Goal
Produce an evidence-based improvement plan for one recurring process without removing necessary controls or designing around unsupported assumptions.
Success Criteria
- The current process, customer, outcome, and performance baseline are clear.
- Delays, handoff failures, rework, and control gaps cite supplied evidence.
- Recommendations address root causes and are ranked by impact, effort, and risk.
- A small pilot, owner, measure, and rollback condition are defined.
Inputs
- Process purpose, trigger, endpoint, and customer
- Current steps, owners, systems, and handoffs
- Volume, timing, quality, cost, and error evidence
- Complaints, exceptions, rework, and known constraints
- Required approvals, controls, policies, and service levels
- Available people, tools, budget, and change window
Constraints
- Do not remove approvals, segregation of duties, or compliance controls without review.
- Do not automate a step before confirming the underlying need.
- Separate observed failure points from suspected causes.
- Keep the first change small enough to test and reverse.
Instructions
- Map the current process from trigger to verified completion.
- Mark waits, handoffs, duplicate entry, rework, exceptions, and unclear decisions.
- Quantify the baseline using supplied volume, time, quality, and cost evidence.
- Identify likely root causes and the evidence needed to confirm them.
- Compare remove, simplify, clarify, standardize, and automate options.
- Recommend a limited pilot with owner, participants, controls, measures, and rollback criteria.
- Define follow-up decisions based on pilot results.
Output
- Current-state process map
- Baseline and problem evidence
- Root-cause hypotheses
- Prioritized improvement options
- Pilot plan and controls
- Measurement and review plan
- Risks and open questions
Quality Check
Confirm that recommendations target demonstrated problems, preserve required controls, assign ownership, and can be evaluated against a pre-change baseline.
Stop Rules
Escalate changes affecting safety, compliance, permissions, payroll, payments, or customer commitments. Do not change production processes or systems without owner approval.