Page 281 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

268 C o n t i n u o u s I m p r o v e m e n t D e f i n e S t a g e 269

However, particularly at the process level, you’ll need to balance
stretch goals with a reasonable project completion time. In some cases,
stretch goals can be divided into several projects assigned to several proj­
ect teams. A work breakdown structure is often effective at identifying
useful scope limiting statements.

Work Breakdown Structure
The work breakdown structure is a special­purpose tree diagram used
to break down problems or projects into their components. An example
is shown in Fig. 13.1. It reduces “big and complex” down to “tiny and
manageable.” By breaking the process into its components, subprocesses
are exposed that might serve as logical break­points for separate improve­
ment efforts. Limiting the project to one or only a few closely related cat­
egories will lead to a better chance of project success. The potential
deliverables (in financial terms) for each of these subprocesses is the
preferred means of justifying a given project proposal.

Figure 13.1 Example work breakdown structure (Pyzdek and Keller, 2010).

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