Title: Assessing and Validating Solutions

Event: Portland State University, Center for Executive and Professional Education

Date: April 27th & May 4th, 2016, 8:30 A.M. - 4:30 P.M.

Speaker: Christopher Dennis

Have you recently updated a major business process but aren’t sure the update is improving outcomes? Unsure how a recent solution has impacted production? Having difficulty proving to stakeholders a project has reaped benefits for your organization?

Problems are a fact of business operation, and when we implement our chosen solutions, we want to be sure those solutions are providing their intended impact.

In this course we will overview techniques that help measure an implemented solution and evaluate it’s success. If the solution has not provided the intended value, then we need to find out why. The class explores methods for investigating limitations that may be rooted in the solution or in the organization itself. Participants in this course make active assessments of various real-world solutions, putting techniques into practice immediately and forming recommendations that help the case study organization move forward.

Participants will improve their ability to

• Evaluate solutions for overall value, regardless of where the solution is in its life cycle
• Relate evaluation findings to metrics, and track metrics over time
• Identify aspects of the solution that are not delivering value as expected
• Identify aspects of the organization that are limiting the performance of the solution
• Track problems associated with the solution and prioritize them for resolution
• Recommend changes to solutions (including the organization) that increase solution value
• Derive actionable lessons learned from business analysis activity