Area Activity Analysis [CD-ROM]

Harrington (Author), H. J. Harrington (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harrington's Performance Improvement Series | Publication Date: November 1, 1998

Concentrating on Harrington's "people-building" approach, AreaActivity analysis helps managers clarify what is expected of theirgroups, define key measures, set performance standards, and"laser-focus' each employee's efforts on the organization's mission.The third book in The H. James Harrington Performance ImprovementSeries provides a methodology designed to put all employees on thesame page and eliminate wasted effort and misunderstandings. Byimplementing their well-researched recommendations, readers will beable to bring better alignment between their company's mission, activities, and customer expectations.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Align your workforce--to get maximum value from each employee! Are your organization's management and employees in complete harmony, not only about how each activity's quality and productivity are measured, but also about what is considered acceptable performance? Area Activity Analysis provides a methodology to align your organization's mission, activities, and measurements systems so that each work team understands the critical nature of their output, along with each individual customer's (and management's) expectations. This comprehensive book/CD communications package shows you how to develop signed, documented partnership agreements with your Natural Work Teams' customers, suppliers, and upper management that: define each area's purpose and activities; develop quality and productivity measurements for each activity; develop a performance standard for each measurement; gain commitment to the performance standard by employees and management; identify where improvement opportunities exist; gain supplier commitment. Uncover and correct your organizational chain's weakest links! Area Activity Analysis is the essential approach for ensuring that each employee understands his or her area's overall mission, and which strategies will best measure and improve the employee's performance in every activity!

About the Author

H. James Harrington, the visionary International Quality Advisor for Ernst & Young, added Business Process Improvement to todayÕs business lexicon. He is considered one of the worldÕs Performance Improvement gurus. Glen D. Hoffherr provides consulting and training support to government and service organizations in Information Technology, quality improvement, and more. Robert P. Reid introduced advanced organizational effectiveness thinking and concepts that have had a major impact upon organizations around the world. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• CD-ROM: 368 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071347038
• ISBN-13: 978-0071347037
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,856,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding approach to ogranizing for service delivery, August 15, 2001

By 

Linda Zarate "IT Ops Consultant" (Azusa, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Area Activity Analysis (CD-ROM)

This book's theme is developing a workforce that is aligned to overall organizational mission and goals, is accountable for performing to established metrics and focused on meeting customer expectations. The workforce is broken into "natural work teams" are service-oriented as opposed to function- or task-oriented. Without a methodical approach, such as the one set forth in this book, developing such a workforce is a near-impossible task. However, the authors lay out a clear path to achieving just such a workforce.

The expected outcome of area activity analysis is cultural change (starting with renaming teams to reflect their real roles as service providers), focusing the mission on service, defining clear activity descriptions for which the teams are responsible, determining how to measure team effectiveness, establishing service-related performance standards and restructuring reward systems.

Using a seven phase approach, the book leads you through the entire process of transforming to "natural work teams". The first three phases are foundational, and consist of (I) preparations for the activity analysis, (II) developing service-oriented mission statements for the functional areas (not easily done), (III) defining the activities for each area.

Phase IV is the pivot point during which you develop customer relationships. Customers can be internal customers of the activity or external customers. In this respect there is a set of classifications that need to be performed for the activities themselves, which are: Real-Value-Added (RVA), which provide value as seen through the eyes of the activity's customer; Business-Value-Added (BVA), which may be necessary to support internal business functions, but provide no direct benefit to the activity's customer, and No-Value-Added (NVA), which are not essential to business functions, nor do they add any perceivable value to customers. This information is used in Phase V to determine the efficiency of the activity. It is also worth noting at this point that the what authors call "activities" are processes and process chains, so you may have to either adopt his vocabulary or mentally translate as you read. This is not a criticism of the book, however, because the approach is valuable and will enable you to classify activities in accordance with their value characteristics and determine if they are optimum for their intended use. Phase VI entails developing supplier partnerships. This is applicable to both external supply chain partners as well as internal activities. An example of an internal supplier partnership, taken from my profession, is services provided by IT to end users (usually codified in service level agreements and comprised of service level objectives). The final phase, VII, addresses continuous improvement. An added bonus is the CD ROM that comes with the book contains an application called WorkDraw, which is a process modeling tool with many of the same features as Micrografx iGrafx Process.

As an IT professional who works extensively on projects for service level management and IT-Business alignment I found this book to be a gem. In fact, the service-orientation of the "natural work teams" has changed my thinking about how to structure an ideal IT organization, and has also greatly influenced my thinking about how to manage service delivery. The book earns 5 solid stars and my highest recommendation.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very complete, April 16, 2002

By 

Michael Underhill (Beijing China) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Area Activity Analysis (CD-ROM)

Used successfully to re-work many of the operations of a small company.

AAA provides not only an analytical framework for organisational change, but - more importantly - an extensive and concrete manual for implementation.

When you've done enough reading on the subject and have to actually DO something, get this book.

4.0 out of 5 stars A great methodology for increasing productivity & profits., October 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Area Activity Analysis: Aligning Work Activities and Measurements to Enhance Business Performance (The H. James Harrington Performance Improvement Series) (Hardcover)

Area Activity Analysis provided me with an excellent step-by-step methodology for increasing productivity & profits.

Of special note was the free Knowledge Management & Process Improvement Software included with the book.