Question

Tutorial 5

Topic

Qualitative Process Analysis

Questions

Question 1

Consider the following process for the admission of graduate students at a university.

In order to apply for admission, students first fill in an online form. Online applications are recorded in an information system to which all staff members involved in the admissions process have access to. After a student has submitted the online form, a PDF document is generated and the student is requested to download it, sign it, and send it by post together with the required documents, which include:

Certified copies of previous degree and academic transcripts.

Results of English language test.

Curriculum vitae.

When these documents are received by the admissions office, an officer checks the completeness of the documents. If any document is missing, an e-mail is sent to the student. The student has to send the missing documents by post. Assuming the application is complete, the admissions office sends the certified copies of the degrees to an academic recognition agency, which checks the degrees and gives an assessment of their validity and equivalence in terms of local education standards. This agency requires that all documents be sent to it by post, and all documents must be certified copies of the originals. The agency sends back its assessment to the university by post as well. Assuming the degree verification is successful, the English language test results are then checked online by an officer at the admissions office. If the validity of the English language test results cannot be verified, the application is rejected (such notifications of rejection are sent by e-mail). Once all documents of a given student have been validated, the admission office forwards these documents by internal mail to the corresponding academic committee responsible for deciding whether to offer admission or not. The committee makes its decision based on the academic transcripts and the CV. The committee meets once every 2 to 3 weeks and examines all applications that are ready for academic assessment at the time of the meeting. At the end of the committee meeting, the chair of the committee notifies the admissions office of the selection outcomes. This notification includes a list of admitted and rejected candidates. A few days later, the admission office notifies the outcome to each candidate via e-mail. Additionally, successful candidates are sent a confirmation letter by post.

What steps can you extract from this process? Classify these steps into VA, BVA and NVA.

Question 2

Consider the university admission process described in Question 1.

One of the issues faced by the university is that students have to wait too long to know the outcome of the application (especially for successful outcomes). It often happens that by the time a student is admitted, the student has decided to go to another university instead (students send multiple applications in parallel to many universities). Analyse the causes of this issue using a cause–effect diagram.

Question 3

Consider the university admission process described in Question 1.

Analyse the issue described in Question 2 (i.e. is that students have to wait too long to know the outcome of their application, especially for successful outcomes), using a why-why diagram.

Question 4

Write an issue register for the university admission process and the issue described in Question 2 (i.e. is that students have to wait too long to know the outcome of their application, especially for successful outcomes).

Question 5

Consider the university admission process described in Question 1.

Complete Table 1 below using the complaints listed. List the most frequent admission problems first. Prepare a Pareto chart using Chart 1 based on the information in Table 1, alternatively use MS Excel to prepare the Pareto chart.

Online application system is slow – 100 complaints

Confirmation letter not received – 20 complaints

Degree verification takes too long – 120 complaints

Admissions office does not follow through as promised – 40 complaints

Table 1:

Admissions complaints	Frequency	% of Total	Cumulative%
Total complaints

Cumulative %

Chart 1:

0					0

                                                            Admissions complaints

Question 6

Consider the university admission process described in Question 1.

Use the list provided in Question 5. Record each issue in Table 2 and classify each issue using the PICK chart four quadrants, described below.

Possible (low payoff, easy to do): issues that can be addressed if there are sufficient resources for doing so.

Implement (high payoff, easy to do): issues that should definitely be implemented as a matter of priority.

Challenge (high payoff, hard to do): issues that should be addressed but require significant amount of effort. In general one would pick one of these challenges and focus on it rather than addressing all or multiple challenges at once.

Kill (low payoff, hard to do): issues that are probably not worth addressing or at least not to their full extent.

Table 2

Admissions Complaint		Quadrant	Payoff	Difficulty
1
2
3
4

Question 7

Consider the university admission process described in Question 1.

Use the admission complaints classified in Table 2, to create a PICK chart using Chart 2, alternatively use MS Excel to prepare the PICK chart.

Chart 2

Implement

Challenge

Possible

Kill

Easy

Hard

Difficulty

Low

High

Payoff

Answer 1

1)

Value adding (VA) steps add value or satisfaction for the final customer, i.e. identifying that is the customer willing to pay for this step/activity?

Business value adding (BVA) steps create value for the business, so these are needed to run the business smoothly or for regulatory requirements of the business.

Non value adding (NVA) steps do not belong to any of the above two categories, i.e. they do not add value to the customer or to the business.

Steps Extracted From the Process:

• Filling in online form by students: VA
• Downloading PDF, signing it and sending it by post with the required documents: BVA
• Admission office checking the completeness of the documents: BVA
• Sending an email to the student if documents incomplete, and student sends missing documents by post: BVA
• admissions office sends the certified copies of the degrees to an academic recognition agency: NVA
• academic recognition agency checks the degrees and gives an assessment: BVA
• agency sends back its assessment to the university by post: NVA
• English language test results are then checked online by an officer at the admissions office: BVA
• Notifying by email if application is rejected: VA
• forwarding validated documents by internal mail to the corresponding academic committee: BVA
• committee makes its decision: VA
• committee notifies the admissions office: BVA
• admission office notifies the outcome to each candidate via e-mail: VA
• candidates are sent a confirmation letter by post: VA