Project managers understand that improving business results isn’t something that happens naturally – or easily. It is a result of managing key business processes and improving key performance metrics.
Six Sigma’s tools and methods are effective at improving an organization’s processes because Six Sigma and (PM) are similar in many ways. Both continually seek new techniques to effectively manage projects and teams, both exist in a “world” of life cycles and phases, and both require a competent and highly skilled project facilitator to lead a team toward project success.
For any key metric to be improved, the underlying process must be improved as well. Here are the 5 key steps to implementing Six Sigma and improving your organization’s business processes.
Define and Plan
Like many projects, a Six Sigma project starts with defining and planning to ensure the project is initially planned correctly. During this step, project managers establish timelines, train all stakeholders on the DMAIC steps, develop a project charter, build teams and acquire proper sponsorship from executives and other stakeholders.
During this step, key measures must be agreed upon that align the business’ strategy to the project, and these measure should illustrate sustained improvement in order to be successful.
Measure
Many teams skip this critical step, and doing so can cause lasting ramifications. In the measure step, teams should develop a plan to collect data and ensure the accuracy of the measurement system. Data may be specifically needed but not available, available but not accurate, available but not helpful, or available but too much or too little in quantity.
During this stage, charts may also be created to help team members better understand the process and any important issues to note.
Analyze
Once data has been gathered and charts have been created, team members should begin searching for clues as to how processes may be improved through key metrics. They should then utilize statistical tools to stratify data and decide on the logical next steps, identify any issues, constraints, or bottlenecks, and focus on key measure drivers.
Verify and Validate
Before final process changes can be implemented, recommendations must first be verified and validated. Without testing and validation, there is no real way to ensure that a recommendation will make a positive and sustained difference – which is the ultimate goal of every Six Sigma project.
Control
Once improvements have been verified and validated, the new process must be implemented and then handed off to the ultimate process owners. During this step the organization must be trained on the data collection plan and on how to interpret and maintain the key metric charts. An audit and reaction plan will also be put into place at this juncture which will ensure that the improvements are maintained over the long term so that organizations don’t find themselves continuously “fixing” the same problems over and over again.
Improving business processes is important to every organization and project managers are typically there to lead the improvement efforts. Incorporating Six Sigma methodologies into projects helps project managers lead teams more effectively and discover more, longer-lasting breakthrough results.
