Using the PDCA Cycle to Support Continuous Improvement Kaizen

ITIL 4 shifts the attention from processes and procedures to ensuring that every action and decision contributes to delivering value. By focusing on the value stream—the series of activities required to deliver a service—organizations can ensure that all aspects of service management are aligned with customer needs and business goals. By promoting a more collaborative approach, ITIL 4 helps break down barriers that exist between departments. This creates a more cohesive environment where teams share information and resources, improving decision-making, problem-solving, and innovation.

Best Practices:

Prioritizes releasing features to users quickly, then improving them through subsequent releases. Collect user feedback as early as possible to inform next iteration of updates. Even if your change was a smashing success, you’ll need to go through the cycle again with another proposed change later.

This flexibility ensures that services are delivered in a way that can accommodate the rapid changes in customer preferences, market conditions, and technological advancements. Through its focus on collaboration, flexibility, and continuous improvement, ITIL 4 enables organizations to enhance service delivery and create value across all levels of the business. Unlike its predecessor, ITIL v3, which was more process-driven and rigid, ITIL 4 introduces a more adaptive and agile framework. This allows organizations to better respond to changing business needs, customer demands, and the rapidly evolving technology landscape. The framework’s design enables companies to scale their service management practices as required, adapting to new challenges and opportunities without disrupting their overall service delivery. Six Sigma projects are often led by trained specialists (Black Belts, Green Belts) who use statistical tools to identify root causes of quality problems.

Disadvantages of the PDCA Cycle

Keep reading to learn more about iterative processes, why the PDCA cycle is important to improve them, and how each step of the PDCA cycle helps you create better products with less waste during each iteration. As one HBR case noted, health systems that applied TPS gained big improvements in quality and cost by redesigning processes, but when the champion leader left, those gains eroded. Organizations should avoid depending on a single CI “hero”; instead, they establish structures (like Lean Six Sigma councils or Hoshin planning) so improvement continues even if people change. They must communicate a clear improvement strategy, remove obstacles, and balance short-term goals with the ongoing pursuit of excellence. Daniel Croft is an experienced continuous improvement manager with a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management.

• Instead, they figure out what works as they go, which may mean that the timeline for when the work will be done is hard to pin down.
• Implementing CI strategically also means building it into the organization’s management systems.
• For example, Toyota’s Fujio Cho famously advised Lean leaders to “Go see, ask why, show respect” on the shop floor.
• To apply this concept in practice, the PDCA cycle provides a framework to promote improvements continuously.

You’ll go through several rounds of sketching and feedback until you choose one or two ideas that your team can move forward with. Gain a solid foundation in the philosophy, principles and methods of user experience design. As you work through the PDCA cycle, you’ll need something to help you keep track of what you’re planning and learning. You can document your thoughts and actions for each stage of the cycle so that you have a record of everything you proposed or tried, and you’ll be able to keep track of what your findings and decisions were. Once you have your findings in hand, you need to decide what to do with them.

The four components of the PDCA cycle

Explained briefly, the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is a model for carrying out change. It is a simple four-stage method that enables teams to avoid recurring mistakes and improve processes. It is an essential part of the Lean manufacturing philosophy and a key prerequisite for continuous improvement of people and processes. In a similar vein, incremental development does not work well when developers lack a clear sense of what to implement. However, the team doesn’t expect the initial application release to be perfect from users’ perspective — far from it.

• If your organization uses Lean methodology, you’re focused on building only what your customers want without wasting any time or resources to get the job done.
• The cyclical nature of this model allows teams to identify and remove defects early in the process and restart the cycle until the desired outcome is reached.
• This certification is designed for individuals who want to gain a basic understanding of ITIL 4 and how it can improve their organization’s service management practices.
• Unlike ITIL v3, which largely centered on processes and procedures, ITIL 4 focuses on delivering value to stakeholders and fostering continuous improvement through feedback and iterative work.

This increases efficiency and eliminates ineffective elements until the optimal solution can be identified. Depending on the project’s size, planning can take a major part of your team’s efforts. It will usually consist of smaller steps so that you can build a proper plan with fewer possibilities of failure. The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle was first proposed by American physicist and engineer Walter A. Shewhart in the 1920s. The PDCA cycle is a continuous process and product improvement method and an essential component of the lean manufacturing philosophy.

Dig Deeper on Software design and development

ITIL 4’s focus on agility is particularly important for organizations looking to implement modern methodologies, such as DevOps and Agile, in their IT service management. By providing a flexible foundation, ITIL 4 enables organizations to integrate these approaches seamlessly, improving responsiveness to customer needs and ensuring quicker delivery of services. This agility also makes it easier for organizations to continuously improve their IT services in response to feedback and evolving business goals. Implementing CI strategically also means building it into the organization’s management systems.

The principle of “Progress Iteratively with Feedback” plays a significant role in promoting continuous improvement. By which of the following is iterative four stage approach for continually improving the process working in smaller, manageable increments, organizations can quickly adjust to changes and adapt to customer needs. This iterative approach reduces the risk of large-scale failures and allows organizations to fine-tune services gradually over time, ensuring that improvements are sustainable and impactful. With ITIL 4, organizations can create a more personalized, customer-centric experience.

For example, successful companies use Hoshin Kanri (policy deployment) to translate high-level objectives into daily improvement targets. In this way, continuous improvement becomes part of how the company operates, not just an occasional activity. As ASQ observes, popular CI methods emphasize employee involvement and teamwork, helping to align improvements with the company’s strategic needs. This strategic role of CI ultimately ensures that the effort to improve processes supports the overall mission and vision of the organization. ITILV 4 introduces the concept of the Service Value System (SVS), a key distinction from ITIL v3’s more structured and linear lifecycle approach.

What Makes the PDCA Cycle Different from Other Change Management Methods?

However, every time you repeat a standardized plan, remind your team to go through all steps again and try to improve carefully. Applications are possible in change management, product development, project management, and quality improvement. As noted earlier, the PDCA cycle can be used wherever change or continuous improvement is required. Conceptualized and designed the study, developed the methodology, and led the manuscript writing. All authors reviewed, edited, and approved the final version of the manuscript. At that point, the app could be considered a minimum viable product, or MVP — meaning it meets basic user requirements but might still be missing important features.

Candidates will gain a broad understanding of the framework and how to apply ITIL 4’s principles within their organizations to create more efficient, customer-centric services. Another notable difference between ITIL 4 and ITIL v3 is the way ITIL 4 integrates modern practices such as DevOps, Agile, and Lean methodologies into the framework. These methodologies have become increasingly important as organizations seek to improve collaboration, speed up service delivery, and reduce waste in their operations. ITILV 4 ensures that IT services are aligned with business goals, making IT an integral part of the organization’s overall success. By focusing on value delivery, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ITIL 4 ensures that IT services are not only reactive but also proactive in driving business objectives. Through the Service Value System (SVS) and the principles of ITIL 4, organizations are better equipped to design services that are not only efficient but also user-friendly and responsive to customer requirements.

The certification also serves as a prerequisite for more advanced ITIL certifications, such as the ITILV 4 Managing Professional and ITILV 4 Strategic Leader certifications. The Service Value Chain within the SVS consists of a series of interconnected activities that organizations perform to deliver value to their customers. Unlike the process-centric structure of ITIL v3, the SVS encourages organizations to think about service management as an ongoing, cyclical process of creating, delivering, and optimizing value. This allows organizations to be more responsive and adaptable to changes in customer needs and the business environment.