Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma is one more you can add.

It's a combination of two parent methodologies,

Lean and Six Sigma.

The uses for Lean Six Sigma are

common in projects that have goals to save money,

improve quality, and move through processes quickly.

It also focuses on

team collaboration which promotes

a positive work environment.

The idea is that when your team feels valued,

motivation and productivity increases

and the whole process functions more smoothly.

There are five phases in the Lean Six Sigma approach.

They are define, measure, analyze,

improve, and control, commonly known as DMAIC.

DMAIC is a strategy for process improvement,

meaning you're trying to figure out

where the problems are in

the current process and fix them

so that everything runs more smoothly.

The goal of each step is to ensure

the best possible results for your project.

Just like with Waterfall and Agile,

there're more specific details for using

DMAIC and the Lean Six Sigma approach.

But what's great about the DMAIC process

is that it can be used to solve

any business problem. Let's break it down.

The first phase is to define

the project goal and what it will take to meet it.

This first phase is very similar to

the initiation phase of traditional project management.

Let's take a real scenario to illustrate.

Imagine that you are brought on as

a project manager for a large travel company to help

streamline and minimize customer service wait

times that have been

surging due to a recent sales promotion.

Before you begin working on tackling the issue,

you're going to need to define

the project goal and talk to

stakeholders about expectations for the project.

In this case, the goal is to take average wait times

down to less than 10 minutes

on average compared to 30 minutes.

Next, it's time to

measure how the current process is performing.

In order to improve processes,

DMAIC focuses on data.

Here you want to map out

the current process and locate exactly where

the problems are and what kind of

effect the problems have on the process.

Using our example, you're trying

to figure out why it's taking so

long for the travel company

to address a customer service issue.

To do this, you look at

company data like average wait times,

number of customers per day, and seasonal variations.

Then you'll set a plan for how you'll get

that data and how often to measure it.

This could look something like

having the company generate

reports on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis.

In other situations, you might have

employees or customers fill out

surveys or look at inventory,

shipping, and tracking records, things like that.

Once you have the data and measurements,

you can move on to the next phase which is analyze.

Here, you'll begin to identify gaps and issues.

In our example, after

mapping out the process and data points,

you may see that staffing is

inadequate on days where customers are the highest.

Data analysis is important for

project managers regardless of

which method you choose and we will

learn more about that in an upcoming course.

From your data, you'll have

a strong understanding of causes

and solutions to get to the next stage, improve.

Oftentimes, project managers may

want to leap straight to this phase but

really projects in process improvements should

only be made after a careful analysis.

This is the point where you present

your findings and get ready to start making improvements.

In our example, this could be

modifying staffing to address customer needs.

The last step of this cycle is control.

You've gotten the process and project to a good place,

and now it's time to implement it and keep it there.

Controlling is all about learning from the work you

did up front to put new processes

and documentation in place and continue to monitor so

the company doesn't revert back to

the old, inefficient way of doing things.

To sum it all up, you can remember DMAIC like this,

defining tells you what to measure,

measuring tells you what to analyze,

analyzing tells you what to improve,

and improving tells you what to control.

Lean Six Sigma and

the DMAIC approach are

ideal when the project goal includes

improving the current process to fix

complex or high risk problems like improving sales,

conversions, or eliminating a bottleneck,

which is when things get backed up during a process.

Following the DMAIC process

prevents the likelihood of skipping

important steps and increases

the chances of a successful project.

As a way for your team to discover

best practices that your client can use going forward,

it uses data and focuses on

the customer or end-user to solve problems in

a way that builds on previous learning so that you can

discover effective permanent solutions

for difficult problems.

There are many ways out there that break the flow of

project management into digestible phases and approaches,

all with the same end goal of

accomplishing the desired outcome

as smoothly as possible and delivering the best value.

Like I said earlier, at

Google we follow a lot of different approaches.

For instance, an engineering team releasing

a customer-focused product may

primarily use Agile when creating the product,

but decide to plug in some of the aspects of

Waterfall project management

for planning and documentation.

A customer service team might

focus on using Lean Six Sigma to improve

an experience for our users like

offering new features based on a recent analysis.

But the team might develop parts of

the code and roll out the features using

Agile iterations and sprints to allow for change.

Or one of our internal education and training teams

may focus solely on

Waterfall project management to achieve a targeted goal

of having all employees

complete an annual compliance training.

Here, Waterfall makes sense since the requirements

of the training program are fixed

and so is the deadline and goal.

The biggest takeaway is to know the various methods and

tools to be able to

confidently apply what works best for you,

your team, and the end goal.

There is no real prescription

for how to execute a project

perfectly because there're always

pieces you can't 100 percent control.

But the good news is, you can get pretty close with the

skill sets you develop through learning

about these different frameworks.

In DMAIC, the analyze step is when project managers learn what to improve by identifying gaps and issues.