How Six Sigma Works in IT
Despite its origin in manufacturing, Six Sigma isn't about widgets; the focus is on processes. When applied to IT operations, Six Sigma aims to measure and improve both internal processes, such as network speed and reliability, and line-of-business processes in which IT has a role, such as how well an online ordering system is working.
"IT is a big user of processes: testing and hardware implementation and software development," says Doug Debrecht, vice president and CIO at Raytheon Aircraft, where the entire IT workforce has had some form of Six Sigma training. "Six Sigma has given us a good toolset that we can use consistently and repeatedly to analyse how we have things set up and running."
Six Sigma analysis tends to begin with the formulation of a problem statement. One Six Sigma team at Raytheon, for example, was charged with analysing why the division had what Debrecht admits was "an ungodly number" of servers - 350. "We needed to figure out a way to consolidate and be smarter in how we deployed our servers," he says. The Six Sigma team determined the root cause of the problem - that each application got its own server, regardless of its size or bandwidth requirements - and then worked out the specifics to allow applications to share servers logically and securely. The result: A 40 per cent consolidation in servers, with the attendant time and labour savings added back to the bottom line.
The methodology breaks down problem evaluation into five distinct steps: define, measure, analyse, improve and control. Practitioners call this rubric DMAIC for short, pronounced "de-MAY-ick". (Another approach, Design for Six Sigma, aims to remove defects from a process during the design phase. It's generally used only by organisations that have mastered the DMAIC methodology.)
At each of the DMAIC steps, organisations apply appropriate tools and measures from a wide variety of choices. Some, such as histograms, Pareto charts and Scatter diagrams, may already be familiar to IT. Others, which boast names such as Voice of the Customer or House of Quality, probably aren't, though CIOs report that these customer-centric tools are often the ones they find most enlightening.
Textron used the DMAIC process and the Voice of the Customer tool, among others, to tackle data-centre sprawl. "We found we had over 80 data centres inside our company," says Ken Bohlen, Textron's executive vice president and chief innovation officer. "We used Voice of the Customer to canvass our customer base and ask some very specific questions," such as what critical information was stored where. By making customer needs the top priority, Textron has been able to consolidate or shut down 40 of the data centres, which were supporting legacy or underused applications. Bohlen says his long-term goal is to get down to five data centres.
While Six Sigma often helps organisations refine and streamline operations, the methodology can also be used to leverage existing systems for customer benefit. Chase Financial Services formed a Six Sigma team to take a look at the costs accrued by customer service representatives. The team recommended technology changes to the company's interactive voice-response system to allow customers to more easily find their own answers to routine questions, which in turn allowed service representatives to redirect their efforts into selling additional products.
Pioneer CIOs and industry watchers point to some best practices for reaping success from Six Sigma in IT.
- Pick the right people. Workers trained in Six Sigma techniques act like internal SWAT teams, coming together to tackle a given process, then breaking apart and re-forming, often in a different configuration, to undertake the next challenge. Depending on what level of Six Sigma training employees have undergone, they're known as green belts, brown belts or black belts, with black belts most often deployed to lead a team or tackle projects on their own. It's important to tap motivated employees for training, which produces a high-performance team and at the same time signals that Six Sigma is part of an upward career path. "If you grab the C- and D-level players because you can spare them, you're sending the wrong message," says Textron's Bohlen. "We started with the best and brightest, and showed that [Six Sigma training] accelerated their careers. Now I have a waiting list of people wanting to get black belt training." Be careful about training people but not giving them a project right away to work on, warns Chase Financial Services' Costa. "We have found it very beneficial for people to take a project with them into training or to start something right after," he says.
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