Find out more about how the Improvement Tools, and other content on the Improvement Network, helped one user tackle budgeting and change management issues in the workplace.

1) What prompted you/your organisation to use the Improvement Network?

I came across a link to the website (cannot recall how exactly) and thought the materials looked interesting.

2) What particular content or Improvement Tools did you first look at and why?

1. Change Management Improvement Tool because I was tasked with making organisational changes in my area and wanted to do some research before deciding on my plan/approach.
2. Finance Fundamentals Improvement Tool - specifically 'What is a budget?
3. Financial Management National Studies - specifically Audit Commission (2005) World class financial management.

3) Did you adapt any case study/guidance/Improvement Tool to suit your particular workplace situation? If so, how?

I suggested adopting a Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) approach as outlined in the Improvement Network guidance which says this allows funds to be allocated "in line with the needs determined by the current strategy". At the time we were considering devolution of budgets and I was looking to develop a model that would allow my manager to profile his costs and track expenditure against predictions. Being a relatively new team we had no historic data of costs and so ZBB was a better option than Incremental budgeting. The budgets have not yet been devolved but the exercise was useful and allowed me to better understand the need for budgets and to identify some possible controls.

The financial management study outlined a "peer review", which I thought would also be useful practice - not just in the financial area but also in an exercise to specify requirement for an improved IT service. To explain further - I am an IT process lead for Incident and Problem Management and have colleagues who perform similar functions for other aspects of the IT service such as Change and Release and Service Level Management. I suggested that, once we had determined our individual requirements, we get together for a peer review to validate individual assumptions and engender consistency across the processes, providing better value for money and strengthening our requirements.

All the Process Leads did a brief presentation explaining their requirements and allowing for questions. This worked well and provided a vehicle to share useful information across the overall team. It also allowed us to identify areas where we could better integrate and work together to deliver the overall service.

4) What have been the short-term benefits so far, and what do you anticipate the longer-term benefits will be for you and your staff from using the Improvement Network?

The Improvement Network is a good place to start to look at what's going on in the public sector. Sometimes it helps to know we are all being challenged with similar issues such as 'more for less'. It provides a good source of information about how colleagues are implementing a practical approach to issues/problems, and some of the material provides useful training - or refreshes my memory about past learning.

5) Do you intend to measure impact?

Measurement in my area is proving difficult as I don't produce tangible outputs. As for impact of the Improvement Network itself - it adds value for the reasons I have outlined above to me personally, and to my department in the changes I have implemented using some of the information I got from the website.

6) Have you recommended other staff to visit the Improvement Network website and/subscribe to access the free Improvement Tools for their own personal development needs?

Yes, some of my staff already have access to the Improvement Tools.

7) Are there other topic areas you plan to look at? If so, which ones and why?

I would like to study some of the management development case studies as I'll be embarking on a senior management programme this year.

Note: The responses to these questions were provided by Sue Giles, a Corporate IT Incident and Problem Manager at the Department for Work & Pensions.