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The main attraction was supposed to be Joshua Bell, a famous virtuoso violinist. Usually, the tickets to his concerts are extremely expensive or even impossible to buy. Bell was playing at the Plaza s famous pieces at 7:30 a.m. as a street musician. Very few people stopped. Even fewer people threw money into the hat. He collected a few dollars, but much less than he expected. Why? </p> <p class=text> Everything was set right: busy place (people on their way to work most of them government employees) and a famous violinist (celebrity, classical music). The value and value delivery were obvious. So, what went wrong? Content? Perception? Place? People priorities? All of the above? </p> <p class=text> The answer probably is all of the above. We need a lot of supporting activities to deliver the value. Without them, the value is not recognized or appreciated. </p> <p class=text> A value stream is all of the actions (both value added and non-value added) currently required to deliver a product or a service. It is the work activity and information flow occurring as raw material or information becomes a product&#047;service that is delivered to a customer. It is the flow of paper and information from its origin or initial request, to the desired service or action, to its final delivery to the user or customer. It is the entire flow, from door to door. It can comprise several key process areas that together achieve the deliverable. </p> <p class=text> Using a value stream perspective means working on the big picture, not just individual process steps to find individual opportunities to optimize the whole. For any given product or service, a value stream spans all of the processes, from the delivery of supplied parts, material, and information, to the delivery and receipt by the user or customer. It is an analysis that helps you to see and understand the flow of materials, documents, and information as a product or service flows through all of the processes, from the customer back to the supplier. </p> <p class=text> With products and services, we tend to think mostly of the flow of materials that achieve the required deliverables. It is important to know the information flow also. Information tells each process step what to do next and what to produce. The goal is to understand how information flows so every discrete process will do only what is needed when it is needed. We must define the workflow, then look at how the workflow is managed using various forms of information and communication. For the purposes of this class, we will focus only on the workflow, and just briefly cover information flow. </p> <p class=text> Successfully applying CPI requires a comprehensive value stream focus within the transformed enterprise. Enterprise creates myriad nodes, interfaces, activities, and other  touch points that may need to be considered as parts of a specific value stream the cross-functional enterprise-wide process that may contribute to the improved process and support activity. </p> <p class=text> This is where process management can make a significant difference. Process management is all about creating a framework and an actionable effort aimed at configuring, coordinating, and aligning both core and enabling business processes to achieve the goals of the organization. Process management creates the insight to see how value flows across the various stovepipes or functional organizations of the company. Key inputs and outputs of these value-creating and -supporting processes are identified, and their performance or capability is characterized. The organization can see how outputs of one process become inputs to another process until, finally, an output to an external customer is made. &#9830; <br> <br> <b>Read more <a href="http://ittoday.info/ITPerformanceImprovement/index.htm"><i>IT Performance Improvement</i></a></b> </p> <!--DISCLAIMER NOTICE AND COPYRIGHT--> <p class="copyright"> <br> <br> Certain names and logos on this page and others may constitute trademarks, servicemarks, or tradenames of <a HREF="http://www.crcpress.com" TARGET="_parent">Taylor & Francis LLC.</a> Copyright &#169; 2008&#151;2011 Taylor & Francis LLC. All rights reserved. </font> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> <td width="300"> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table style="background-color:#E0E0D1;" cellpadding="10" margin="5" border="0" valign="top"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan=2> <h3>This article is an excerpt from:</h3> </td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td> <center> <img src="http://www.ittoday.info/catalog/images/covers80w/AU7249.jpg" Border=0> </center> </td> <td> <p class=text> <a href="http://www.crcpress.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?isbn=9781420072495&AF=WAUER" target="blank"><b>Improving Business Process Performance: Gain Agility, Create Value, and Achieve Success</b> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <p class=text> The managerial practices that successfully drove industry for decades have become insufficient to support the rapidly changing business landscape. Companies around the world are being challenged to improve performance, reshape operations, and adapt swiftly to new opportunities. With an abundance of improvement methodologies and frameworks like BPM, BPI, Six Sigma, Lean, and Executive Dashboard, many question where to begin. <br> <br> <b>Improving Business Process Performance: Gain Agility, Create Value, and Achieve Success</b> surveys and integrates the quantitative improvement approaches quickly gaining momentum, including Goal Driven Measurements (GQM), Business Process Management (BPM), Lean Methodology, and the Balanced Score Card to show you exactly where you should begin. It presents a practical methodology that enables your organization to build a measurements framework with the ability to not only monitor events, but also continuously improve and refine those events by providing a feedback loop for analysis, goal, and strategy adjustments. This measurement framework can be customized and linked to your organization s overall strategy to provide critical feedback on improvement efforts. </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </table> </body> </html>