Archive for the 'Six Sigma' Category

What Six Sigma Black Belts Must Know

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The success of any Six Sigma initiative depends on the ability of the professionals, who are entrusted with the task of implementing the 6 Sigma concepts and methodologies. Business organizations often employ Six Sigma Black Belts, who are qualified and certified by the parent company. However, qualification and certification are not the only prerequisites. Black Belts are required to exhibit the requisite skills, experience and creativity to overcome basic organizational challenges.Black Belts Should Have All The Basic Skills

Six Sigma Black Belts ought to be equipped to employ all the statistical tools and techniques adopted, to reduce shortcomings and improve the efficiency of the existent business processes. The implementation of the statistical tools enables them to use the available data to set company specific goals and objectives. They should be able to develop a detailed action-plan to achieve these objectives.

While implementing the 6 Sigma concepts and methodologies, these professionals should be able to measure and quantify the effect of the Six Sigma initiatives on the quality of the products and services, within the set time frame. They should be able to set up effective control systems to maintain the achieved quality standards. After achieving the desired results, they should be able to effectively communicate the essence of the strategy to the participants, to take the organization to the next level of 6 Sigma quality standards.

Black Belts Should To Be Aware Of The Technicalities

Black Belts should be able to measure the existing PPM or Parts Per Million rates of the organization. This refers to the number of defects that occur per million opportunities. After assessing the current PPM rate, they should be able to create a detailed plan to achieve the Six Sigma PPM rates, which are 3.4 defects per million opportunities. They are expected to measure the current COPQ or Cost of Poor Quality too. This refers to the cost incurred due to the manufacture of defective pieces. After measuring the current COPQ, they should be able to implement the necessary steps to achieve the Six Sigma COPQ levels.

Apart from these calculations, they should be able to effectively employ all the 6 Sigma tools and techniques, such as QFD Matrix or Quality Function Deployment, central tendency, dispersion, regression analysis, linear and non-linear analysis, cost scheduling, Chi-square analysis and quantitative trend analysis. They should also be conversant with the basic probability concepts, factorials, permutations and combinations and the common probability distributions, like hyper geometric, binomial, Poisson, normal, exponential and chi-square.

Other Things That Black Belts Should Know

In addition to the Six Sigma strategy adopted, the Black belts are expected to be aware of the fact that the success of any 6 Sigma initiative depends on the co-operation between the Six Sigma professionals, employees of the company and the management. They should be able to establish effective and regular communication channels between the various entities involved in the 6 Sigma project. Most importantly, Six Sigma Black Belts should be aware of all the different methodologies that help in completing a 6 Sigma project, within the stipulated time frame.

About the Author

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution’s Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

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Six Sigma and Agile Software Development

The term Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) describes a class of methodologies for software development where the system grows incrementally through a series of complete development cycles. Agile software development methods are a group of specific iterative methodologies that combine relatively short iterations with evolutionary refinement of the requirements, plans and targets across each subsequent iteration.
In our experience, agile and iterative methodologies are more reliable and lower risk than using more traditional ‘waterfall’ style methods for software development. We have also found that various Agile software methods such as eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Unified Process (UP) and Evo supply important and useful paradigms for reliable delivery of software development projects.

Editors Note: Agreed, but sometimes extremely difficult to change the waterfall mindset

We believe that one potential weakness of these methods is the reliance on regular ongoing testing between iterations to ensure software quality, without providing specific processes or tools to define or facilitate this testing. We have successfully utilized the Six Sigma problem solving methodology DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) within each iteration to improve the reliability of the software development process. The key to the success of this methodology is its focus on using data-driven tools to identify what is to be changed and then to monitor the actual impact of changes in a feedback loop.
Most software project failures are the result of business needs not being correctly understood or by overly optimistic software development estimates. These errors lead to long delays and large cost overruns. The traditional mechanism for ensuring that requirements are understood and that estimates are accurate is to engage in lengthy up-front analysis, design and planning. Unfortunately this approach is inflexible and is inappropriate for the majority of real-world projects. Agile methods use an iterative approach to ensure that flexibility is an inherent component of the project however this can lead to a lack of clarity as to whether the deliverable is tracking to goal. By applying Six Sigma concepts of defining, quantifying and measuring key delivery factors we can monitor overall delivery and quality of the resulting software without resorting to “analysis paralysis” in the early stages.
The specific parameters to be measured and analyzed will be project dependent and should relate directly to the ultimate end-user functionality of the software being developed. In addition, we have found that some useful key indicators for software quality include measurements of numbers of defects found in a test cycle, the percentage of rework per iteration (the number of requirements which need to be re-implemented during one cycle) and the number of new features which are logged after one cycle.
We believe that Six Sigma provides a framework and effective tools that support reliable Agile software development project delivery. Based on our experience, we strongly recommend combining Six Sigma with Agile and Iterative software development methodologies.

Chris Young is the founder of White Water Consulting (http://www.whitewater.com.au) and is a senior consultant with a broad knowledge and experience in financial services, change management and information technology. His areas of focus include delivering business-aligned IT strategy and implementing best practices in process improvement, project management and software development process. White Water Consulting provides practical solutions to designing and implementing information technology strategy. By remaining independent of solutions and solution providers White Water Consulting can concentrate on your actual business needs and recommend strategies that are pragmatic and cost effective.

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Six Sigma In The Software Industry

Six Sigma in the software industry must have caused a few eyelids to bat in its early days. Six Sigma in manufacturing is completely understandable. For the same logic to apply to software products, it still has a long way to go to establish itself. However, for the moment it is safe to assume that there exist factors within the software industry that contribute to the shift that we discussed above. This also makes way for examples such as constant changing tools like hardware & software, decline in adherence to procedures, etc.Level of CMM© At Which Six Sigma Can Be AppliedSix Sigma needs to be applied a bit differently when it comes to software service companies. For a company intending to streamline their processes, Six Sigma contributes well by way of helping to refine the mechanism.

It may not seem too practical to talk about defect-free processes so that you can begin implementation. The need here is the road map for organizations to work on defect control targets in stages. CMM level 1 and level 2 companies may find Six Sigma to be ideal to augment their framework application procedures for defect reduction. Levels above 3 will have attained the maturity levels sufficient for immediately implementing framework of measurement practices and will proceed further. At the mature levels of CMM 4 and 5, you can establish the complex metrics of ‘true’ Six Sigma to maximize leverage.

Techniques of Six Sigma for Software

As with manufacturing, the fundamental step is to begin with ‘the customer is always right’ approach. You can use a number of metrics, tools and charts to define customer specifications for critiquing and analyzing various parameters such as cost, quality and schedules at different levels.

There is no reason why Six Sigma will not go beyond cosmetic improvements and changes in the software industry. The ‘goal questioning metric’ or GQM, may be made use of in combination with other tools. The GQM technique combines well with the DMAIC model of Six Sigma. This is especially helpful, especially with Six Sigma being more focused on data- driven techniques.

Editor’s Note: The following paragraph text has been made bold for emphasis.

However, you must keep in mind that when applying Six Sigma in your organization, it is necessary that suitability of a chosen tool or technique is established beforehand.

The Big Question

The big question as to whether Six Sigma can really be applied as successfully in the software industry as it was to manufacturing is still being debated. The real challenge is to see if it can be implemented without reinventing the wheel. There is also disagreement among leaders in the software industry about the need for Six Sigma.

One possible solution is that the proven processes of CMM, PSP and ISO can always contribute while Six Sigma can be used a complimentary tool.

About the Author

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution’s Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

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