Six Sigma Principles

Organizations use Six Sigma principles to improve quality, decrease costs, and better meet customer needs. In the book "The Six Sigma Way", define Six Sigma as "a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and maximizing business success. Six Sigma is uniquely driven by close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, and statistical analysis, and diligent attention for managing, improving, and reinventing business process".

Six Sigma's target for perfection is the achievement of no more than 3.4 defects, errors, or mistakes per million opportunities. This target number is explained in more detail later in this section. An organization can apply the Six Sigma principles to the design and production of a product, a Help Desk, or other customer-service process.

Projects that use Six Sigma principles for quality control normally follow a five-phase improvement process called DMAIC (pronounced de-MAY-ic), which stands for Define, Measure, Analyze,Improve, and Control. DMAIC is a systematic, closed-loop process for continued improvement that is scientific and fact based. The following are brief descriptions of each phase of the DMAIC improvement process:

1. Define: Define the problem/opportunity, process, and customer requirements. Important tools used in this phase include a project charter, a description of customer requirements, process maps, and Voice of the Customer (VOC) data. Examples of VOC data include complaints, surveys, comments, and market research that represent the views and needs of the organization's customers.
2. Measure: Define measures, then collect, compile, and display data. Measures are defined in terms of defects per opportunity.
3. Analyze: Describe process details to find improvement opportunities. A project team working on a Six Sigma project, normally referred to as a Six Sigma team, investigates and verifies data to prove the suspected root causes of quality problems and substantiates the problem statement. An important tool in this phase is the Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram.
4. Improve: Generate solutions and ideas for improving the problem. A final solution is verified with the project sponsor, and the Six Sigma team develops a plan to pilot test the solution. The Six Sigma team reviews the results of the pilot test to refine the solution, if needed, and then implements the solution where appropriate.
5. Control: Track and verify the stability of the improvements and the predictability of the solution. Control charts are one tool used in the control phase.
   

Project Management Knowledge Areas

Project management knowledge areas describe the key competencies that project managers mus develop. There are nine knowledge areas of project management. The four core knowledge areas of project management include project scope, time, cost, and quality management. These are core knowledge areas because they lead to specific project objectives. Brief descriptions of each core knowledge area are as follows:

• Project scope management, involves defining and managing all the work required to complete the project successfully.
• Project time management, includes estimating how long it will take to complete the work, developing an acceptable project schedule, and ensuring timely completion of the project.
• Project cost management, consists of preparing and managing the budget for the project.
• Project quality management, ensures that the project will satisfy the stated or implied needs for which it was undertaken.

The four facilitating knowledge areas of project management are human resource, communications, risk, and procurement management. These are called facilitating areas because they are the processes through which the project objectives are achieved. Brief descriptions of each facilitating knowledge area are as follows:

• Project human resource management, is concerned with making effective use of the people involved with the project.
• Project communications management, involves generating, collecting, disseminating, and storing project information.
• Project risk management, includes identifying, analyzing, and responding to risks related to the project.
• Project procurement management, involves acquiring or procuring goods and services for a project from outside the performing organization.

Project integration management, the ninth knowledge area, is an overarching function that affects and is affected by all of the other knowledge areas. Project managers must have knowledge and skills in all nine of these areas.

Project Management Offices

The concept of a project management office, sometimes referred to as the PMO, has been around for several years. You’ll find that many organizations are establishing PMOs in many different forms. PMOs might also be called project offices or program management offices. The PMO is usually a centralized organizational unit that oversees the management of projects and programs throughout the organization. The most common reason a company starts a project management office is to establish and maintain procedures and standards for project management methodologies.

In some organizations, project managers and team members might report directly to the PMO and are assigned to projects as they are initiated. In other organizations, the PMO provides support functions only for projects and trains others in project management procedures and techniques. Still others, depending on their size and function, have experts available that assist project managers in project planning, estimating, and business assumption verification tasks. They serve as mentors to junior-level project managers and act as consultants to the senior project managers.

The PMO usually has responsibility for maintaining and archiving project documentation for future reference. This office compares project goals with project progress and gives feedback to the project teams. It also measures the project performance of active projects and suggests corrective actions. The PMO evaluates completed projects for their adherence to the project plan and asks questions like “Did the project meet the time frames established?” and “Did it stay within budget?” and “Was the quality acceptable?”

Project management offices are becoming more common in organizations today, if for no other reason than to serve as a collection point for project documentation. Some PMOs are fairly sophisticated and prescribe the standards and methodologies to be used in all project phases across the enterprise. Still others provide all these functions and also offer project management consulting services. However, the establishment of a PMO is not required in order for you to apply good project management practices to your next project.