Aug 19, 2016

The Plan, Do, Check and Act cycle is an invaluable way to continually improve processes or products iteratively. This ideology was created by Dr Deming who is thought to be the pioneer of quality control in manufacturing, however this can be used in any industry, including ITSM (IT service management).

Use this model:

• When continual improvement is required
• During the development or design of a new process or service
• When starting a new improvement project
• When putting in a new change

To implement this model:

• Plan - This requires us to consider the goal or reason to implement process or service, defining what our expectations are, our success metrics, and then kicking the plan into action.
• Do - This step requires the implementation of the solutions considered in the plan step. We should be measuring and gauging our progress in this step too
• Check – Consider the outcomes of the Do step. Are our results valid? Have we improved. This step will also have us study our results and analyse them to see effective improvement or not.
• Act – The close of the cycle, where we implement learning generated by the check step. We may adjust our goals or methods of implementation. Most importantly we document and bed the steps, inform others and make recommendations for any changes to be made.

Afterwards:

We start it all again, making improvement to our processes or services in small steps, hopefully always moving up the hill of progress rather than backwards. At each turn of the cycle, document and imbed the processes and start again.

Using this methodology will slowly and gently improve processes and services constantly.

If you would like more information, take a look at New Horizons' Process Management training.