International Process and Performance Institute

A week from today I will be presenting the latest material in the IPAPI CPP™ program at the open course in Dallas. I think this is going to be an "AHA" moment, as this mateiral makes the program even more actionable, managable and beneficial.

Some of the interesting points wovern into this revised program include historical influences from people like Drs. Deming and Juran as well as Richard Normann - the person who first gave us an operational perspective on the use of Moments of Truth (which influenced Jan Carlzson's use of same at SAS and subsequent book on the subject).

So would it surprise you to know that Break Points have been a key part of management thinking from Deming's early work? That "outside in" thinking and "successful customer outcomes" were a core part of Juran's quality philosophy in the 1940's? A lot of people don't know that. The influence of leaders like these are the true foundation of the CPP program and we gratefully acknowledge these important works where they have influenced our program.

I will also be introducing the concept of "Process Actors" into the mix, along with process baselining and linkage of Action Plans to SCO statements.

I think its going to fun and I am looking forward to giving this seminal class in Dallas!

Members of IPAPI can join me in developing the foundational work for the next certification on our agenda - the IPAPI CPM™ program (Certified Process Manager). This course, which is starting with my whitepaper describing the Process Maturity Model, will focus on a flexible and adaptable way to manage process on an organization al basis up to (and including) the Enterprise - along with giving us a way to measure and assess our process maturity over time.

If all goes well we hope to launch that program on late Q1 2009 or early Q2.

While our Board of Directors is set for now (myself, Alex Morse, Don Smith) our next action is to establish our Advisory Board. We have a few people already identified for this important volunteer role (currently all roles in IPAPI are volunteer) in IPAPI and are looking forward to establsih a world-class group of Advisors who are willing to spend a regular portion of their valuable time helping us to grow IPAPI into what we see as a very bright future.

That's about as far as we have taken things so far. The Board has decided to take things a step at a time, rather than build out a comprehensive roadmap that we have to change over and over again. Although I will tell you that there are several other key initiatives we will be acting on early next year that will enable us to embrace a much larger audience in respect to building our reach in the process community.