The above diagram shows a 3-tier structure that represents 3 stages, 3 teams, and 3 projects, but one goal: to find gold in our old business processes.

1. The foundation of the entire plan is an intranet connected to a relational database. This infrastructure is used to support the collection and distribution of data to all participants. This is hard technical work.

2. The balanced scorecard provides a management system based on measurements of the cycle time and cost of processes, employee growth and satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and financial data. The metrics for the balanced scorecard are defined with reference to the strategic plan, so they can be used to assess alignment with this strategic plan. This project contains some hard work: defining the proper metrics, and periodically collecting the data.

3. The measurement system provided by the balanced scorecard allows us to measure processes and subprocesses, to identify candidates for improvement, and to make the improvements - this is the Business Process Improvements Project. This is where the gold is! We should expect to find significant overall cost reductions by the application of BPI analysis to some of these antiquated processes that have not been examined for decades.

Notice that the development of the three projects can be managed by conventional project management, but the balanced scorecard itself is not a project: it is a perpetual system that will be built into the information infrastructure of the agency. Also, the BPI efforts may be managed continuously, rather than as focused projects.