Growing Pains - Where Did We Go Wrong?

Growing Pains is a medium sized company that is growing quickly.  They've doubled in size the last couple of years in a row and continue to see opportunities for growth.   Everything had been going well, but they've noticed that morale is dropping and attrition is climbing.  The future is bright so what's going wrong?

When companies grow, especially ones that grow quickly, a level of attrition is expected.  Some people work better in a smaller environment, no big deal.  For those who stay, it's important to make sure they are set up to be successful.  A PM can help in this situation by performing a process audit.  The audit can take the form of interviews, documentation review, system exploration, shadowing, or a number of data gathering techniques.

The focus should be in three areas:  workflow, process, and tools.

Workflow:

• What are the owners, actors, inputs, and outputs for the typical workflows?
• Where are the pain points?
• Does the workflow align with the goals of the business?

Process:

• Is there a process in place?
• Is it documented?
• Does the level of documentation meet the needs of the organization?
• Does the level of process meet the needs of the organization?

Tools:

• Are tools outdated/duplicated/redundant?
• Do complimentary systems communicate without requiring human intervention?
• Can information be extracted easily and at the level of detail required?

The result of a process audit should include an evaluation of the existing system, recommendations for improvement, and suggestions on how to implement those recommendations.  It's not as helpful to point out what's broken without also providing a way to fix it.