Organizational Analysis Services
DPRA proposes five service offerings under this SIN area: Performance Measurement, Organizational Assessment, Benchmarking, Modeling and Simulation, and Program Evaluation.
The following is a brief description of each service and an explanation of how it supports Management, Organizational, and Business Improvement Services.
Performance measurement systems enable organizations to determine whether they are achieving the key mission and business results described in their strategic plans.
In addition to providing the data required to evaluate overall performance, performance measurement systems may also track unique measures that are important to particular organizations, such as customer satisfaction, financial or program performance results, or broader measures of outcomes and objectives.
Performance measurement systems are necessary components of an integrated approach to business improvement.
In order to have an effective performance measurement system, an organization must be prepared to take action when results indicate that organizational performance is not aligned with strategic objectives. Action plans will often contain recommendations for ongoing business improvement activities, such as business process reengineering or organizational benchmarking.
Once an action plan is adopted, it must be carefully managed and integrated into other business improvement activities to ensure that the intended results are achieved.
Organizations need to have a sense of both where they have been and where they are now in order to establish a vision for the future.
This vision should be rooted in the organization's values, culture, and climate. Organizational assessments go beyond business-sector performance measures and provide concrete information about the current state of the organization from the perspective of the employees.
Through a variety of information collection devices, including the Campbell Organizational Survey (COS), these assessments provide management with information about employee feelings of frustration or satisfaction with various aspects of their work, including feedback, leadership, diversity, and organizational planning.
An initial organizational assessment serves as a baseline for the pre-transformation state of the organization. Organizational assessments conducted during the implementation of business improvement efforts provide important information about how employees are dealing with change and help management recalibrate strategic plans as needed.
Benchmarking is the process of gathering information about one organization's policies, practices, philosophies, or performance measures and beneficially applying them to another organization. It generally involves comparing and measuring an organization against an organizational standard, identifying performance gaps, and creating a plan that when implemented will improve the organization's performance.
Four types of benchmarking are generally accepted: internal benchmarking, competitive benchmarking, industry benchmarking, and process benchmarking.
Benchmarking is a continuous improvement tool that can facilitate process redesign when combined with business process reengineering.
Beneficially applying the results of a benchmarking effort to an organization requires an understanding of why an innovation works. Attempts to simply graft a business process approach from one organization onto another often fail.
A clear understanding of why an innovation works is needed to effectively apply a similar approach in a different organizational environment.
Organizational modeling and simulation refer to the use of analytical and numerical techniques to develop mathematical models composed of people, equipment, and procedures. Modeling and simulation provide a rational basis for decision-making by seeking to understand complex situations and to use this understanding to predict behavior and improve performance.
As a planning tool, modeling and simulation can be used to evaluate how different configurations of people, equipment, and procedures affect performance. As an optimization tool, modeling and simulation can be used to determine the combination of resources that is required to achieve the highest performance level.
Program evaluation is an area of applied research that attempts to evaluate the effectiveness with which an organization is implementing its policies. It employs research methodologies that examine the conceptualization, design, and implementation of a program.
Evaluation design and implementation varies depending on the type of research question being asked, the stage a program is in (i.e, whether it is a new or established program), and the type of decision the evaluation is intended to inform.
The three major classes of evaluations are (1) analyses related to the conceptualization and design of a program, (2) monitoring of program implementation, and (3) assessments of impact and efficiency. An evaluation may focus on any of these three areas; comprehensive evaluations may include all of them.
Program evaluations provide organizations with tools to evaluate program performance and identify potential opportunities for business process improvement.
They are particularly useful as a program auditing tool when a performance measurement system has already been established under the Government Performance Results Act (GPRA).