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Our Approach
We take a collaborative, data-informed approach to process improvement. Our goal is to help teams identify what is working, where barriers exist, and how processes can be improved to better support students, faculty, staff, and institutional priorities.
How We Improve Processes
Process improvement begins with understanding the current state. We work with stakeholders to document existing workflows, clarify roles and responsibilities, and identify pain points such as delays, duplication, handoffs, or unnecessary complexity that may be creating challenges.
From there, we help teams design a future state that is practical, measurable, and aligned with the needs of the people who use and support the process.
Our work may include:
- Process discovery and documentation to create a shared understanding of how work happens today
- Workflow and value stream mapping to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement
- Root cause analysis to distinguish symptoms from underlying issues
- Stakeholder engagement to ensure improvements reflect user needs and operational realities
- Future-state design to define clearer, simpler, and more effective ways of working
- Measurement planning to establish success criteria and track whether improvements are delivering impact
What We Deliver
The UPMO supports process improvement efforts with scalable deliverables, including:
- Current-state process maps
- Future-state workflow designs
- Pain point and opportunity analyses
- Requirements and decision-support documentation
- Process roles, responsibilities, and handoff clarification
- Roadmaps for implementation
- Metrics and success criteria to support ongoing evaluation
Each deliverable is designed to create clarity, support decision-making, and help teams move from insight to action.
Why It Matters
Strong processes make it easier for people to do their best work. When processes are unclear, inconsistent, or overly complex, they can create delays, frustration, duplicated effort, and uneven experiences for the campus community.
By improving how work flows across people, systems, and units, we help the University:
- Support better service experiences for students, faculty, and staff
- Improve consistency, transparency, and accountability
- Strengthen collaboration across units
- Increase efficiency and reduce unnecessary effort
- Create sustainable improvements that can be measured and maintained over time