Once you have figured out that your organization is mature enough to implement Six Sigma (or you have brought it up to that maturity), you need to put together a core team and get a quick education on what it takes to get going. You will need to know the critical differences between DMAIC and DFSS since you can implement only one of them. You will need to know whether Lean management may have to go with it. And being an IT organization, you may already be implementing ITIL or CMMI – so you will need to know how you can use Six Sigma to complement these.

We have put together a few documents (the Education and Awareness Framework) to help you get started. Firstly, you need to identify the critical processes in your organization to which you are going to apply Six Sigma, and the problems you face within them. If the problem is simple, you can use Root Cause Analysis (RCA).If the problem is complex, you may need to apply DMAIC. If the problem is really bad, you may have to scrap the process and begin afresh with a DFSS method. Our framework can help determine where to start.

That apart, you may be implementing (or planning to implement) ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). This is a best practices framework for developing and executing IT service management. An organization that implements an ITIL framework does it chiefly to avail cost advantages due to streamlining of IT processes and better internal customer satisfaction.

Will this clash with Six Sigma? No.

The purpose of Six Sigma is to improve the efficiency of the process, to ensure that it yields defect-free results 99.9997% of the time. Whereas, ITIL prescribes the processes you need too have in your organization for meeting best practices standards. e.g. ITIL prescribes that you define and implement an Incident Management Process. What you can do is use Six Sigma methods to design (DFSS) or implement (DMAIC) the Incident Management Process.

CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is a framework that sets process improvement benchmarks, goals, and measures for software development teams. Six Sigma is a much more generic methodology, suitable for any organization. CMMI and Six Sigma are generally mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, you can choose to implement Six Sigma for functions of your organization not involving software development.

Once you have assessed what form and level of Six Sigma you need, you can use our presentation to start training your team members on Six Sigma processes. There are three training levels – green belt, Black Belt and Master Black Belt, for each of which there is a certification you can obtain.