Improving Your Studio: What Your Producer Told Me vs Where Process-Improvement Projects Go Wrong - Essay Example

Three Guidelines Organizations all face many different problems that can be avoided by following certain guidelines. Following these guidelines can reduce the chance of failure and prevent loss. There are so many different factors that contribute to projects going wrong. Specific problems include hiring the wrong developers, not meeting deadlines, or ill factored time completion. Many problems that prevent projects from reaching deadlines can be avoided and need to be properly addressed. The first guideline that can be used by an organization is to make sure projects are operating efficiently and are successful involves improving doing what one does.

Improving what one does can be defined in a few different ways. One can improve what one does with further training, education, or networking. Since each project is different, so are the tasks associated with the project. One may have used specific ideas or training to assist with the project. Since the new project involves different tasks, it is important to better ones knowledge associated with the project. Bettering of knowledge to assist with the project is important and can be judged by gathering feedback.

Why is feedback so important? The feedback that is learned from trying something new or increasing knowledge and training can determine if the extra training and self improvement was beneficial. This helps to decide which works best and which is a potential waste of time. It is important to decide which method works best for improving one’s self so that less time is used on feedback, and more focus on getting the job done. Organizations need to focus on properly implementing employee improvement to assist with projects.

The second important guideline is making sure the plan is implemented. Organizations need to make sure the guideline of improving skills does not start off good and then backfire. To prevent a backfire, organizations need to make sure the correct follow up and evaluation is being taken place. This can be known as the “stretching phase”. This phase is important in project improvement. During this phase, managers can decide whether the process improvement stage has been successful or a waste of time.

As stated in the article, “it is important to make sure employees are focused on certain ideas such as making sure more items are error free rather than actually completing more items”. (Chakravorty 2010) On that note, executives can create a chart physically showing either and improvement or a loss. The third guideline that is important to understand and evaluate for an organization is to not focus on the big success. To further define this, many companies make the mistake of only bragging about the completed projects.

This may be done to take the focus off of failed projects. If executive were really aware of how many failed projects there were, a more accurate anti- fail strategy can be put in place to prevent further failures. This third guideline is extremely important because it enables executives to receive accurate feedback and decide what is going wrong and what can be done to improve project performance. Using each one of the guidelines can prove to be very beneficial to completing projects. It is easy to see how one can follow the three given guidelines to ensure that projects focus on improvement, evaluation, and proper presentation.

These guidelines are very important and a necessity for any organization. References Chakravorty, Satya S. "Where Process-Improvement Projects Go Wrong – Executive Adviser - MIT Sloan Management Review." MIT Sloan Management Review - The New Business of Innovation. Web. 18 May 2011. . "Gamasutra - Features - Improving Your Studio: What Your Producer Told Me." Gamasutra - The Art & Business of Making Games. Web. 18 May 2011. .