The Way We Work

1
The Way We Work

• A guide to the process model in The Department
  of Revenue

2
Objectives for today.

• Understanding of
• Your key business processes
• Know customer and stakeholder needs
• Tools to monitor the health of your key processes

3
Principles of Quality

• Ask the Customers

Make Decisions Based on Data
Involve Those who do the Work
4
Process Model

• A way to approach the way we work
• Begins with customer requirements
• Involves the people who do the process
• Uses simple tools to develop shared understanding
  of what happens in our work processes
• Uses data to make decisions

5
What is a Process?

• A series of steps, tasks or activities that
  converts input into output
• Adds value by changing the input or using it to
  produce something new

6
Components of a process
Materials
Equipment
Methods
Environment
People
7
Input

• Information or product that kicks off the process
  or causes it to be initiated
• Provided by a supplier
• Suppliers can come from outside or inside your
  organization
• EX A request for a harvest permit - is the
  input for a process in Forest Tax
• EX A work order is sent from a user division -
  is the input for a process in Information Services

8
Output Result

• Product or service that results from the process
• Received by the customer

9
Putting it together...
PROCESS Methods Equipment Materials Environment
People Partners
Input
Output
Supplier
Customer
10
Example of a Process

• Input Request for a refund of a credit
• Supplier taxpayer
• Process TAA staff review request and taxpayer
  account to determine eligible refund amount
• Outputs Refund request is authorized and mailed
• Customer receives check

11
What are your KEY processes?
12
Who is the Customer?

• People who receive the direct output from the
  processthe next in line
• Can be internal or external
• Internal customers can use your output as an
  input to their work process(es)

13
Customer? or Stakeholder?

• Stakeholders are the people or groups who care
  about this process or the output. They may have
  considerable influence over the process, but are
  not the direct recipients of the output.
• ex Sponsors, Managers, Legislators, citizens
  of Washington

14
Who are your KEY customers and stakeholders for
each process?

• Process
• Customers
• Stakeholders
• Process
• Customers
• Stakeholders
• Process
• Customers
• Stakeholders

15
Customer Requirements

• What customers need, want or expect from your
  process
• ex cycle time, quantity, fitness for use, ease
  of use, value
• Should be obtained directly from the customers
• Importance vs. satisfaction use to identify
  opportunities
• Feasibility vs. support use to select options
  for improvement

16
What do you think your key customers care about?

• List some possible attributes
• (e.g. timeliness, accuracy)

17
What do you think your key stakeholders care
about?

• List some possible attributes
• (e.g. timeliness, accuracy)

18
Obtaining Customer Input

• Identify quality attributes
• Solicit input
• Analyze and interpret results
• Look for the gaps between customer requirements
  and what we think they want

19
Tools to gather customer input

• Focus Groups
• Surveys
• Phone Calls
• Visit their work site
• Invite real customers in to our work site
• Other

20
How do you plan on validating customer
requirements?
21
Flow Chart

• Shows the process in pictures
• Documents the process
• Helps train or orient new employees
• Helps people see opportunities for streamlining
  and other improvements

22
Flow chart your process

• Use these symbols to create a flow chart of your
  process(es)
• Create a symbol for each step in the process
• Test your flow chart on a co-worker

Start/stop
Step
Hold/Wait
Decision
Flow arrow
Several steps
23
Flow Chart Tip Sheet

• Create a high level flow chart first - no more
  than 15 symbols
• Look for diamonds - decisions. The more decision
  point you have in your chart, the more complexity
  there is in it.
• Look for circles - hold times. These are easy
  targets for process improvement.

24
Create a flow chart here
25
Incorporate Requirements

• After you have been through the validation of
  customer requirements, ensure you have those
  elements in the process and output(s)
• Use your staff to help you modify the process so
  that you are meeting the customer needs and
  requirements

26
Building Measurements

• Based on the information collected and validated
  from your direct customers, create a series of
  meaningful performance measures to monitor the
  key requirements from your customers

27
Measurement

• For example, if your customer cares about
  timeliness create a measure or two that will
  tell you how fast your process is
• If they care about accuracy, create measures
  around percentages of errors found, etc.

28
Measurement - continued

• Consider how you will display and share this
  information will all staff and managers
• Measures should be created to tell you whether
  the process is getting better, worse, or whether
  it is staying the same
• Measures can be best expressed by indicating WHAT
  is to be measured and couple that with the UNIT
  of MEASUREMENT
• For example, documents per week, errors per form,
  calls per person

29
Tip

• Its important to weigh the cost of gathering the
  data for a measure with the time and money you
  have available
• It may take you several tries to find some
  meaningful measures
• You should have at least one measure for each key
  requirement of your customers

30
What are potential performance measures for this
process?
31
Expect Results

• Hold managers and staff accountable for results
  -- ONLY if you paved the way for success
• Expect regular communication
• Provide a time line
• Celebrate and recognize
• results no matter what size!

32
Results Washington Dept of Revenue

• Since July 1997
• Saved 955,562 in agency funds
• Saved over 137,008 staff hours (65.6 FTEs)
• Generated over
• 33.1 million in revenue
• Saved over
• 4.2 million for others