Lean and Six Sigma can be used in IT in several areas:

a) Improve quality (bug-free) of the IT product/service.

b - Reduce the cost of service (minimize non-value added costs)

c) Improve utilization of servers and other hardware resources

d) Reduce the time to deliver products & services (project management)

e) Improve workplace organization (including emails etc)

f) Improve employee productivity

g) Improve customer satisfaction scores

h) Ensure products are robust to customer usage

i) Improve sales & marketing activities

j) Reduce setup times for product features

 

Hi,

I am working as a Business Owner(Business Analyst ) of a global application in my organisation.

I am involved in a lot of IT activities like roadmap design, performing UAT, performing detailed analysis on the RFC's and RFQ's. Interacting with clients understanding their requirements and designing a functional and technical impact analysis report etc.

I am planning to run a sigma project on the same.

Can you please suggest me with some ideas refering to my activities mentioned above that what should I focus on during this Project ?

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Hi Kapil,

DMAIC is applicable for situations where you have a chronic issue rather than for situations when you are developing a process from scratch.

If you have several project ideas, pick a project that gives you the biggest benefit (returns) and which can be completed with the smallest resources (time, capital expenditures etc).

Let's look at UAT: What are your main concerns with User Acceptance Testing in the past? Is it the cost of such a testing, the time it takes to complete UAT or the number of defects observed at this final stage or the number of cases that pass through UAT but still cause dissatisfaction at the customer end? The data you collect on the above for your specific company, may guide you to one area you can focus on to get rid of those problems in the future and you can use a Six Sigma process to identify the root causes of the problems and come up with solutions to get rid of them.

SJ