June 2022: Do you build maintainability in design? Maintainability is the concept of making a product or service easy to maintain through enabling future maintenance activities by planning to accommodate such activities during the design stage. A product or service designed with future maintenance in mind would reduce the effort, time, and cost of resolving any future issues or necessary upgrades of this item, eliminating the need to rework or rebuild. For example, a software system can be said to be maintainable if you can modify features in future releases without disturbance of active operations. A construction project can be designed with maintainability if internal components can be accessed and maintained through previously prepared channels like removable blocks. Similarly, a long-term design vision within any scope will take future usability issues and potential maintenance needs in consideration.
May 2022: Are all your suppliers created equal? An organization typically deals with several suppliers providing different product and services necessary for their operations. Not all suppliers in your supply chain are of same importance or impact for your organization. Suppliers are usually categorized according to their criticality, depending on how unique they are and how many alternatives available for them, the value of the components they provide to your operations, the depth and length of the relationship between the supplier organization and your organization, in addition to other criteria. The purpose of this classification is to determine your strategy in managing the relationship with each supplier. Some suppliers will be strategic indispensable partners, and other will be commodity providers easily replaceable. The importance of the relationship will imply the organizational level of dealing, which can be at the executive level, or assigning a dedicated account manager.
April 2022: How to create an organizational structure? An organizational structure is a hierarchical depiction of the functional breakdown of a certain organization showing sub-functions and roles with reporting lines. The organizational structure can be created for any organizational scope, with any level of breakdown necessary for the purpose for which this organizational structure will be used and the target audience. For example, a multi-national company can create an organizational structure for the global group showing top executives in all national branches, in addition to several national organizational structures for local branches, and going on the same way for subsequent organizational units. Team organizational structure can also be created for temporary endeavors like individual projects. The structure and number of levels and branches in an organizational structure are arbitrary depending on each organization composition, but it should be suitable for use as a depiction and detailed to a manageable level.
March 2022: How to measure process performance? Performance is generally measured using KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are defined according to the performance aspects of the scope being measured. For processes, KPIs are defined to measure the aspects related to process components, including inputs, outputs, activities, stakeholders, etc. KPIs would not only measure the timing of completion of steps, but also quality and validity of the artifacts and produced outputs, and generally the objectives of executing the process. KPIs would also measure performance and capability of the actors playing roles in executing process steps with regards to required competences. Performance measures of the process are collected periodically, and are used as basis for continual improvement of the process performance as found necessary.
February 2022: Is a process important to exist? A process is needed for grouping and sequencing a series of steps leading to an expected output or achievement of an objective. Processes are viewed as means for discipline and governance. However, when overly complicated these same processes can be a reason for bureaucracy and become counter-productive. Even in agile environments, processes are still important; they are mainly elimination of ad-hoc actions, as processes are implicit agreements of how things are done here. To be efficient, process performance needs to be monitored, measured, and managed, so that there are no bottlenecks or redundancy. Also roles and responsibilities associated with every step in each process need to be clearly defined and assigned. Consequently, processes are subject to continual improvement of their structure and performance.
January 2022: How to balance technical skills versus soft skills? Although technical skills are the core required skills for any profession, they need to be accompanied by proper level of soft skills for a person to succeed and progress in their career. Lack of essential soft skills can be a substantial obstacle in someone's path to growth despite high level of technical skills. The weight of importance of soft skills can be different from profession to another, depending on the needs of each job. Most work environments, however, would necessitate a practical level of soft skills, like communication and interpersonal skills, team work, time management, conflict management, etc. Amount of effort and training required to acquire such skills will depend on the current level of each person, while some people can be talented with charismatic level of personal skills, others would need extensive effort to adopt such skills in their character.
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