I recently listened to the
IpX True North Podcast where
Ray Wozny CEO and
Ken Black VP of Education at the
Institute for Process Excellence talked about their CM(2) journey, which I really enjoyed. This article will highlight some of the insights they shared. One in particular is the Enterprise Change assessment or what I call Impact Analysis, which Ken indicates is crucial for the successful processing of a change. A step that is often skipped or done poorly.
An example of this I just saw after listening to the podcast in my hometown, was where they created new parking spots along the street. However, somebody forgot to include the lamppost in the impact analysis.
Fixing these mistakes always costs more than doing it right the first time even including the time spent on Impact Analysis. Further down the street, you see that another lamppost is situated on the sidewalk. Note this lamppost was added later and did not exist in 2022.
The Baseline
How do you ensure that impact analysis or Enterprise Change assessment can be done effectively. This is where the baseline comes in; the CM2 Baseline or CM Baseline. Ken explains how the baseline allows you to find all the related information to a dataset that has an issue. Having a knowledge graph of the baseline will make finding these relations and nodes even more easy as shown in the below example.
I have written multiple posts about the
CM Baseline, that explain this in great detail.
Embedding the Change
But the Baseline does not only cover the product (type and instance), but also the Enterprise, the Facilities, and IT. That is what CM2 is about, Enterprise Configuration Management. How else can you embed changes in your organization? When people leave, often so much knowledge drains from the organization, that gaps are created. Gaps that require fire fighting because the people that are left do not have anything to fall back on.
Pretty soon we have these huge gaps and so that’s where the culture comes into play…. Yes my product configuration is important, all my product data is important, but if I don’t have that business process side of the house linked easy to find proper ownership, the same processes that we use for our product, if that’s not in place, I can spin and make things better for the next year or two but without the process being updated, we’ll slide back into chaos.
Ray Wozny
Change needs to be embedded into the DNA of the organization. Ken explains this so well:
Static is the behaviors that you’ve institutionalized. Dynamic is the energy to change those behaviors. But once you change them then you have to turn the dynamic into a static again so you have to capture you have to institutionalize.
Ken Black
To ensure that a change to the way we work stays embedded, we need to ensure it is documented, linked, and properly owned by the Created and Designated User(s). Proper ownership seems to be a difficult topic in many organizations. Proper ownership means that people need to be accountable, feel pride in their work. But also that if a person leaves this ownership is taken over, not just by handing a list of datasets to a colleague, but by facilitating the transfer and having the new owner(s), accept that accountability.
These were some highlights from the conversation between Ken and Ray.
Listen to or watch the podcast to learn more
, it might give you some new insights or different perspectives. And feel free to share what you have learned!
