Care by Design understands the fundamentals of organisational development, service management and leadership for the 21st century public sector organisation and communities.
Care by Design understands the fundamentals of organisational development, service management and leadership for the 21st century public sector organisation and communities.
The most important thing to remember about data gathering is simply just to do it.
In the typical organisation decisions are made, methods are persevered with, and actions are taken with absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they will deliver the required results.
A more intelligent organisation will "manage by fact". In other words, it will base its decisions and actions on data - on evidence that its actions will deliver the required results.
The next time someone advises you on the best method of doing something, or as to the cause of a problem, ask "Is that fact or is it just your opinion?". Chances are they will assure you it is fact. If so, ask "Can you show me the evidence?"
Data Gathering is simply an inherent part of using the overall service improvement framework and of using the other tools and techniques. It would be very difficult to measure demand, capacity and capability without gathering data. Similarly, tools such as Bar Charts, Histograms, Line Graphs, Process Behaviour Charts, Problem Definition, Pareto Charts, etc. all need data. The main thing is to make sure that you actually do it.
It is up to you how you gather your data, it depends on the particular situation. There are, however, a few guidelines:
Keep it simple. The purpose of the analysis is insight, and the best analysis is the simplest analysis which gives the needed insight.
The data gathering exercise should interfere with normal work as little as possible, or not at all, if possible.
The people who work in the area under investigation should carry out the data gathering (they should be carrying out the investigation, anyway).
Use Plan Do study Act on the data gathering exercise. Determine scope and purpose before deciding what data to gather. Pilot your data gathering method on a small scale and modify it if necessary.
Gather data before and after changes.
The data gathered should be a reasonable representation of the whole process. It would not be a good idea to gather data over a bank holiday, or only on Monday's night shift!
Don't reinvent the wheel. If the data you require already exists in a usable format, all you need to do is pick it up. If it doesn't, you will need to design a method of gathering the data.
A check sheet is a simple form which can be used to gather data with minimal effort. The check sheet used to gather data on causes of accidents may look like this:
The causes of accidents could have been identified by a Cause and Effect Diagram, and the results of the check sheet analysis could be placed on a Pareto Chart.
Data is not always numbers. For instance, a department that was looking at ways to reduce costs noticed that they were spending a lot of money on replacing protective gloves damaged by everyday use.
They hung a picture of a pair of gloves on the wall where the replacements were kept and asked everyone to put a cross on the picture where their gloves were damaged before they took a new pair. Nobody minded doing this. After a period of time, the picture looked like this.
They, therefore, asked their supplier to reinforce this part of the glove and the problem was solved.
Published 1st January 1970