I am taking a mental break from this BIG, loooong, tedious system tests that I have to do. And I find myself thinking about WBS.. and BPR. Let me share my thoughts..
BPR
..stands for Business Process Reengineering. It sounds scary - but it's really just about looking into your daily tasks and seeing how you can improve it by working smarter and faster. I think smart workers do their own BPR every now and then. Other than that, they tell you which part of it, can be done by a computer system.
Big companies employ big consultancy firms to do this for them and the charged fee is like tens of thousands or even over a hundred thousand. And the thing is, these consultants don't actually IMPROVE your tasks per se. They fly in from all around the world, come into your office and help you ask YOURSELF, how you can improve your own tasks. Oh, they also help you question your bosses, why you do what you do.
Then from the numbers they ask the company to gather, they do some superficial calculations of 'savings' in time, manpower, money - WHICH in most cases, do not reflect the real situation (just like how GDP does not reflect the real state of a country).
Reminds me of..(if you'd let me side-track a bit. No, you have no choice), my lecturer who does not like the word 'average'. He says average is not real. If I have one feet in scalding hot water like 100 deg Cel, and the other leg in an ice cold water - 0 deg Cel - it would have looked OK on the 'average'. But it's NOT.
I'm drifting away from my main topic.
My thoughts are.. if the BIG BOSS is sincere, smart and determined about improving, there CAN be improvement without having to pay thousands of dollars, just to find out how. Else, even at the end of the whole exercise.. nothing much will change. End of BPR.
WBS
I just learned this acronym/term, about last week. I was asked to manage this one project and then asked to prepare the 'WBS'.
"Sorry." I said, "What's WBS?"
"Oh.. that stands for Work Breakdown Structure"
"Wow. Ermm. Is that like our tasks list?"
And so apparently, it is. So that's another important sounding term for it.
I have nothing more for now - not any that I can recall easily.
It's not important. So, I won't bother.
2 comments:
Erni, you are so right. My company also spent millions of dollars that we feel could have been better utilised...err....like distributing to us poor employees..heh..heh.
We also use WBS in our system. And yes, they are nothing but tasks lists.
i guess big companies donate to other big companies this way.. :p
Post a Comment