tspsymposium2014

In working with TPI (Team Process Integration) teams in NAVAIR, patterns are beginning to emerge concerning which topics to focus on when performing postmortems. Showing a team how it has improved in some aspect is a very strong motivating factor to help the team embrace process improvement and to show how easily improvement can be achieved. First postmortems, therefore, are important in sustaining a team’s interest in process improvement. As a team evolves and begins to use more complex plans, more extensive postmortems become possible. We have developed a standard set of postmortem topics that can be introduced piecewise as a team gains experience and that can be analyzed regardless of that team’s domain. Standardization allows organizational managers to become familiar with the charts presented in the postmortem out-briefs, which, in turn, show management that the team is improving its performance in some aspect, regardless of whether the team is well on its way to becoming a TxP (Team-X-Process) team or just starting the TPI. The presentation will walk through the graphs that have been most effective in presenting analysis results at the various levels of evolution as a team works toward becoming a TxP team. These analyses improve planning, improve communication with management, and sustain team interest in process improvement.