ITIL

Prince2 the default for project management Most of the projects in Europe are managed by Prince2 certified project managers. Part of the Prince2 training is the Prince2 healt check, which can be found in Appendix D of OGC's Prince2 manual (Managing Sucessful Projects). Use the project management health check I used this wonderful health check for years years to check the current state of my projects. Later as a programme manager I have used it to check my project managers and help them perform better. Every time I switched jobs I was surprised that I was the only one who had an automated Prince2 checklist (in excel). Now I created a website with the automated health check so everyone can...

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} A lot of time, money and energy go in building a perfect website. Once you build a website, it is time to earn quick bucks through online ads. If you are unable to reach your target...

Running a performance-based customer service will enable you to generate more leads, understand the requirements of your prospects and finally generate more sales. Customer service is not something which will generate you a sales directly, but customer service is something that is really important for any business. Actually, good customer service can generate you a sales as good as a well-trained sales agent does. The question is: how to make a customer serviced that will generate sales? The answers must focus on measure and control. One must measure and control the performance of call center trying to identify potential problems and good solutions, it's important to find and share both - good and...

Tansee iPhone Transfer SMS can provide you: - Backup SMS in iPhone to computer before iPhone reject receiving new SMS. - View and Manage old iPhone SMS in your computer. - View SMS in Text file format (.txt file) or ANTS file format (.ants file) on PC. - Password protection support (ANTS file only). Download Click Here All iPhone users can't backup the SMS to anywhere until the SMS box is full, then you have to delete all of them to prevent iPhone rejecting new SMS receiving. With Tansee iPhone Transfer, you can transfer the iPhone SMS to computer as a txt file or a ANTS file before the event above happens. Before the transfer, you can choose to transfer from all contacts or a single contact...

You might well ask, "What is a certified media placement specialist?" First of all, this is not about getting a certificate to add to your resume to get a job. Why would you want to learn how to work for someone else when you can so easily learn to work for yourself? In gaining certification as a media placement specialist you receive personalized one on one training which teaches you how to easily specialize in the skill of media placement to establish and grow your business. This is bigger than just traditional marketing, though it is similar in a lot of ways. The principal of Global Network, Mary Gersten, once said "When someone masters the art and science of placing media, they start to control...

One sees a great many differences between Japanese and Americans in not only the approach to leading and managing in the work environment directly but in the approach to business as a process. These differences are underscored in the approach to cell manufacturing. In the Japanese model, the workers are involved in the cell operation and in producing the highest-quality product possible. They are expected to get it right the first time, but they are not expected to address (and culturally would not think to address) the way business decisions are made concerning the company vision or how the company is organized and run. They would not make any suggestions regarding human resources operations...

Senior managers contemplating using the Lean tool SMED / Quick Changeover often ask "What's the payoff? After all, the operating guys will be doing almost the same amount of work." To say that is skepticism over the benefits of SMED / Quick Changeover is akin to saying an iceberg is just an oversized ice cube. The act of learning, applying, and retaining the SMED / Quick Changeover methodology causes a change in the way a changeover is viewed. This change is an essential building block of making Lean Management part of the culture of the enterprise. In effect, Lean becomes part of the company DNA. By having a cross-functional team methodically review a changeover and separate work elements into...

Six Sigma was an original business management strategy developed in 1981. Today, it is widely used around the world and in various industrial sectors. It works by improving the quality of process output through the identification of errors and minimizing variability in business processes. Basically, it uses a set of quality management techniques including statistical analysis. Each project follows a sequence of steps and has defined, quantified targets (i.e. increase profit) and/or focuses on critical customer service areas (i.e. delivery of products). It is associated with manufacturing processes whereby defects are kept to a minimal using a high standard of measurement. DMAIC stands for Define...

A lot of companies that have a help desk software stated that it brings a lot of benefits to their business. Aside from the fact that it is really excellent when it comes to managing ticket troubles, it is also very flexible in different programs that are web-based that is why it also makes it very effective to organize different files. Because of these two very important benefits, many companies are already starting to realize that they really need a help desk tracking software for their business. This is because they are starting to realize now that excellently handling the issues of their customers is one of the ways by which they can build a group of loyal consumers. Truly, a help desk program...

Google Redirect Virus is a very common virus that can be quite difficult to remove if you don't know how. It's basically a virus that infects your computer and then redirects your search results to random advertising websites in the hope that you'll purchase one of the many unrelated products that these sites show you. This virus can come from a wide variety of sources and here's how to remove it for good... This virus is actually very difficult to remove using "conventional" antivirus and other removal techniques, because it works in a different way to most infections. Antivirus programs work by looking for any applications or files that are running without your computer's knowledge and then remove...

Partner portal is a web-based program that helps manufacturer's established partner to achieve direct access to marketing resources, pricing and sales information along with technical info which is not available to other end-users. A partner portal manager system pays for themselves and even keep on providing measurable gains in incremental sales, increased profit and reduced management cost and strengthen partner loyalty and mind share. Features of Partner Portals Capture leads Built on Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform, your administrators online can access you portal anytime from any computer 24/7. Content Management System The portal and content management system allows you to...

Adding the element of time will help clarify your understanding of the causes of variation in your processes. A run chart is a line graph of data points organized in time sequence and centered on the median data value. The patterns in the run chart can help you find where to look for assignable causes of variation. What can it do for you? Histograms or frequency plots can show you the general distribution or variation among a collection of data points representing a process, but one histogram or one frequency plot can not show you trends or help pinpoint unusual events. Sometimes, a normal-looking distribution will hide trends or other unusual data. To spot those trends, the data must be considered...

What Is a Multi-Generation Project Plan? - A vehicle to help focus the design team's energies on a manageable project that can be completed relatively quickly. - Since the future has been considered, the team will not make decisions that are incompatible with future generations. - As the team's work progresses, new ideas can be added to future generations of the process instead of increasing the development time for the first generation process. - MGPP helps manage "scope creep." - The organization can be working on new technologies that are needed for future generations while the first generation process is being implemented and benefits realized. The MGPP is usually not fully developed in the Lean...

The affinity diagram is a management and planning tool. Use of this tool is based on the understanding that time invested in planning will produce remarkable dividends as the generated ideas and plans are acted upon and implemented. Unlike the basic tools for improvement that deal primarily with collecting and analyzing hard data, this tool focuses on issues and ideas, soft data. An affinity diagram is the result of a creative process focused on finding the major themes affecting a problem by generating a number of ideas, issues or opinions. The process identifies these ideas, groups naturally related items and identifies the one concept that ties each grouping together. The team working on a...

Box-and-whisker diagrams, or Box Plots, use the concept of breaking a data set into fourths, or quartiles, to create a display. The box part of the diagram is based on the middle (the second and third quartiles) of the data set. The whiskers are lines that extend from either side of the box. The maximum length of the whiskers is calculated based on the length of the box. The actual length of each whisker is determined after considering the data points in the first and the fourth quartiles. Although box-and-whisker diagrams present less information than histograms or dot plots, they do say a lot about distribution, location and spread of the represented data. They are particularly valuable because...

The first phase is Define. During the Define phase, a team and its sponsors reach agreement on what the project is and what it should accomplish. Presuming that a draft of the Project Charter is already in place, the main work in the Define phase is for the project team to complete an analysis of what the project should accomplish and confirm understanding with the sponsor(s). They should agree on the problem, which customers are affected, and how the current process or outcomes fail to meet their customers' needs through "Voice of the Customer or Critical-To-Quality (CTQ)." The outcome of the Define phase is: - A clear statement of the intended improvement (Project Charter) - A high-level map of...

A Quality Control (QC) Process Chart is a tool that helps you document Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) activities for the process. The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle is a well-known model for CPI. It teaches organizations to plan an action, do it, check to see how it conforms to the plan and act on what has been learned. The PDCA cycle is made up of four steps for improvement or change: Plan: Recognize an opportunity, and plan the change. Do: Test the change. Check: Review the test, analyze the results and identify key learning points. Act: Take action based on what you learned in the check step. If the change was successful, incorporate the learning from the test into wider changes. If not, go through the...

TPC Analysis seeks to identify, label and understand sources of resistance as either Technical (sunk costs, lack of skills, and lack of critical resources), Political (issues of power and authority), or Cultural (norms, mindsets, and habits). Building off the Key Constituents Map Template and Attitude Charting Template, This tool helps the team to more clearly understand the nature of the resistance they will likely face and begin to developed a strategy to eliminate or lessen it. We often assume that once we have discovered a given population relative to the attitude toward change they currently exhibit, we are ready to develop an effective strategy for winning their support. However, too often our...

Run Charts Run charts (often known as line graphs outside the quality management field) display process performance over time. Upward and downward trends, cycles, and large aberrations may be spotted and investigated further. In a run chart, events, shown on the y axis, are graphed against a time period on the x axis. For example, a run chart in a hospital might plot the number of patient transfer delays against the time of day or day of the week. Control Charts Every process varies. If you write your name ten times, your signatures will all be similar, but no two signatures will be exactly alike. There is an inherent variation, but it varies between predictable limits. If, as you are signing your...

The Data Measurement Plan: - Data Collection Plans are used in the Measure Phase of Lean Six Sigma projects. For each performance measure (Y), update a data collection plan to: - Include MSA (Measurement System Analysis) measure plan (Gantt chart, MS-Project plan is Optional) - Add Financial measure plan if separate from performance Y - Add any Time Study or other data collection plans for Value Stream Map - Sample Size Calculation - Input, Process and Output Metrics (confirm that the right process metrics have been chosen and logical trade-offs have been made in determining what to measure.) - Is this project driven by Customer specifications? If so, how do you know that the specifications satisfy...

Cause-and-Effect Diagrams (Fishbone Diagrams) It is difficult if not impossible to solve complicated problems without considering many factors and the cause-and-effect relationships between those factors. Defining and displaying those relationships helps. The first such cause-and-effect diagram was used by Kaoru Ishikawa in 1943 to explain to a group of engineers at the Kawasaki Steel Works how various work factors could be sorted and related. In recognition of this, these diagrams sometimes are called Ishikawa diagrams. They are also called fishbone diagrams, because they look something like fish skeletons. What can it do for you? Quality problems are typically not simple. They often involve the...

Pareto (pa-RAY-toe) analysis is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1897, he presented a formula that showed that income was distributed unevenly, with about 80% of the wealth in the hands of about 20% of the people. In a similar way, a disproportionately large percentage of errors or defects in any process are usually caused by relatively few problems. Pareto analysis helps identify those significant few problems so people can target them for action. It is particularly helpful in the measure and control phases of Six Sigma methodology. What can it do for you? There are so many aspects of work that can be improved, knowing where...

Adobe Photoshop is one of the world's leading graphics editing programs, developed by Adobe Systems. Available on Mac OS or PC, Photoshop is used as one of the leading image design programs for the World Wide Web. The most recent version of Photoshop, or Photoshop CS2, "bridges" between other Adobe products such as Image Ready, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, and Encore DVD to produce professional videos and DVDs. Photoshop uses a file format called a .PSD or .PDD to store multiple layers of an image. Recently Adobe released a program called Photoshop Elements in order to give a less expensive version of Photoshop with many of the same features. Although Adobe Photoshop is used primarily in...

Responsibility Grid - A useful tool to help the project team sort out "who will do what" in terms of decision making. Based on the theory that not all constituents have the same vested interest in the decisions the team will make, it can help the team identify the areas where they need to be "politically" sensitive to the needs and desires of various groups and individuals as they relate to activities (execution), decisions and milestones of the project. Uses: Project teams who have used this tool have found it very useful in sorting out who will do what with respect to overall action plan for the project, rather than in the more traditional way of identifying who needs to be "in the loop" with...

What Is a Confidence Interval? - We know that when we take the average of a sample, it is probably not exactly the same as the average of the population. - Confidence intervals help us determine the likely range of the population parameter. * For example, if my 95% confidence interval is 5 +/- 2, then I have 95% confidence that the mean of the population is between 3 and 7. Why Do We Need Confidence Intervals? - Sample statistics, such as Mean and Standard Deviation, are only estimates of the population's parameters. - Because there is variability in these estimates from sample to sample, we can quantify our uncertainty using statistically-based confidence intervals. - Confidence intervals provide a...

It is difficult if not impossible to solve complicated problems without considering many factors and the cause-and-effect relationships between those factors. Defining and displaying those relationships helps. The first such cause-and-effect diagram was used by Kaoru Ishikawa in 1943 to explain to a group of engineers at the Kawasaki Steel Works how various work factors could be sorted and related. In recognition of this, these diagrams sometimes are called Ishikawa diagrams. They are also called fishbone diagrams, because they look something like fish skeletons. What can it do for you? Quality problems are typically not simple. They often involve the complex interaction of several causes. A cause...

Mistake proofing is a technique for eliminating errors. It is based upon the premise that it is good to do something right the first time; it is even better to make it impossible to do it wrong the first time. The idea is to make it impossible to make a mistake. You may also hear the term, Poka-Yoke or Error Proofing applied to mistake proofing. The objectives of this article are to provide participants with the information so they can: - Understand the difference between errors and defects; - Understand how defects originate - Recognize the elements of source inspection and its role in defect elimination; - Identify key mistake proofing devices; - Show mistake proofing as a proactive tool, and...

An important aspect of total quality is the identification and control of all the sources of variation so that processes produce essentially the same result again and again. A histogram is a tool that allows you to understand at a glance the variation that exists in a process. Although the histogram is essentially a bar chart, it creates a "lumpy distribution curve" that can be used to help identify and eliminate the causes of process variation. Histograms are especially useful in the measure, analyze and control phases of the Lean Six Sigma methodology. What can it do for you? A histogram will show you the central value of a characteristic produced by your process, and the shape and size of the...

When deploying and online e-procurement application, it is critical to analyze each department's procurement process flow to determine a baseline set of business rules. Each area within the enterprise has evolved their own standards that best suits their needs, unfortunately, these standards were based on business practices established in the early 90's. Today, many companies want to increase throughput and streamline the approval process but can't because their manual processes fall down due to the inability to handle the volume of orders. Consequently fixes like blanket purchase orders were put in place which can streamline the ordering process but diminish controls and oversight. When...

HP0-J22 Exam Designing HP StorageWorks Solutions Exam Number/Code : HP0-J22 Exam Name : Designing HP StorageWorks Solutions Questions and Answers : 79 Q&As Update Time: 2010-09-21   Testinside provides you the guidance of the senior and certification experts and provide you HP0-J22 exam questions as well. Testinside also provides you everything that you need to clear your certification. Testinside HP0-J22 questions and answers make you feel just like you are sitting in the prometric testing center and enjoying your real HP0-J22 exam attempts. It is Testinside HP0-J22 exam materials that gives you confidence to pass this certification exam in first attempt and with maximized score. Testinside...

Risk management is a vital component of business management training and good management practice. Effective risk management is one of the most valued qualities of good leadership. Effective small business owners and managers understand that risk management should be an intrinsic part of their business culture. Rather than viewing it as some kind of extra business activity or as a separate program, risk management must be integrated into a whole of business approach. Risk management becomes everybody's responsibility. To manage risk effectively in the small business environment, effective and successful business owners have a clearly spelled out risk management model. This model enables all...

In this technologically blessed era, you can find such devices and gadgets that have made living easier for people. Some of these techniques are not used on industrial scale to complete different tasks in an easy way. Laser machining is one such technology that has changed the way different tasks were done in industries. What laser machining is all about? When you talk about the definition of laser machining, you can actually find people introducing it in different ways. However, you can take such machining as a combination of techniques that are used for laser cutting, laser drilling, laser wielding, laser heat-treating, laser scribing, and laser scoring. It is due to the use of laser in these...

Sometimes we simply do not have the luxury of several days preparation ahead of a job interview. When faced with a last minute interview try these ten essential advice tips. 1. Be enthusiastic; whether your interview is formal or informal, be enthusiastic and take a positive outlook throughout the entire process (even if you feel it has not gone well in parts). 2. Show loyalty; loyalty is highly valued in any company and when it comes to discussing previous employers draw on positives and never speak negatively of them. 3. Be natural; don't worry about pausing before you answer a question, it shows you can think and are not delivering rehearsed answers. 4. Be honest; try not to embellish or waffle...

The cost of poor quality (COPQ) is the total cost impact of defects produced by the process. There have been many discussions, some heated, about what categories of costs should be considered in this important process metric. Many organizations make the mistake of only counting the COPQ that they can see. The problem is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. One way to see these costs is to look at what expense types in the process' operating budget will decrease if the process operates defect free. With this point of view, the cost of poor quality becomes the difference between the as-is cost of producing a product or service, minus the cost of production with no defects. The COPQ of a process...

There are several benefits to implementing a cost reduction program. However, most companies realize increased profits by selling lower cost products and receiving higher margins. Because you can offer lower prices to the end user, you will gain a larger percentage of market share and organizational stability. The reduction mechanism reduces layoffs and increases morale by developing a stronger organizational focus. Customers notice an improvement in quality and service as you improve business processes through utilizing a systematic approach to thinking. Cost reduction increases your bottom line, resulting in additional revenue. Optimize Resources for Cost Reduction Combined with business process...

There is an urgent need for every company in this global economy to improve its processes continuously. The ongoing strive to be better than everybody else and become better than oneself the day before, is at the core of survival. And the key to the success of the program lies in sustaining the gains from every step! Step 1. Get Everyone Engaged To sustain the results for your continuous improvement process, you must first engage all employees involved in the business. This should also include those contractors and suppliers you do business with for an extended period of time. Here's why: * By including the biggest number of people with insight in your business processes, you open the widest idea...

A quality improvement team is an excellent solution to problems that arise in your business because when you have a team of individuals focused on quality, they are bound to be more effective than one person. A team is a good idea because everyone in a team will take ownership and responsibility for providing excellent work. You can get total involvement with a team. It is important to build motivation within an organization when you need to focus on quality improvement. If one person has been having difficulty getting acceptable quality on a piece of software, for example, they might need some assistance with a team. When you put a team of people together to assist with quality and stress the...

"> Fact gathering is an integral part of understanding reality and preparing a good process map. Yet, it is often dismissed or given cursory attention as superficial process maps are created by an individual or group of people some distance away from the work...and thereby some distance away from reality. If you want your process maps to reflect reality, you must go to the work and see it happen. Who do we interview? Interview experienced employees. If you want to find out how a job is done, ask someone who knows how to do it. Pretty simple advice, right? Yet it is amazing how often process maps, procedures, even custom software applications are developed some distance from reality - away from the...

5S requires a top-down commitment from senior management to the operator level. Without this any 5S program is doomed from the outset. Also there needs to be an infrastructure such as QCDSM in place for sustainability and continuous improvement (time and resources, ideas scheme etc.) to ensure the programs meets your goals and expectations. 5S must be properly understood by everyone in the organization. It is not simply a clean up exercise and if it is portrayed that way then the program will only achieve the second "S" and will be considered a failure. It simply works only when management understands that 5S is fundamental to good performance rather than secondary to it. 5S only succeeds in...

A flowchart is a sequence of graphical symbols and shapes that create a visual map to document a procedure or set of steps to accomplish a goal based on specific business rules. Learning how to draw flowcharts can become a valuable skill when doing business analysis and re-engineering. A flowchart can enable the person who understands the process to effectively communicate rules and guidelines using symbols, directional arrows and flow diagrams. Flowcharts have been used for over 50 years to transfer knowledge allow others to understand complex processes logic paths. Analyzing a flowchart enables the reader to logically follow the sequence of steps, specific rules and paths they should take when...

How well an organization's business processes work is a major factor in determining how well it produces results. Experience tells us that the effectiveness of these processes will directly influence an organization's results. That's why I am a major supporter of continuous improvement of business processes. We also know that motivated, committed and skilled people are even more valuable because they can often make things work despite less than perfect systems. I have come to understand more than ever that the answer to higher productivity lies in a larger investment in creating committed people. This idea is not new, but it is difficult to put it in place when in the environment of 24/7...

Start taking action (doing) rather than just trying. Trying arises under two conditions. First, the individual is not confident that his/her skills will allow a particular action to be accomplished. Second, it is an indication that either a system is not in place or the one there is not effective. For the former, a lack of training could be the culprit or it may be that you simply have the wrong person in a particular role. For the latter, all systems should clearly dictate necessary actions. There is no need and no time for trying. Implementing the clearly outlined actions of a system eliminates the need to try. "But what about innovation or thinking outside of the box?" you might be shouting to me...

The word 'Collaborate' gets used frequently in today's workplace but what does it really mean and how can your organization benefit from it. By definition, collaboration simply means working together to achieve a common objective or goal. All facets of life, including work, involve some element of collaboration as soon as more than one person engages in any part of an activity. Simply talking with someone about a problem, challenge, idea, etc... is a very rudimentary example of collaboration. Taking this a step further in the business world, collaboration usually extends to the routing of information (usually in document or email form), so all parties are 'kept in the loop'. However, today's...

Management Challenge Organizations are judged on their financial performance and therefore, by default so are their management teams. The key for managers is understanding how financial success is measured, impacts on operational performance and options available to make positive sustainable change. Typically managers tend to think in two dimensions when trying to address the problem. What do I need to change in my operations to achieve the desired financial results? Timescales may be tight and sometimes the short term needs may outweigh the long term aspirations. Sometimes short term measures can damage the long term capabilities of an organization. This can become a vicious circle where the law...

There's an old saying that 90% of what you do in life is just showing up. While some people consider this to be true, almost everyone will agree that showing up on time is 100% of life. However, some people still think that it's okay to be consistently late to various appointments. Your friends will most likely consider it quite rude if you're supposed to do something with them and they have to wait on you to show up. Do it often enough, and they may start to think that you don't value their friendship as much as you say. Being frequently late to your job is an obvious behavior to avoid, yet some people continue to do it. Most companies have no problem firing an employee who's consistently late...

Lord Buddha said "Life is suffering".Today each and Everybody in this world is has the same comment "My life is full of problems?",be it a MD of a company or a employee or a homemaker or anyone. All I ask is " IS ANY MOVIE COMPLETE WITHOUT A BAD GUY?",the answer is "NO". Imagine a movie where the characters lead a simple trouble free life, wake up in the morning, go for their jobs, come back home, play with kids, makes love to his wife and goes to sleep.Will you enjoy the movie?,same is with life, if everything is smooth youu don't deserve to be a Human. The basic difference between Human and animals is that , You can question "Your suffering" but the animal just thinks that its a way of life. Well...

In the current economic climate, there is not a single business that is immune to the increased financial pressures. As doctors we often focus way too much on "the practice" instead of the business. Even though patients is the most important part of your practice, without a business you won't be there to help and serve them. The business side of it is something you need to take very seriously and there is one thing in particular that you can look at to start improving efficiency. Computer systems have transformed medical practices. A lot of the manual labor involved with patient consultations can now be done of a central database and the need for elaborate filing systems is no longer necessary. In...

If you have children who spend long hours of unattended time on your home computer you have already installed or have thought about installing some form of Internet parental control protection software. The two leading parental control software companies are Net Nanny and CyberPatrol. These internet protection software products have to run on your computer. Any average computer literate user could easily override the software protection command and disable it. The widespread daily usage of computers for business and commercial matters has create a new trend of everything-as-a-service. Mobile usage and the introduction of low memory net books makes it less convenient to carry a computer laden with...

The introduction of bill payment software recently has really made things a lot easier, not only for the people who are paying but also for those who are being paid. Everybody wants to have the assurance that when they pay bills online, their transactions are secure and that the site they are using is a reputable, trusted one. Some of the best bill payment software available on the market do just this; they let you make payments while adding the factor of reliance. Here, it is crucial to mention that the popularity of these types of software is on an upsurge, which is mainly due to its several amazing features. Actually, the advantages of using bill payment software are many. For one thing, they...