1. Aim: Which of your goals is this change idea driving towards?
2. Selecting Change Idea to Test: What change idea are you looking to test? Where did the change come from (e.g., Resource Hub, evidence, bright spot, creativity exercise, other). In what way will this change your system or process?
3. Goal of this PDSA Cycle: What is the first test (or if not the first, just a test) you can run of this change?
Is there a way to shrink the change to a small test that you could run relatively quickly?
Think of “oneness”: one client, one form, one day. Also think about whether you could test this by “next Tuesday”.
It’s great you have action steps already outlined, what is the test you see yourself running here? Is this a task or a test?
Remember, a test is a change to the system. You may identify some tasks that help you prepare to run the test, but that isn’t the test.
4. Questions to Answer: Complete the sentence “If we do _______, will it result in ______?”
What is it you hope to learn from the test you are running?
When you run this test, what you are curious about?
Do you think the test you are running will answer those questions?
(If not, maybe run a different test!) Anything else? Anything else?
5. Prediction: Complete the sentence “ when we do this____, we think _____ will happen.”
What do you think will happen when you run the test?
What do you think the answers to your questions will be?
Where do you have confidence and where are you unsure? (Some folks need to build out the plan part of the test before going through the data collection plan, and vice versa. Either way is fine.)
6. Data Collection: How will you know this test is successful? For data collection, Who, What, Where, When? Are there other ways you would measure success? (Qualitative and Quantitative)
How will you discern the answers to the questions you’ve posed?
Who will be responsible for collecting this data and reporting back to the group?
Is there a way you can simplify this data collection and make it back of the napkin?
Think data for improvement - we only need enough to know if we’re heading in the right direction! Is this scrappy enough?
7. Plan: What are the steps and who is responsible for running the test?
Who will run the rest?
Where will it happen?
When will it happen?
Do you have a plan for when and where you’ll “Study” the test? It may help to plan the size of your test to the duration you have in between team meetings: if you meet weekly, run one test per week.
In order to encourage “ramps” of PDSAs around a change idea, it is helpful to ask a team “If this test were successful, what kind of a test would you run next?” (e.g., the same test with predicted revisions; testing with several more clients; testing in a variety of conditions (day shift to night shift, paid staff vs. volunteer staff, etc.)
If you get push back to the data collection plan for a PDSA, ask them to describe a scenario in which they could collect the data. (e.g., “I could collect the data if it only took 15 minutes.” or “I could collect data if we did it as part of a team meeting rather than scheduling time to do it.”)