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Gold Medal Winner of the 2015 Axiom Book Award for best business theory book!

The Definitive Guide to Process Improvement and Operational Excellence

Today’s business environment demands faster responses, better service, and increased agility. The Process Improvement Handbook reveals how to design effective process improvement structures, organizations, and cultures to meet those needs. Focusing on specific process improvement knowledge areas, this practical work establishes the foundation required to create, maintain, and measure processes while equipping practitioners with the necessary skills to deliver consistent, successful outcomes.

This definitive resource introduces a body of knowledge for anyone looking to improve their operating environment. The result is process self-sufficiency, extensibility, sustainability, higher quality, and overall speed that increases competitive advantage. The principles explained in this book encapsulate everything needed to be more “process mature,” and to enable process excellence from start to finish.

Coverage includes:



The process improvement overview
Process maturity
Process-Oriented Architecture (POA)
Creating a process ecosystem
Managing process improvements
The process improvement organization
Process improvement aptitudes
Case examples
Process improvement templates and instructions



Praise for The Process Improvement Handbook

“I believe that this is a book that will end up with many yellow highlights in almost every chapter. You are wise to buy this book; you’ll be even wiser if you apply its contents to the way your organization functions.” —H. James Harrington, Ph.D., prolific author of over 35 Process Improvement books, CEO Harrington Institute

“Tristan Boutros and Tim Purdie have delivered a true gift to all business process management professionals, and to the business community as a whole. Comprehensive in scope, deliberate in focus, deep in expert knowledge, and highly practical in its wisdom, The Process Improvement Handbook enables the reader to put it all together and take a more integrative approach to improving business performance. With so much already written on the topic of process improvement, the authors tackle the challenge of differentiation head on by defining a compelling business case for this work—identifying critical links to other enterprise management disciplines and defining key contributions to organizational agility and value innovation. If real knowledge is less a matter of knowing everything and more about knowing where to find everything, then this book is an indispensable resource for everyone seeking answers to performance challenges.” —Joseph A. Braidish, Director of Consulting and Training, Rummler-Brache Group

“Boutros and Purdie present a framework that is invaluable for any organization looking to improve its processes (and what organization isn’t looking to do that). Concise, clear, and credible, this handbook is full of ideas and approaches that will benefit anyone working with Process Improvement.” —Mike Jacka, author of Business Process Mapping: Improving Customer Satisfaction, Second Edition

“Finally, we have book that takes Process Improvement from theory to templates. There are a lot of books that poke at pieces of Process Improvement structure, but this book finally takes us across the entire spectrum. It is invaluable in two ways: it is a valuable resource for identifying and understanding the role and impact of a process within an organization, and it is a valuable ongoing ref