CHAPTER 7: MANAGEMENT CHANGE Flashcards
What is a BPR?
Business process reengineering as ‘the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.
Define principles of BPR.
- There must be a complete re-think of business processes in a cross- functional manner.
- The objective should be to achieve dramatic improvements in performance through a radical re-design of the process.
- Where possible, the number of links in the chain of activities should be reduced.
Define WBS.
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a tool or technique for breaking the total work on a project into
smaller and smaller parts, such as:
◼ the main stages of a project stages
◼ the lower-level tasks within each stage, and
◼ work packages, which are items of work within each lower-level task.
Example; PRINCE 2 (Projects in Controlled Environments)
Name 2 planning tools.
Network analysis (also called critical path analysis - CPA)
GANTT charts
Define critical path.
The critical path consists of the sequence of activities that must begin at the earliest possible time (and so must be completed at the earliest possible time) so that the project as a whole will be completed in the minimum possible time.
Define Float.
The amount of time by which an activity can be delayed without delaying the whole project.
What are GANTT charts?
A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart. Each activity is shown as a bar, and the length of the bar represents the duration of an activity. They are usually drawn with each activity starting at its earliest starting time and ending at its earliest finishing time. Float time is shown as a dotted line.
Advantages of GANTT chart.
Easy to construct
Easy to interpret
Give useful overview of the whole project,
both completion times and employee numbers
Limitations of GANTT chart.
Do not show interrelationship between tasks
Cannot calculate CPA
Limited in use for project planning and control
feature of Project management software
- Create a list of tasks for the project and their expected duration
- Construct a CPA chart or a Gantt chart
- Assign resources to each task
- Prepare a budget for the project
- Track the progress of tasks (and update the CPA chart from time to time)
- Record and monitor actual costs
- Manage the documents for the project
- Prepare progress reports
main functions of project software
To produce and edit CPA charts or Gantt charts easily. The project manager simply has to enter the
activities, their interdependencies and their expected duration. The software will then construct the CPA
chart or Gantt chart automatically. Charts can also be amended when project activities are changed. They
can also be updated to the current position at any time during the project
To provide an accounting function for the project, by helping the project manager to prepare a budget,
record actual expenditure and monitor actual costs against the budget.
To plan and monitor the use of resources on the project, particularly the number of staff working on the
project. The project manager can enter the staff requirements for each activity, and the software will
produce a detailed estimate of staff numbers required each day or week of the project. Where the
resources required exceeds the resources available, the project manager can then use the software to
look for ways of reducing staff requirements at peak times without affecting the overall project
completion time, by
delaying the start of non-critical activities, or
reducing the number of staff assigned to non-critical activities, and allowing these activities to take
a longer time to complete.
elements of BPR
- Fundamental. The redesign of a process should be fundamental, and old assumptions about the way things are done must be questioned.
- Radical. The redesign of the process results in a completely different way of doing things.
- Dramatic. The improvements resulting from process change are not small. They are dramatic, in terms of lower cost, better quality, better service or improved speed.
principles of BPR
Key principles of BPR are as follows:
There must be a total re-think of business processes. Work must not be looked at from a departmental or functional perspective. It must be looked at in a cross- functional manner.
Work should be organised around the natural flow of information, or materials or customers.
Work should be organised around what the process produces, not around the tasks that go into it.
The objective of a BPR programme is to achieve substantial improvements in performance by redesigning the process.
hammer main principles of BPR
There must be a completely different way of thinking about a process. A process should be seen as
something that is done to achieve a desired objective. The focus should be on the end result, not the
functions and activities involved in the existing process. The work should therefore be organised around
the outcome from the process, not the tasks that go into performing it.
The aim is to achieve dramatic improvements in the process through major re- design.
Whenever possible, the ‘customer’ for an operation or process should be required to carry out the
process himself. A ‘customer’ should therefore be his own supplier.
The decision points for controlling the process should be located where the work is done. The people who do the work should also be the people who manage it.
changes introduced by BPR
The new process will often involve delegating more responsibility to employees who deal directly with suppliers and customers. In some cases, it might involve outsourcing – paying an external supplier to
carry out some activities instead of performing the activities with the entity’s own staff.
Information should be captured once, at source, and made available to everyone who needs it through
an efficient IT system.
The need for checks and controls is often reduced by improving the quality of the process. Checking and
controlling are activities that add no value.
Employees might be required to perform several different tasks, not just one specialised task.
