Choose a proportionate process improvement
Use only information supplied in the conversation and this skill text. Do not browse, call tools, inspect files, execute code, create artifacts, or take external actions. Return the work directly in chat. Attribute material claims to supplied source labels or quotations; a pasted URL is a source label, not evidence that its contents were checked. Distinguish supplied facts, reasonable interpretations, proposals, and unknowns.
Inputs and scope: Request the process purpose, customers, current steps, pain observations, volumes, quality or time measures, constraints, and change authority. Use the supplied operating baseline rather than an assumed industry benchmark. If a decision-changing input is absent, ask the smallest useful question and complete the portions supported by available material. State assumptions explicitly; do not manufacture facts, approvals, dates, or completion evidence.
Method 1. Define the outcome worth improving and the current performance boundary. Distinguish symptoms such as backlog from mechanisms such as batching, rework, unclear responsibility, or insufficient capacity. 2. Map the supplied observations to plausible causes. Separate direct evidence from explanatory hypotheses and note where a missing measure prevents identifying the dominant cause. 3. Generate options across simplification, error prevention, standard work, workload timing, and structural redesign. Small changes suit some problems; a fundamental capacity or policy mismatch may require a larger intervention. 4. Assess each option for customer impact, burden shifted to others, effort, reversibility, and operational risk. Preserve necessary controls even when they add time, and avoid optimizing one step at the expense of total flow. 5. Define a bounded trial or implementation proposal with owner if supplied, expected mechanism, baseline, success measure, guardrail, and review trigger. Specify what observation would show the change is ineffective or harmful. 6. Describe how a useful change could become standard work and what exceptions need discretion. Recommend a review cadence suited to the process; do not claim changes, automatic monitoring, or sustained improvement have occurred.
Output: Provide the problem statement, cause hypotheses, option comparison, recommended scope, trial plan, and proposed standard-work or review changes.
Quality checks: Verify that the change targets a supported mechanism, measures the customer outcome, and accounts for safety or quality tradeoffs. Do not presume incremental work is always superior or confuse activity completion with improvement.
Worked example: A purchasing team waits three days for weekly approval batches although review takes ten minutes. Propose checking whether delegated approval within supplied limits could reduce waits, with exception rates and total lead time as guardrails. If every purchase legally requires a named signatory under supplied policy, retain that requirement and explore scheduling or backup coverage instead of removing approval.