To Get Started Immediately
Try using a Standard Prescription on a small non-critical project. Or you can just mentally apply the process to an imaginary or past project. This will familiarize you with the Minimum Core components plus others. Then on your next project, customize the first process you used to fit the project better, and try using the Problem and Opportunity Diagonistics. This will reveal the real power of PP, which is descriptiveness, prescriptiveness.and configurability.
How to Create A Custom Process
The prescriptive portion of PP is not ready, so you must manually create custom processes. Here's the steps we use:
1. Pick the closest Standard Prescription. Find the html document for the list of its components. Make a copy and name it YourProcess_List.html. Edit Items_LeftTop.html to include a link to your YourProcess_List.html, with the lower left frame as the target. You now have a process first pass.
2. Study the list of components closely.
3. List the problems and opportunities your present process has.
4. Brainstorm possible solution elements. These need not be components. For example your list might include:
- Streamline testing to eliminate bottleneck
5. Rework the list of components using your lists of problems, opportunities and possible solution elements.. You can examine PP's inventory of components for ideas. You many need to create new components, because PP is still young.
6. Use optional components and rules for when to use them. This allows your process to fit a reasonably wide range of projects.
7. Create the unification components. These are a higher level type of component, and unify the lower level you have created. Or you can start with the higher level, using it to create the lower level, just as developers model and then implement.
8. Mentally run your custom process on previous, current and future projects. Does it solve your problems and opportunities? Does it create any new problems of its own, such as need for training or aversion to change? Does it create any new opportunities, such as ability to tackle more ambitions project, more reuse than can serve as the foundation for new products, faster ramp up on new employees allowing moving up future project milestones, etc?
9. Use your custom process on short low risk projects at first. Fine tune the process. Then escalate to longer higher risk projects as your confidence grows.
10. Once your custom process is stable, do us all a favor - send a copy to the maintainers of PP so we can add it to the Component Library and Knowledge Base. Thanks. :-)