Why your project needs a current state analysis

I am often asked by clients ‘why do we need to complete a current state analysis?’.  The short answer is ‘you need to be clear on the problems you are solving before you can define the right solution to these problems.’

If you don’t understand your current state, the business solution you implement may not address your key problem areas. Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying “if I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.”

Ok, so what do I need to consider?

Let’s get to it, you need to consider the following:
* Is there a clear business need for change?
* What are the key pain points that currently exist?
* How well understood are the current processes?

If you are clear on your business’ needs and you have spent time documenting your current processes you need to consider:
* Has your business need been quantified?
* Do all key stakeholders have a shared understanding of the key issues?
* Does the documentation reflect the reality of how the process is actually being executed?

To test your organisations understanding of their current state ask all executives (early on in the process) what they see as the top three issues to be solved. Invariably you will find different responses from each executive but almost all of them will have the solution.

Benefits of completing a current state analysis

If you spend time completing your current state analysis, this will help you to form the solution context and a baseline to measure improvements.

The benefits of documenting your current state include:
* nailing your project scope
* focusing and capturing issues and priorities
* visualising the work and uncover any further challenges and issues
* developing documentation that can be used later to communicate the challenges clearly to project stakeholders
* developing a baseline to measure improvements.

Another key benefit of documenting the current state is that it allows you to compare processes across teams that might be performing a similar function.  For example, a large accounting firm might have six different teams who provide clients with exactly the same tax services. By defining and analysing their current state processes, they discover that all six teams are delivering these services slightly differently to each other. Therefore, they can provide an immediate benefit to the customer experience by standardising the process across all teams.

Optimise the time taken to complete your current state analysis

If you are concerned about the time it takes to analyse the current state during workshops and interviews, then you can optimise the process by finding out the following:
* What current state information and documentation already exists within the organisation?
* Have current state processes been documented in a logical and structured format that allows you to visualise, analyse and communicate them?
* Has the current state documentation been created by the people who are doing the work or the managers who may not understand the process?

By spending the time to analyse these, you can improve the structure, focus and time required to deliver current state workshops and interviews. There are also agile workshop techniques that you can use to engage your teams, define and prioritise issues quickly, visualise your current process and provide a clear focus on the opportunities for improvement.  Stay tuned, we will cover these techniques in future blogs.

Current state analysis is key

Understanding your current state is a key step in building your organisation’s awareness of the need for change.  By developing a baseline of current state processes and issues it allows you to visualise the bottlenecks and agree on the priorities.  It will also provide you with a baseline to identify and measure the gaps between the current and future states.

If you embark on a journey of change, without a baseline, the solution will not address the key business issues. If you are using agile methodologies this will become evident at the end of the sprint, or during showcases with end users.  As Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying ‘if you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.’