Three Critical Actions for Improving Productivity in Technical Organizations

It’s February 2009, and you are in some way affected by perhaps the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Your company is probably “hunkering down,” “weathering the storm,” or <insert metaphor of choice here> until the financial crisis is over.

Given this situation, businesses can’t afford to waste money. Actually, businesses can never really afford to waste money. But they do. Lots of it. An inconceivable amount of money is wasted every day in businesses around the globe because managers allow unproductive activities to occur. Think of five ways your company wastes money in your opinion. I bet you can do this in less than two minutes.

Why do businesses allow such waste? Because managers don’t know how to measure and improve productivity from more than some narrow perspective they learned along the way. Many don’t know how to do this at all.

Cutting costs is often necessary during tough economic times, but cost-cutting usually has a significant detrimental effect – and cost cutting doesn’t address productivity issues due to inefficient processes, poor communication practices, mismanaged projects, and many other factors.

Before implementing cost-cutting measures that might have damaging long-term effects, managers must be engaged in productivity initiatives with measurable short-term and long-term outcomes.

You might be wondering, “What is a productivity initiative?” A productivity initiative has the goal of sustainable improvements that provide better results (profit, time to market, quality, etc.) at roughly the same fixed costs, or even lower fixed costs if possible. There will always be an initial non-recurring cost to implement sustainable improvements, but the long-term ROI should be significant enough to fund the initiative.

Sustainable improvements might involve eliminating non-value-adding activity; improving communication; enhancing project management methodology and tools; strengthening leadership; or improving relationships with customers and stakeholders.

Here are three ways to assess and improve productivity in your organization:
http://www.auxilium-inc.com/Technical-Productivity.htm

What are your thoughts and experiences regarding the best opportunities for productivity improvements?

Explore posts in the same categories: Clean Execution in Product Development, Product Development Leadership

Tags: productivity initiative, technical productivity, technical professionals, Wheelwright and Clark

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