Project Quality Management

Using the PDCA cycle to coordinate work

Lincolnshire Bank & Trust has been serving patrons for over $50$ years but would like to expand its business by developing a new Internet service that would appeal to online customers. The bank knows that a new, up$-$to$-$date service would attract new clientele and help it challenge its larger competitors for market share.

Lannie Bostwick, an experienced project lead, is asked to develop this new service to help Lincolnshire cross over into this market. Bostwick agrees to run the project, but only after being assured that she can hand$-$pick the people she wants for her project team. She gathers a diverse and talented group of people that can quickly assess and plan the work of the project.

After a brief discussion of the project's intent, the team gets down to work. They brainstorm several ideas and record them in the following list:

$1.$ Design a safe and efficient site and service

$2.$ Roll out the new service to a subset of customers

$3.$ Record any problems encountered $($by customers and within the system$)$

$4.$ Develop new reporting and review procedures for the banking staff to follow

$5.$ Develop additional policies and processes to correct for any problems that happened

$6.$ Survey customers to gather feedback about the new service

$7.$ Evaluate the ability of the bank's current third$-$party IT company to develop the Internet service

$8.$ Administer a new training program for the banking staff

$9.$ Track any changes to legislation to ensure that the system remains in compliance

$10.$ Measure the effectiveness of newly instituted training programs

$11.$ Improve the training programs

$12.$ Set a timeline for the development and implementation of the new service

$13.$ Make adjustments before opening the service up to all customers

Bostwick pauses for a moment, then asks for the team's opinion. "Now we have to coordinate this stuff into some sort of action plan. What if we used the PDCA cycle? We could place each of the ideas into the correct PDCA step so we'd have a process to follow."

Tasks for your team:

Place each idea listed above into the correct step of the PDCA cycle $($Plan$,$ Do$,$ Check, or Act$).$ For each step of the PDCA cycle, explain briefly why these ideas support this step.