Process Vulnerabilities [ Part 1: ]
A process vulnerability occurs is when a part of the process workflow is missing, is inefficient or it is simply not working as intended. Ultimately, this vulnerability causes waste of company resource and user dissatisfaction with the product. One-way companies try to identify process vulnerabilities is by conducting peer reviews. This is a great idea in theory. In addition, typically, after a peer review group identifies process vulnerability, a Process Improvement Team is dispatched to the fix the identified problem and life goes on. Unfortunately, for small companies the idea of Peer Review Groups has pit falls, which must be considered.
the Pitfall:
Companies tend to define peer review as intra-company groups (I.E. one department is asked to review the next) which limit PRGs to only internal employees. Company leaders often use the cost cutting rational: By drafting existing internal employees for PRGs, it saves valuable time and labor expense over the expense of using outside reviewers.
Using only internal employees has potentially severe ramifications from the start. Small companies typically do not have multiple experts in each work process but rather they have a few experts for many processes. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that a peer review groups will be composed of experts in the exact process being reviewed.
(end part 1)
