Goal alignment in process improvement

Process improvement should improve an organisation's ability to achieve its business goals. While mapping an organisation's strategic goals through various layers of management is common, such mapping does not seem to continue through to their processes that create value to the organisation. Despite a number of process improvement methods being available, and almost two decades of experience with those methods, many process improvement projects do not end successfully. We explore the impact process assessment has on process improvement. In particular, we study the alignment of an organisation's process goals to its business goals; and the contribution of process assessment to this goal alignment. This paper illustrates the data gathered through industry survey reflecting the lack of focus on and alignment of organisation's business goals throughout process improvement. The results indicate that there is little knowledge and experience in industry in aligning the process goals and organisation's business goals. This, in turn, could explain the unsuccessful process improvement efforts or perhaps even the skepticism towards process improvement in general. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved