• Improvement in the number of up-to-date courses

• Increased student satisfaction

• Improved compliance to accreditation requirements

Step 1: What’s My Opportunity?

Clarify what optimizing the process will accomplish

The university’s course catalog had grown significantly in recent years and each course could potentially require an update in any given term. The current multi-disciplinary process of updating the textbooks and courseware was struggling to keep pace.

The university decided to form a process optimization team to ensure the update process was capable of meeting the growing demand.

Kure set the project up for success by clarifying their problem and goal, then automatically created their Project Charter, Plan, and Timeline. The current process completed an average of 25 projects per term. The goal was to improve productivity to 35 projects per term.

Step 2: What’s My Process?

Explore the steps by which the work gets done and find opportunities

The team was guided to map out their current process, explore the process flow and collect data on its performance using Kure’s As-Is Map and Data Collection Tools.

Kure enabled the team to establish the Baseline performance and look for opportunities for greater productivity. Kure’s AI, which includes Anomaly Detection, helped uncover several factors that could lead to improvement, such as:

• Excessive rework within and between projects

• Numerous delays waiting for subject matter resources

• Duplication of efforts between projects

Step 3: What’s Causing My Problem?

Identify one or more actionable items producing the undesired effect

Using Kure’s Fishbone Diagram and the 5 Whys, the team identified several root causes:

• Excessive rework and duplication of effort due to poor documentation and change tracking

• Misalignment of projects addressing the same courses 

• Project delays due to inaccurate assessment of work and resource requirements

Step 4: What’s My Solution?

Implement specific solutions to make the problem go away

Focusing on the root causes, the team generated, evaluated, and implemented the best solutions using Kure’s Solution Selection Matrix which helped them visualize their options.

• Shared project roadmap aligning and prioritizing all efforts each term

• Standardization of documentation for action items and course changes minimizing duplication of effort and improving communication

• Standardization of the project assessment methods leading to more accurate tasks and resources planning

After implementing these solutions, the total number of projects completed in the next term increased from 25 to 39 (56% improvement).

Kure automatically generates this documentation alongside a Project Summary so the project team could easily communicate and celebrate their success — helping them efficiently transfer and scale their success throughout.