Is your process improvement still working?
A process can work well during launch and gradually lose its value. Staff change, demand shifts and exceptions accumulate. Reviewing an improvement means checking whether the intended benefit is still reaching the business and whether people can maintain the process under normal operating pressure.
Editorial responsibility: Nardus Oelofse, Chief Consultant.
By Chase & Marshal
Return to the original problem
Find the reason the process changed. What delay, error, cost or customer problem was it meant to address? Compare current performance with the original condition and the standard the business agreed to achieve.
If the original aim was never recorded, define it now using the work and customer outcome. Avoid evaluating the process solely on whether staff complete its steps. A perfectly followed process can still fail to solve the problem it was introduced to address.
Observe a normal day and an awkward one
Watch the process in use across ordinary work and exceptions. Ask where people wait, enter information twice or move outside the system. Look at busy periods and handovers between teams, where pressure can expose weaknesses hidden during a controlled rollout.
In an illustrative quoting process, the standard request may move smoothly while complex enquiries return to personal email. The workaround may preserve customer service in the short term but remove visibility and ownership. Understand why it exists before instructing staff to stop.
Check ownership and supporting information
Confirm who maintains the process, updates guidance and decides how new exceptions should be handled. Information, permissions and templates need an owner just as the overall workflow does. Without maintenance, staff may gradually stop trusting the official route.
Review whether measures create the behaviour you want. If one team is rewarded for handing work over quickly while another absorbs incomplete requests, local performance can improve while the overall service deteriorates. Evaluate the whole journey to the useful outcome.
Make a targeted correction
Distinguish a small maintenance issue from a flaw in the process design. Fix the specific cause, explain the change and check that it resolves the problem. Replacing the entire process can create unnecessary disruption when a missing decision or outdated field is responsible.
Set a manageable review rhythm based on the importance and variability of the work. Track a small set of outcome measures and recurring exceptions. Sustaining improvement is an ongoing operating responsibility, with enough attention to catch drift before it becomes the normal way of working.
Questions answered
How often should we review a process?
Choose a rhythm that reflects how often the work occurs and how much it changes. Also review after significant changes in demand, systems or responsibilities, and when recurring exceptions indicate that the process is drifting.
Related
Sources
Sources supporting the factual statements in this article. Findings should be read within their stated dates, geography and scope.
- Go-live is not adoption: what to measure in the six months after cutover | The Langford Institute. www.thelangfordinstitute.org. 2026-10-04T08:00:00+00:00
Check whether the improvement has lasted
If an improvement has faded or staff have returned to workarounds, we can help review the process and identify the changes needed to make it dependable.
