Understanding and Applying Value-Added Assessment: Eliminating Business Process Waste

Rating:
Summary: Often overlooked part of process design & cost control
Review: This book is a highly readable, informative approach to an activity that is often missing from process design, process improvement initiatives and cost analyses. The premise is that processes consist of tasks or activities that either add value or don't add it. The goal is to discover and eliminate the non-value adding activities, which, of course, saves money, reduces cycle time and improves efficiency.

The trick is discovering non-value adding activities and making sure that you don't misclassify a necessary task or activity as non-value adding, which causes its own set of problems. This book steps you through the assessment process. It does so in a straightforward manner and provides a wealth of tools and techniques along the way. The first four chapters place value assessment into context with a chapter each devoted to business stakeholders, business processes, business process evolution and methods for improving processes. These chapters are rich in content and cover the basics well. The author makes good use of both page layout, illustrations and good writing to get you up to speed on the fundamentals of organization, process and value concepts that you need to know before proceeding with the analysis and assessment phases.

Chapters 5 through 7 provide procedures for performing the analysis phase, gives a well-defined framework for the analysis and step-by-step procedures for the value-added assessment process. Chapter 8 augments this with tools and techniques for quantifying the process time and cost elements. This chapter provides process flows, calculations and tips and advice. This chapter is also heavily illustrated and makes excellent use of tables, which removes any uncertainty or ambiguity. One of the best parts of this book is the non-value added dictionary that is provided in chapter 9. Every task or activity that is a possible non-value added step is listed in alphabetical order, ranging from "Adjusts" to "Waits for". There is a page devoted to each, which follows a specific format which is a nice template for adding your own activities and tasks. The format includes a definition of the step, symbol used to represent it, category, an example, rationale for identifying the step as non-value added, synonyms, related actions and notes. Not all steps provided in the book will be non-value add in all processes. For example, in software engineering an inspection is one of the most effective quality assurance methods with a proven record for catching defects early in the development life cycle. Because software development is usually a one-off process that produces a unique product inspections are warranted. Use your judgement here.

This book is unique and essential if you are developing processes, initiating process improvement or performing cost analysis. It's exceptionally well written and should be considered more a tool than a book.

Rating:
Summary: Often overlooked part of process design & cost control
Review: This book is a highly readable, informative approach to an activity that is often missing from process design, process improvement initiatives and cost analyses. The premise is that processes consist of tasks or activities that either add value or don't add it. The goal is to discover and eliminate the non-value adding activities, which, of course, saves money, reduces cycle time and improves efficiency.

The trick is discovering non-value adding activities and making sure that you don't misclassify a necessary task or activity as non-value adding, which causes its own set of problems. This book steps you through the assessment process. It does so in a straightforward manner and provides a wealth of tools and techniques along the way. The first four chapters place value assessment into context with a chapter each devoted to business stakeholders, business processes, business process evolution and methods for improving processes. These chapters are rich in content and cover the basics well. The author makes good use of both page layout, illustrations and good writing to get you up to speed on the fundamentals of organization, process and value concepts that you need to know before proceeding with the analysis and assessment phases.

Chapters 5 through 7 provide procedures for performing the analysis phase, gives a well-defined framework for the analysis and step-by-step procedures for the value-added assessment process. Chapter 8 augments this with tools and techniques for quantifying the process time and cost elements. This chapter provides process flows, calculations and tips and advice. This chapter is also heavily illustrated and makes excellent use of tables, which removes any uncertainty or ambiguity. One of the best parts of this book is the non-value added dictionary that is provided in chapter 9. Every task or activity that is a possible non-value added step is listed in alphabetical order, ranging from "Adjusts" to "Waits for". There is a page devoted to each, which follows a specific format which is a nice template for adding your own activities and tasks. The format includes a definition of the step, symbol used to represent it, category, an example, rationale for identifying the step as non-value added, synonyms, related actions and notes. Not all steps provided in the book will be non-value add in all processes. For example, in software engineering an inspection is one of the most effective quality assurance methods with a proven record for catching defects early in the development life cycle. Because software development is usually a one-off process that produces a unique product inspections are warranted. Use your judgement here.

This book is unique and essential if you are developing processes, initiating process improvement or performing cost analysis. It's exceptionally well written and should be considered more a tool than a book.