METHODWRIGHTService
Process Assessment
I follow your process with the people who run it, measure it, and deliver a findings report: where the friction is, what it costs you, and what is worth automating.
What happens
- I follow the work. Not a workshop and not a survey. I go through the process with the people who do it, in the order it actually happens.
- I measure each step. This produces the baseline. Without it, every later claim about improvement is an opinion.
- I compile where it stalls. Backtracks, waits for a decision, and information re-entered from somewhere it already exists.
- I write it up. A findings report you keep, whether or not you build anything with me afterward.
What you get
A documented baseline for the process examined, the friction points ranked by what they cost in hours and delay, and a plain assessment of what is worth automating against the systems you already run, and what is not.
Where the answer is that your current process is fine, the report says so. A finding of "leave this alone" is a legitimate outcome and I would rather deliver it than manufacture a project.
When this is the right service
Choose an assessment when the process has to be observed in person: work changing hands, paper moving between desks, decisions made by finding someone and asking. If the process lives entirely in systems and email, a Remote Assessment covers the same ground without travel.
What the findings report contains
The report is the deliverable. It is written to be read by someone who was not in the room, and to still be useful a year later.
- The process as it actually runs. Step by step, in the order it really happens, which is frequently not the order the written procedure describes.
- A measured time for every step, and a total. Plus how often the process runs, because a two-minute step performed four hundred times a week is not a small problem.
- The friction points, ranked by what they cost in hours and in delay.
- What it would take to remove each one, and what removing it is worth.
- A recommendation per point: automate it, change the procedure, or leave it alone.
- What I would not touch, and the reasoning.
You keep the report whether or not you build anything with me afterward. It is yours, it names no vendor as a requirement, and another firm could act on it.
What it asks of your team
Less than most people expect, and none of it in advance.
- A few hours from the people who run the process, during their normal working time.
- Access to watch the work happen where it happens, not a conference room.
- Someone who can answer “why is it done this way?” when the answer is historical.
There is nothing to fill out beforehand, no data pull to prepare, and no workshop to schedule. Asking a team to document its own process before you arrive produces a description of the process people believe they follow, which is rarely the one they follow.
Why the baseline is the point
Without a measured before, every claim about after is an opinion. A great many improvement projects report savings that were never actually measured at the start, which is why the savings are so difficult to find afterward in anything the finance team recognizes.
The baseline does something else too: it tells you when to stop. Once you can see what each step costs, the point where further effort stops paying becomes visible, and you can put the remaining budget somewhere it does more good.
Next step
Pick the process everyone complains about. Twenty minutes of conversation is usually enough to tell whether an assessment would pay for itself.