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Harvesting The Benefits Of Both Lean And Six Sigma In IT

The IT industry has not been untouched by the variations and defects. Though many times IT technology is the solution to help reduce variations and defects, IT sector companies are themselves facing situation that necessitate them to apply improvement methodologies like Six Sigma.

Six Sigma is very popular with IT companies, because it provides them with a good solution to increase their capabilities and services.

Efforts are now undertaken to use the benefits of the integrated approach of Lean and Six Sigma Certification in the IT industry to bring about better results with reduced defects, as well as reduced waste.

Challenges Faced By Software Companies

The IT industry, like the manufacturing industry, is faced with a few challenges. The biggest problem is the length of the project. Projects take too long to complete beyond set deadlines.

Not just the data oriented tools, but the lack of knowledge base in the industry is an area of concern. On some occasions, companies have not been able to utilize the DMAIC methodology properly for software development projects. Once the projects are completed, the teams disperse - and Six Sigma remains limited to that project itself.

The solution to this scenario is the integration of Lean tools and methods with Lean Six Sigma. They can complement very each other very well, and bring about improvement in areas that are faced with the high rate of variation and waste. Variations are the results of defects, which Six Sigma helps to tackle.

It is difficult to identify the total wastes, and this is where Lean can be very useful.

Typical areas of waste that the software companies need to tackle, as do manufacturing companies, are over production, inventory, defects, and transportation and so on. Over-production is about adding too many features and functions, while inventory focuses on the requirements.

When extra steps are added and additional reviews are made, it increases the processing steps. Defects are the biggest cause, which relates to the bugs that remain in spite of the testing undertaken.

There are also delays due to delayed decision making and in handing over the project.

IT Projects - The Lean Way

The best way to bring about improvements is to use Lean concepts and tools to assess such concern areas of the project that are responsible for the drawbacks.

By undertaking such an assessment, or in other words “leaning out” the processes, it becomes easy to analyze and examine the quality issues using Six Sigma tools and techniques. The causes for variation can be figured out with the help of various Six Sigma tools. This approach of leaning out projects to be taken under the Six Sigma scanner yields good results in the selected process areas.

When IT companies want to bring about changes and improvements in their processes, they can use the Lean framework to workout those problems that are immediately identifiable, such as inventory.

This opportunity can be used quickly to achieve the improvement opportunity. Further detailed Lean diagnosis is done to capture the value of the process, where the scope and complexity of the project is minimal.

As the analysis covers a larger scope of the project and moves towards achieving cost reduction by identifying the cost of poor quality, organizations are able to bring down such costs to a large extent.

It cannot be a one solution for everyone. With the coordinated efforts of Six Sigma and Lean, relevant problem areas can be sorted out properly, and advantages of both achieved for overall success of the improvement process.