Six sigma WTF?



  • Interesting variation on "plz send me teh codes" - "plz send me teh Six Sigma thesis"...

    By the way, why can't we have cool green/yellow/black belts in software development?  I mean, real belts?



  • Belts? Real programmers code in the nude.



  • I have worked at the birth place of 6 sigma and have heard and seen horror stories about people being forced into doing projects in order to obtain the management required certifications. They basically revolve around staff having to stop working direct billable hours and start working on green belt status projects in order that they can be blessed by management as being capable of doing the job the have been doing for years. In extreme examples I have heard of staff being brought in to fake the green belt projects so that the original staff can continue with their billable projects without interruption.



  • I work for a Japanese Company in the UK , we have a modified version of 6Sigma thats been doing the rounds since 2000.

    It was quite amusing at the beginning as this got rolled out started up and all these uttlerly meaningless stats got published - " Ooh , our call center defects went down from 3.4 per million , to 2.1 per million, yay! We're so good a 6Sigma <Little Dance>".

    Everyone else in the company was wondering how you define a defect in something like Customer service.

    Then it caught on that if you had a '6 Sigma' project it was higher priority than the boring everyday projects that actually had justification beyond ' its 6Sigma, so its IMPORTANT' so everyone was running round trying to get their 6Sigma project in and ahead of everyone else.

    We ended up with the situation where every project was 6Sigma  and so important that its A1 priority . In the end we just did them in the order that made sense and rejected those that were utterly stupid. So much for 6Sigma. 

    Its calmed down now as the more idiotic things have run their course, and we don't actually have anyone who knows how it should work.

     

     

     

     



  • @UriGagarin said:

    Everyone else in the company was wondering how you define a defect in something like Customer service.

    I have seen that too. One typical measure is cases closed. And you can achieve that either by being really good at your customer service, or really bad.



  •  Well Cases closed might have been used , but the metrics were never actually stated , for any of the projects - just "we've gone down from 7.4 defect/million to 2.4" or whatever. Like you say that kind of metric can be achieved by being crap or great . 

    So it was utterly meaningless to anyone - personally I doubted they were measuring the right thing in the first place. 



  • Cases closed doesn't really measure quality when (as one of our groups does) you change the disposition of most cases from "bug/error" to "works as designed" or "enhancement request" thereby shoving the issue off to a different group or quality status.   And we don't even do Six Sigma.



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    By the way, why can't we have cool green/yellow/black belts in software development?  I mean, real belts?

     

     You mean, like like this?



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    Six sigma WTF?

    Yes. Yes, it is.



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    Interesting variation on "plz send me teh codes" - "plz send me teh Six Sigma thesis"...

     

    TRWTF is how on his Linked-In profile he describes himself as an "Ass Manager" <g> 

    Come to think of it, we could probably make use of his services here... there's at least a few unmanageable asses on the forums...



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    By the way, why can't we have cool green/yellow/black belts in software development?  I mean, real belts?
     

    Canvas. JC Penney, 3.98; You like?

    Obscure? Maybe this will help: In Okinawa, belt mean no need rope to hold up pants.”

     

    I worked at a company that instittuted 6sigma "Faster than anyone has before" This particular company had over 60,000 employees so it was an achievement.  At first it was only for projects and processes where a noticeable return could be accomplished.   Before long, 6 sigma was running everything, even things that weren't processes or new projects.  Further, the first 2 waves of blackbelts got a bonus based on the savings of their project.  After wave 2 that incentive was cut.  You still got the extra workload, just without the bonus :)

     

     


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