Bhuvaneswari Rajamani

For all related to IT through software development / maintenance, You can leverage six sigma tools for troubleshooting issues in a software application. It need not be a complete DMAIC project. I recently used few of the six sigma tools in such case. One of the automated batch operations (Job1) was failing randomly. We tried to collect the data and wanted to see if there is any specific pattern in which the jobs are failing. We could do this analysis and nail down the actual issue within 4-5 hours as opposed to 2-3 days which was spent in such analysis without using the tools. At the end of analysis, we found out the issue is due to system resource contention (database connections) between Job1 and few more jobs. Whenever the previous jobs are processing more data all resources are consumed by those jobs and when Job1 kicks off according to the schedule resources were unavailable. That's why Job1 was failing intermittently. The development team fixed this issue by changing the logic to wait for the previous jobs to complete and check if the required resources available before kicking off Job1 (and not after kicking off the job). It was an interesting analysis and outcome was a rather surprising one. Used run chart, time series plot, Pareto, scatter plot. Please share if anyone else has come across such usage for 6 Sigma tools.

Look out for one or more of the following. Partial done work / incomplete or unfinished work waiting for other department to pick up Delays People switching their tasks too frequently (too much multitasking) Too many handoffs in the process. Missed deadlines, customers, targets Lost profit, customer or business Customer complaints Time / money wasted on extra features (eg., additional details in management reports, added features in the creative work, impossible incentive promises in sales etc.)