.

Pareto Analysis

• Impact assessment input for Pareto analysis.
• Pareto Analysis = identify which issues or which causal factors of an issue should be given priority.
  • PRINCIPLE: Small number of factors are responsible for the largest share of a given effect.
    • 80-20 principle ( 20% of the issues is responsible for 80% of the effect )
  • APPROACH:
    1. Define the effect to be analyzed and the measure via which this effect will be quantified.
       • ex. Financial loss for customer/business.
       • ex. Time loss by the customer/process participants.
       • ex. Number of occurrences of a negative outcome, such as number of unsatisfied customers due to errors made when handling their case.
    2. Identify all relevant issues that contribute to the effect to be analyzed.
    3. Quantify each issue according to the chosen measure.
       • Quantitative impact column in the issue register can be used.
    4. Sort the issues according to the chosen measure (from highest to lowest impact) and draw a so-called Pareto chart. a. A bar chart where each bar corresponds to an issue and the height of the bar is proportional to the impact of the issue or factor. b. A curve that plots the cumulative percentage impact of the issues.
• Pareto analysis focuses on a single dimension.

PICK chart

• Complement Pareto analysis.
• Each issue appears as a point.
• Horizontal axis = difficulty of addressing/fixing the issue
• Vertical axis = payoff when the issue is fixed
• Split into 4 quadrants:
  • Possible (bottom left, low payoff, easy to do)
  • Implement (top left, high payoff, easy to do)
  • Challenge (top right, high payoff, hard to do)
  • Kill (bottom right, low payoff, hard to do)