Overview of Improve
Dan Bishop avatar
Written by Dan Bishop
Updated over a week ago

Improve helps teams organize and streamline improvement projects. It does this by taking all the fragmented parts of a project and bringing it together. 

Everyone can find what they need in one place. Project performance is visual and easy to understand. Plans and work are easily coordinated. And, it’s easy to share and keep everyone in the loop.

Creating a project. 

Admins can create projects for teams to use. These projects are organized by topic and geographical scope. The topic can be anything and isn’t constrained to the names of audits. The geographical scope can be a single unit or all participating units. 

Setting goals and summarizing progress on the Overview page. 

New projects start with an empty shell. Located on the Overview page of Improve, the Goal Section is a place to capture a project’s aim whether it’s a yearly performance goal or a specific, major accomplishment. 

Tracking measures and setting performance targets with Outcome Measures and Process Measures. If a project has key measures to track, they can be added on the Overview page of Improve. Outcome Measures reference data collection tools created with the Outcome tool on the top bar. Process Measures reference data collection tools created with the Audit tool on the top bar. Any added measure features a small gear where you can configure specific targets, adding a goal line and color coding.

You can further tailor your Overview page to summarize project progress by setting a default timeframe for viewing your measure's data. Default timeframes can be configured on Improve's Settings Page. A custom Project Start Date timeframe option can be configured from the project settings page. If you'd like to set up one-click fiscal year timeframe options, your sites administrator can make the changes in Manage's Institution Settings page.

Coordinating plans and work with Cards and My Tasks. 

The cards feature is a tool for coordinating work. It’s a flexible, digital workspace for anything from action plans to ideas to tests of change to anything else you can imagine. Within a card are tools to document a cards description, add card members, set a due date, add labels, setup tasks, attach files, add insights from your data, and comment. When we’ve finished the work on a card, we can archive it to indicate it’s done. From the Card List Page, users can see all of the open and archived cards, see who’s involved, see when cards are due, and more.

Cards are complemented by the feature My Tasks. In My Tasks, everyone can see all tasks assigned to them across all Cards within all Projects.

Maintaining project documentation with File Attachments and Timeline notes.

Improve helps you organize important reference documents by attaching them to the Overview page of Improve. 

Second, Improve helps you document important events through Timeline Notes. Anything from meeting minutes to important project milestones to tests of change can be recorded. Everyone can stay on the same page about what happened. These notes appear as clickable annotations on your charts to easily see how project events and data relate to each other. 

Lastly, sometimes Timeline Notes are related to work completed on a Card. So, for example, if we want a Timeline note highlighting when we decided to work on a card and when we went live with an intervention we can create a couple Timeline Note on the card. The notes will appear here on the card and appear with the other notes with a link back to the card.

Keeping others in-the-loop with Notifications and Improve Listing Page. 

You can keep others in the loop on what's happening in a project through Notifications. Located as a bell icon on the top bar, notifications share updates on key events in projects or cards you’re a member of. You can add members to a project from its settings page. And, you can add members to just a specific card as well. 

Another way to help keep others in the loop is through Improve’s Listing Page. Any user can star projects that they care about to easily find them. Users can also easily see all the projects where they’ve been added as a member. Lastly, the collections feature can be used to tag projects. 

Identifying areas for improvement in your audit data with Insights.

Insights helps you find gaps in your process data to focus on improving. Learn more about Insights.

Managing audit collection with Data Collection.

Data Collection is a sub-tool for Improve designed to you set and track audit collection over time against a collection goal. Along with collection counts over time you'll also have a table showing you audit collection counts by user account. You'll have the option to setup tracking for any audit you add to your improvement project. Learn more about Data Collection.

Improve with your teammates through Members and Notifications.

Use an improvement project's settings page to add members to give them more administrative privileges and notifications when there are project events. Learn more about Improving with your team.

Did this answer your question?