Improvement Cycles support the purposeful process of change. Implementation teams use improvement cycles to change on purpose. Improvement cycles are based on the Plan, Do, Study, Act process. Improvement Cycles help us identify challenges, solve problems, improve practices, and create hospitable environments for new ways of work.
Key Takeaways
- Rapid-cycle problem-solving is one type of improvement cycle that uses the Plan, Do, Study, Act process. It is typically used to solve emergent or urgent problems that are impacting the roll-out or use of the innovation or to make quick, incremental improvements.
- Usability testing is used to test the feasibility and impact of a new way of work prior to rolling it out more broadly. Usability testing consists of a planned series of tests of an innovation, components of an innovation, or implementation processes for improvement.
- Practice-policy feedback loops are another example of an improvement cycle process. Practice-Policy Feedback Loops are established to ensure that barriers to effective practice are brought to the attention of policy makers, sound policy that strengthens implementation is maintained, and transparent processes exist to support the development of policy enabled practices and practice informed policies.
- A Transformation Zone is “vertical slice” of the system; small enough to be manageable and large enough to ‘disturb’ and impact key aspects of the system, yet not impact the entire system. The intention is to develop the systems and infrastructure that will be needed for successful implementation, sustainability, and scale-up.