A useful tool is a Cause and Effect Matrix, a template for which is provided in the Tools Framework. It lets you score each input against each output, thus helping you identify exact targets for improvement. e.g. Improving cleanliness of the brewing vessel can reduce the soapy taste of the coffee. Fishbone Diagrams (provided in the Tools Framework) are a visual method of doing the same.

Another tool is the Five Whys. Very simply, it is about repeatedly asking why till the root cause of a problem is reached, five being a thumb rule.

Any number of tools exist for analysis – after all, the entire science of statistics is dedicated to that. A few statistical procedures are included in the Tools Framework, like the Chi-Square test (for comparing outcomes against expectations) and the Two Sample T-test (for comparing two outcomes of the same process).

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a method that helps maps failure at each step and quantify the effect of that failure on the final customer satisfaction. e.g. The fact that you may have added only 2.85 teaspoons of sugar (when the customer asked for 3) may not be noticed (low risk), while the failure to wash the cup would be (high risk). The Pugh Matrix can be used for evaluating alternatives, e.g. Which word processor might be the best fit for your operating system

On the side of enacting improvements to the process, a useful tool is Pareto analysis – what process intervention among alternatives will lead to how much of the benefit. Going back to the coffee brewing example, experimenting (and quantifying each trial) with different detergent brands might help you choose the one that reaches the target of 80% reduction in soapiness of the coffee!

Another one is to build dashboards and scorecards. By defining variables, assigning a score-line to each (say 0 to 10) and regular measurements, you can can keep track of how well or badly the intervention in the process is performing. Templates for designing dashboards are included in the Tools Framework.

These are just a few tools you can use, there are many, many more. As mentioned in the preceding blog, the choice of tactics is the critical step that determines what difference your implementation of Six Sigma makes to the process, and the financial consequences. And the philosophy of Six Sigma insists that these choices be made on the basis of methodically acquired data and objective analysis.

All the best for Six Sigma in your organization!

Assessment completed? Yes.

Team chosen and trained? Yes.

Team communications in place? Yes

Now comes when you choose the strategy and tactics – the set of tools you want to use, the key responsibilities you are handing out to each team member, the budgets and timelines.

Strategy is about knowing where you can make a difference, and choosing the methods you will use to make that difference. Tactics is about actually making that difference. Six Sigma is strategy – it can only provide direction. The tactics are many and you can choose what you are comfortable with. We will begin discussing some later in this blog.

First, choose the projects where you can make a difference. Don’t be tempted by taking on the most challenging projects first; a smaller project where you can show results faster may be more pragmatic. Decide when you are starting, and when you hope to finish it. Remember, these projections must be based on measurements, not hunches.

Processes worthy of Six Sigma consideration can be quite common across the IT industry. Based on what we studied across several IT firms, we put together a number of potential processes in the Project Ideas template – which might be helpful to you in identifying those specific processes in your firm which may be amenable to applying Six Sigma.

Once you have chosen you can use our Project Selection template to set down your actionable points firmly on paper. Some critical questions you need to get answers on are

What are the corporate objectives the project will result in (lower costs, greater efficiency, more sales etc)?
How does it benefit the customer?
Who are the people involved?
How much baseline data is available?

Set ‘tollgates’ for each step. Tollgates are points at which process transitions happen – from define to measure, measure to analyze and so on. Assign key responsibilities, and keep track of who is doing what, how trained the person is, etc. Prepare for errors and backlogs, and have a plan B if the roll-out isn’t happening as expected. In our Six Sigma Kit’s Project Management Framework we have included a Program Tracker Template (with a pre-filled example) to help you monitor your strategy.

Six Sigma is an attempt to make management processes more scientific; it thus derives much of its principles from the Scientific Method. This in turn  places a huge emphasis on keeping meticulous records, collecting as much data as is reasonably possible, making hypotheses and testing them. Making sure that you have the capability to store and process all the data is thus very important.

The first tactic comes in making definitions - called Process Mapping. This defines how many steps in a process, the relationships among the steps, and what exactly constitutes a step. Each ’step’ maybe a process in itself, for which again the exercise can be carried out. The way to do it might be to draw a ‘map’ on paper, clearly marking the boundaries between steps. At each step, also mark the cost, wastage and benefit of that step (which is how it differs from a Flowchart). Identify steps which are rate-determiners for the whole process, and steps at which key decisions (such as accept/reject) are made.

Another tool that is useful in defining processes is SIPOC, which simply lists out Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs and Customers/Clients. e.g. If the process is ‘training’ then,

Supplier = instructor.

Input = training material, course syllabus.

Customer = trainee.

Output = actual learning

Process = interaction between instructor and trainee.

Each of these must be quantifiable and therefore quantified. eg

S – qualifications and experience of instructor, success rate of students

I – textbooks, syllabus, teaching aids etc

P – hours of instruction, rate of coverage of syllabus, number of doubts cleared

O – examination of students

C – eligibility to undertake the course, level of training

More tactics in the next blog.

You got your organization committed; you’ve got your team trained. Now the onus is on you to guide the process to achieving its objectives. For that, you may be required to:

Demonstrate you can bring about positive change and enthuse everyone to participate in it.

Be a trainer, coach and mentor to everyone from line level employees to top management.

Know the business and the be able to demo nstrate how your project is critical to the desired business results.

Manage a project in its entirety – scope, requirements, resources, timelines.

Have the technical know how to collect and analyze data to decide the path forward – Six Sigma after all, depends critically on this. ‘Gut-feel’ has no place here.

Lead a team – get along with people, have good influencing skills, and motivate others.

Produce real financial results.

Have a deep knowledge of the process. Simply because you need to know the process thoroughly, so you can detect and remove defects!

Have multiple perspectives. The ability to look at a process from the eye of a client or customer is important in being able to keep the focus on customer satisfaction.

This is just the basic minimum. The Black Belt must go further, because this is the member who

Identifies Six Sigma process improvement projects.

Assists in the development of strategies to improve processes.

For this you must know Six Sigma philosophy, theory, and application tools/tactics in their entirety to attain world-class levels of quality.

The Master Black Belt must go even further – he must be able to enthuse the management to agree to Six Sigma processes, select the right people for the job, guide the entire team from A to Z, and take the ultimate responsibility. You must know your statistical principles inside out because you will be the decision-maker, and Six Sigma decisions are based strictly on data and analysis.

Detailed documentation and presentations on how to achieve each of these levels are provided in the leadership and Communications Framework.

Remember, this is really the big mountain you have to climb. Once you have reached some Six Sigma proficiency, the actual implementation of the processes will become much easier. More on that in the next blog.

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.

How does one do this?

There are five critical areas which need to be questioned.

Firstly, leadership. You need to ask whether the leadership of the company is fully committed to see it through. Do they what this is all about, are they assigning a sufficient budget and suitable staff to the process? Will they stay equally committed once the initiative has been launched? Have they included Six Sigma among the organizational goals?

This is the most critical of all steps. Several Six Sigma initiatives have failed simply because the leadership switched off after an initial period of enthusiasm. Besides, a half-completed process may leave in in the undesirable state of having an abandoned an earlier process without having finished moving to a new one.

Secondly, you need to have your people in place. If you can, get a full-time team in place, or else see to it that some level of dedication is built into it. Ask whether you are getting external Black Belt experts, or are you training internally? Are their compensation packages and rewards being tied to the results they achieve in implementing Six Sigma?

People are important because they will be the measure of how efficiently you are able to go forward. A fully committed and skilled team can achieve wonders.

Thirdly, what is your infrastructure like? This is not about equipment, because Six Sigma can actually cost nothing. But do you have all the data gathering methodologies in place? How much information are you collecting from customers and other stakeholders, how are you storing it and what tools have you got to analyze it?

This is crucial simply because reliable measurement and analysis of data is the bedrock of Six Sigma.

Fourthly, you must have a culture that respects efficiency. Do you really care about the consumer? Does your organization operate smoothly without disputes, and with a universally accepted system of rewards and incentives? Do you care for all that data you accumulate?

This is simply because Six Sigma can only help an organization that is fundamentally sound.

And Fifthly, how accountable are people in the organization going to be to Six Sigma recommendations? Are people going to implement it? Are they going to share the critical data needed for improvement?

To help you get exact data for these questions, you can use our Six Sigma Maturity Assessment Template. It gives you a step by step way of asking the right questions, and getting answers in a quantitative, measurable way.

Once these questions are answered, you can get your team in place, and begin to get them trained in how Six Sigma actually works on the ground.

First, you need to assess whether you are really ready for Six Sigma. This is because, though it seems easy and commonsensical, Six Sigma is a very demanding methodology, demanding commitment, talent, infrastructure, the right culture and accountability.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Is my organization taking this seriously? Will they have the stamina to see it through to the end?

Do I have pre-trained people to do this? Do I need to train them first?

Do I have the necessary resources to carry it through?

Have my people got the right attitude to this? Do I need to change their thinking?

Does everyone accept the accountability and responsibility that it demands?

This done, you will need to get some quick education in place so that everyone understand the jargon used, as well as is able to understand whether DMAIC, DFSS or Lean Six Sigma is required.

Then you organize your team and assign key responsibilities, according to competencies. Set the framework for communications within the team. Begin rolling out your plan, with set timelines and goals firmly in place.

Choose the set of tactics you are going to utilise to achieve your goal. Constantly keep assessing what is working, and what is not.

And finally, keep the define-measure-analyze-implement-control methodology in mind, never failing to measure everything, analyze everything before you act.

Each of these five steps has been very carefully studied by us. We have thus created a set of five templates – one for each – which we together call the Copesetic Six Sigma Framework. Each template comes with a detailed questionnaire that will help you assess – qualitatively and quantitatively – where you stand, as well as help you chart out the way forward.

In the next post, we can begin with knowing how to assess your company’s Six Sigma readiness.

While over 2/3rds of Fortune 500 companies have now implemented Six Sigma processes in some way or the other, the IT sector still seems ambivalent. For example, here is a survey of 956 organizations carried out by iSixSigma magazine.

55% organizastions have IT as a staff function in their company.

45% include IT as a strategic component of business.

Only 17% of the respondents admitted to using Six Sigma to improve IT processes.

50% of the surveyed companies rarely or never used Six Sigma to improve IT processes.

31% reported that no Six Sigma BBs or MBBs were allocated to IT in their company.

Just 21% of the respondents included IT personnel on their Six Sigma teams regularly.

58% reported that IT project development methodologies (e.g., SDLC, CMMI, PSP) are not integrated with Six Sigma methodologies.

But encouragingly, 55% reported that between 1 and 25 percent of Six Sigma projects at their company are IT related.

Less than 10 companies who had IT as a staff function were always using Six Sigma to improve IT processes.

Why would there be so much resistance to Six Sigma processes?

It may simply because of ignorance of the benefits of the method, which the earlier blogs may have gone some way to mitigate. It may be because Six Sigma calls for a dedicated number of ‘Champions’ and ‘Black Belts’ – employees with the passion and focus to implement Six Sigma from beginning to end and make it stay that way. A small IT company may not be able to afford to pay employees not in core functions. Or it may be that the initial cost of implementation presents a barrier, in spite of the potential savings generated.

When you cannot get someone to d it for you, you have to ‘do-it-yourself’. Which is inherently problematic, for there is a long learning curve, and ironically likely to strip you of much efficiency.

We identified this a critical problem, and have tried to develop a set of solutions. We reason that a set of kits, that contain extensive guidelines, examples as well step-by-step templates might be useful in enabling firms to implement Six sigma processes gradually, without having to hire or dedicated exclusive Six Sigma experts.

DFSS is used when a new process has to be implemented, as opposed to the traditional method which is used for existing processes. Once the process is active, DMAIC will come into play.

This also begins by asking you to define what you want to achieve with your new process. e.g. If you decide to build a new word-processing software, what are the exact features you want to achieve? In DFSS, it is critical that your process is so designed as to meet customer aspirations, because the prime goal of Six Sigma is to maximise customer satisfaction.

Then you must measure how ready you are to implement the process. What are the risks involved, what is your production capacity, have you got the right manpower etc. The operative term here is ‘Critical To Quality’ (CTQ) – every aspect that has a role in determining how the final output will be must be taken care of, you must have reliable data on these.

Again, like in DMAIC, you analyze and determine the best path to the end-point. This is achieved by the design of your process – what are parameters you will consider from the available data, how much error can you tolerate (every design will have its inherent defects that may not be apparent when you start out).

Once ready, begin to actually design the process. You must keep asking yourself and your team – how efficient can you make it, do you have an alternate design, how can you test alternate designs. Attention to detail is the difference maker.

The end of the design is only the beginning of the regular use of the process to achieve the new goals. Before that you must verify the design, to ensure that the process is able to consistently achieve the desired results, with no more than 3.4 DPMO. This involves doing multiple pilot runs before scaling it up to the required volumes.

Lean Six Sigma: While the DMAIC and DFSS Six Sigma processes focus on increasing efficiency and eliminating defects form the process, Lean Six Sigma has the additional goal of reducing wastage in the process. It comes from applying Six Sigma along with Lean Manufacturing.

‘Waste’ here is defined as the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of ‘value’ for the end customer. ‘Value’ is simply something the customer will pay for. E.g. while employee perks may add to the price of the product or service, the customer will not willingly pay for it.

Seven ‘wastes’ in the process, that the customer will not pay for are –

1) reworking (correcting defects);

2) overproduction (you must assess demand as accurately as possible);

3) transportation (a cost the customer will not pay for willingly);

4) inventory (storage costs);

5) motion (costs incurred in moving machinery and conveying staff);

6) idle time (an employee or equipment doing nothing is still consuming resources); and

7) inefficiencies in the process itself (which is the focus of Six Sigma).

Lean Six Sigma attempts to reduce wastage alongside improving efficiency.

Six Sigma is a concept you will have heard managers talk about all the time. You may think, well, this is a complicated procedure suitable only for big manufacturing corporations who can afford that entire infrastructure. How can it be applied to a smaller-scale IT Company like yours? After all, Six Sigma does need a special set of experts (called Black Belts), and you may be in no position to afford them.

Yes, Six Sigma is a complex process. Yet, time and again it has been shown to have helped companies reduce expenditure, improve efficiency and lead to greater customer satisfaction, which are the three goals of any for-profit organization, whether in manufacturing or services. It is doubtful if a company can continue not to implement Six Sigma and yet stay competitive, at a time when your competitors are actively adopting it.

A quick introduction to Six Sigma and its goals. A strategy pioneered by Motorola in 1986, it aims to achieve consistent and predictable results within any process, such that there are less than 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). That is, for every million repetitions of a process (say making a microchip), only 3.4 times does the product fail to meet the specifications.

You may ask, what is so great about Six Sigma. This is because every process has an intrinsic efficiency. While in the short term, the errors in the process may be tolerable, in the long-term, the errors accumulate. Why Six Sigma is able to make such a big difference is that it is not just about improving efficiency, but maintaining that state in the long term. For this, a systematic methodology must be followed, that sets clear measurable financial goals at each step, often supervised by a dedicated ‘Champion’.

Three ways of Six Sigma are followed globally – DMAIC, DFSS and Lean Six Sigma.

DMAIC: This methodology has five steps – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve And Control.

You must clearly define everything before you start – what the current status is (the starting point), and what the project’s endpoints are, in terms of manpower, equipment, and money. e.g. You want to define your project as reducing turnaround time from four days to three for a database-building project.

For this you must measure everything in the current process – what is the number of people on the project, how much time do they spend actually working on it, what is each person’s processivity etc.

Then you analyze that data using statistical and other methods, to find out the causal relationships between components of the process. e.g. You may find that a lot of time goes into training of newbies.

You take steps to improve the process. In this case to speed it up (since your goal is speed) you keep only trained and experienced personnel on the project.

The last step of control is very important, because you must ensure that your goal state, once achieved, does not fall back to the previous state. In the above example, you do this by ensuring that no inadequately-trained person is assigned to the database project, and that those working on it remain motivated to see it through to its logical conclusion.