What is “Six Sigma”?
Six Sigma is a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and maximizing business success. Period.
What makes Six Sigma different? Six Sigma is uniquely driven by a close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing, improving, and reinventing business processes (from the book The Six Sigma Way by Pande, Neuman, and Cavanagh).
The Six Sigma methodology is based on the concept that “process variation” (e.g., customer waiting times at a call center waiting varying between ten seconds and three minutes) can be reduced using statistical tools.
The ideal goal is to fix a process so that it will be 99.9997% defect free or produce only 3.4 Defects per million opportunities or less!
For example, this could mean 3-4 broken light bulbs in one million produced, or 3-4 customer calls with waiting times more than one minute. From a statistical standpoint, this means that a process centered at the target has six Standard Deviations (sigma) between the process mean (the target) and the nearest specification limit.
From Moresteam.com, August, 2012
Motorola, who is generally credited for developing Six Sigma in the mid 1980’s, gives the best definition I’ve seen:
“… we think about Six Sigma at three different levels:
- As a metric
- As a methodology
- As a management system
Essentially, Six Sigma is all three at the same time.”
“…Six Sigma as a Metric: The term “Sigma” is often used as a scale for levels of ‘goodness’ or quality. Using this scale, ‘Six Sigma’ equates to 3.4 defects per one million opportunities (DPMO). Therefore, Six Sigma started as a defect reduction effort in manufacturing and was then applied to other business processes for the same purpose..”
“…Six Sigma as a Methodology: As Six Sigma has evolved, there has been less emphasis on the literal definition of 3.4 DPMO, or counting defects in products and processes. Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology that focuses an organization on:
- Understanding and managing customer requirements
- Aligning key business processes to achieve those requirements
- Utilizing rigorous data analysis to minimize variation in those processes
- Driving rapid and sustainable improvement to business processes..”
“..At the heart of the methodology is the DMAIC model for process improvement. DMAIC is commonly used by Six Sigma project teams and is an acronym for:
- Define opportunity
- Measure performance
- Analyze opportunity
- Improve performance
- Control performance..”
“…Six Sigma Management System: Through experience, Motorola has learned that disciplined use of metrics and application of the methodology is still not enough to drive desired breakthrough improvements and results that are sustainable over time. For greatest impact, Motorola ensures that process metrics and structured methodology are applied to improvement opportunities that are directly linked to the organizational strategy. When practiced as a management system, Six Sigma is a high performance system for executing business strategy. Six Sigma is a top-down solution to help organizations:
- Align their business strategy to critical improvement efforts
- Mobilize teams to attack high impact projects
- Accelerate improved business results
- Govern efforts to ensure improvements are sustained..”
“…The Six Sigma Management System drives clarity around the business strategy and the metrics that most reflect success with that strategy. It provides the framework to prioritize resources for projects that will improve the metrics, and it leverages leaders who will manage the efforts for rapid, sustainable, and improved business results..”
© Copyright 1994-2005 Motorola, Inc.
Agile is an umbrella term for a family of methodologies that adhere to the philosophy, values and principles set forth in the Agile Manifesto. The Manifesto was developed in 2001 by thought leaders in the software development space as “…a reaction against heavyweight methodologies that were popular, yet crippling software projects from actually doing what they needed to do – create software that helped the customer!”1 The applicability of Agile as a management approach outside of software development has recently come to light too, as described here. Be careful though, as Agile is becoming a buzzword and some organizations tout themselves as Agile. Are they?
HBC’s best practices include Scrum and Lean. Scrum is an Agile methodology. Agile was heavily influence by Lean.
The Agile Manifesto’s values:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan2
Sometimes these values are misunderstood, so it is important to clarify that the Manifesto is not discarding plans, contracts, documentation, processes or tools. Rather they are underlining the relative importance of change, customer collaboration, delivering early and often, and the importance of individuals and their interactions. For example, the relationship and collaboration you have with your customer drives success much more than your contract.
The Agile Manifesto’s principles:
1) Highest priority is customer satisfaction.
2) Welcome changing requirements.
3) Frequent delivery of software.
4) Business people & developers cooperating daily.
5) Build projects around motivated people.
6) Progress measured by working software.
7) Sustainable development pace.
8) Continuous attention to technical excellence.
9) Simplicity.
10) Self-organizing teams.3
1Abby Fichtner thehackerchicksblog.com January 2nd, 2012
2agilemanifesto.org
3agilemanifesto.org/principles
Lean Six Sigma is a customer focused change strategy that improves business performance. Scroll down to ‘So how did it become Lean Six Sigma’ here.
PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential is the most important industry-recognized certification for project managers. Globally recognized and demanded, the PMP® demonstrates … the experience, education and competency to lead and direct projects.
PMI.org August, 2012
Commonly known as RUP, for Rational Unified Process (acquired by IBM from Rational Software Corporation in 2003), the generic name is UP (Unified Process). Read about it here.