Introducing DEFOG
Kakumei Consulting and Project Management
Kakumei Consulting believes project management is an essential part of any work environment and product creation process. In order to successfully reach whatever goals you are trying to achieve, those goals must be clearly defined and the steps to achieving those goals made readily apparent to all team members. Project management is an integral part of that goal-making process, as it allows for accountability during both the goal-making process itself and during the subsequent workflow in which those goals are worked toward. Every workflow is a constant series of adjustments, and project management ensures that those adjustments align with the overall goals and objectives of individuals and their teams. And we believe that in thinking about your goals by discussing with your people and finding out what they need to know, you will be setting up your team members and your projects for success.
DEFOG: A Project Management Process
When individuals and teams are going about their work, whether daily tasks or larger projects, processes can often get... foggy. That's where DEFOG comes in to do just what the name suggests: get rid of the "fog" around work processes and make it easier to see what exactly is happening.
Simply put, DEFOG is a project management process that examines both individual and team responsibilities to clarify existing processes for maximum transparency and minimum confusion. In DEFOG-ing your processes, we help individuals and teams achieve consistent predictable delivery. And by working together with individual team members during this process, we are able to utilize Kakumei’s people-first approach to project management and get a better understanding of what can be improved.
Each letter of DEFOG stands for one part of the process that helps each team member achieve a sense of clarity: Define, Educate, Facilitate, Own, and Grow.
Define
To start the DEFOG process, we work with clients through Defining the scope of what needs to be done, identifying key pain points, as well as defining what success will look like. This phase allows us to use our project and process management expertise to help set your organization up for success from the outset.
Educate
From there, we help Educate everyone in the team so that we are all on the same page about things like:
What the work is
How the work is being done
Who the work is being delivered to
How the work is being communicated and archived
At the end of the Educate phase, everyone on the team will be ready to start to do their role and all that entails.
Facilitate
During the Facilitate phase, things start to shift: part of what makes DEFOG unique is that while we guide our clients through the process, we also work in a way that allows them to better take ownership of their own processes. As such, this step requires more active engagement from the client as we begin to help the team help themselves. In this phase, we help team members hone skills learned in Educate and put them into practice. Using targeted and relevant metrics and measurements of success, we guide the business, leadership, and team to help them obtain their desired outcomes.
Own
In Own, we work with the leadership team to set reasonable objectives for team members to understand and own completely. Team members should now be aware of the bigger picture and how they fit into it, in terms of tasks, expected outcomes, and the roles they play. Team members can then use this newfound sense of balance and clarity to move forward and accomplish their goals. By the end of this phase, team members should have the confidence to seek assistance based on their newfound clarity and understanding of their roles and responsibilities.
Grow
In the final phase of DEFOG, Grow, we work with teams to ask ourselves “How do we make our process and team better?” and “How do we adjust to continue success?” Growth is a continuous process, and success is not stagnant. This stage allows us to adapt measurements to ensure this success while tracking the changes that are being implemented with roadmaps and retrospectives. And now that the team is familiar with the DEFOG process, they may begin it again at any time to further clarify their processes in the future.
DEFOG for Clarity
DEFOG is a truly versatile project management process that can be used by any individual or team for projects and processes, big and small. At the end of the day, every work environment contains a multitude of workflows which in turn contain a variety of processes. By using DEFOG to clarify these processes, not only will you be able to maintain more consistent and predictable delivery, but your people will have a better sense of purpose. And at Kakumei Consulting, we believe that when the people are happy, you will truly be revolutionizing your work environment.
