CQI Tools

Quality Improvement Team Charter

A team charter is a useful tool for pulling your CQI team together. The purpose of a team charter is to lay out the roles and responsibilities for each team member and lay the foundation of how your team will work together on CQI projects. This Charter tool includes examples of partnership principles and helpful communication plan elements.

Plan-Do-Study-Act Planning Tool

The Plan-Do-Study-Act Planning Tool is intended to help you think through the important details of a PDSA cycle. The tool should be used in preparation for testing a change and revisited once the test is completed to document what was learned and what your team’s next steps will be (i.e., repeat the test, add the change to your program’s process, abandon the change).

Review our sample PDSA Planning Tool with instructions provided in each of the fields.

Smart Aim Worksheet*

Your team can use Smart Aim criteria to make clear statements about what you are going to improve in your CQI project. Using these criteria helps you to be concise and specific as you plan your test of change. Smart aims are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound. Attached is a Smart Aim worksheet from the Embracing Quality in Public Health: A Practitioner’s Quality Improvement Guidebook.

Process Mapping Overview

A process map is a tool to understand how an existing process works or to identify how a new process should work. Process mapping can be helpful to your team’s CQI work, as you focus on improving existing program processes. This overview provides the benefits of process mapping, and the types, examples, and steps for completing process maps.

Fishbone Diagram

A fishbone diagram is a tool used to conduct a root cause analysis during the planning phase of a CQI project. It can help your team to better understand why a problem occurs (the root cause) and prevent you from jumping to a solution before fully understanding the cause. This tool provides steps for completing a fishbone diagram, strategies for success, an example, and a fillable diagram to get you started.