Gap Analysis

Gap Analysis is the analysis of the difference between two states. It is used to identify the gaps or potential improvement opportunities. For financial or sales domain, it is the analysis of actual or current financial/sales performance with that of the projected financial/sales performance.

In the same way, in process consulting, gap analysis is the tool used to identify gaps in the current process ('As-Is' process). Gaps are identified using either an industry accepted process framework, like ITIL, or an ideal scenerio as a reference. All of these identified gaps maps to potential improvement opportunities.  These are then used to define the new process ('To-Be' process).

Baseline:

Baseline is the current state or the 'As-Is' state used as a reference point or benchmark - for our consideration it is the 'As-Is' state of the process.

Gap Analysis & Continuous Improvement

New process is defined or existing process is improved (referred to as 'To-Be' process) using the existing process as a reference or baseline. For continuous improvement, newly defined 'To-Be' process becomes the 'As-Is' process or the new baseline.

So everytime gap analysis is performed in order to identify further improvement opportunities. These identified gaps are then improved upon in the new 'To-Be' process. This eventually becomes a continuous improvement cycle.