Amalgamation of Agile and Six Sigma - ASS ;)

In one of my earlier prints I wrote an article on ‘Has the Era of Six sigma gone’ and in that article, I wrote few of the methodologies picking up speed and taking over Six Sigma. Agile was one of them.

My further study on Agile, made me opine that Six sigma and agile are complementary to each other.

In six sigma methodologies, DMADV is more close to Agile, however, Agile could also be used as part of the Improve phase in DMAIC projects.

Agile project execution gives improved time to market, collaboration and customer satisfaction. Also, if Six sigma’s besties - ‘better process control’ and ‘higher efficiency and effectiveness’, are clubbed together, then there would be a win-win situation for all.

In Agile you need to create Product Back log, Sprint back log from the Product back log. The duration of each sprint should be approximately 3 weeks. Scrum meetings (standing meetings) must be held regularly to know what has been done in last 24 hours and what we will be done in next 24 hours.

This helps Product managers track timeliness/accuracy of the Product or Software developed.

There are five Key Principles of Agile :

1. Focus on Customer Value
2. Iterative and incremental delivery
3. Intense Collaboration
4. Self-Organization
5. Continuous improvement

How to leverage the best of both Agile and DMADV methodology:

Principle 1: The best part of DMADV methodology is that it gathers all the information of the customer upfront, discovering all the stated and latent needs and how performance will be measured and tested. All of these can support the agile Principle of “focus on Customer value”.

Principle 2: Iterative and incremental delivery of Agile can help DMADV methodology, as in DMADV the verification of design happens towards the end of project. If there are problems, then the entire effort is waste and we come to know about it very late in the project life cycle. We lose lot of time, however, if Agile’s iterative approach is adopted, then the entire product development is divided into iterations and pilots are done. This gives you the flexibility to correct at different stages of the product development and it gives you more successful results (developed Products).

Principle 3, 4, 5: Intense collaboration, Self-organization and continuous improvement are part of both Six Sigma and Agile methodologies, hence complement each other.

 Let us understand it better with the help of an example.

Suppose I have got a contract to build a castle. DMADV approach will work in the beginning where I will gather the Voice of the customer, and all kind of requirements upfront. I can use DMADV tools like Survey questionnaire, Interview and Quality function deployment chart (QFD). I will put an approximate timeline for the entire project and then apply the Iterative approach of Agile.

I as a Product Owner, will divide the entire task into different smaller projects and each project work (product backlog) will be divided in Sprint back logs. Let us see how this process will work.

There are three roles in implementing Agile methodology - Product owner, Scrum Master and Team members.

Definition:

Product Owner: Product Owner is the member of the team responsible for defining stories and prioritizing team back log so as to streamline the execution of the Program priorities. In this example I would be playing that role as I am Product expert.

Scrum master: is the facilitator that allows a team to self-organize and make changes quickly. The scrum master manages the process for how information is exchanged.

So a person playing the role will keep an eye on day to day work, delivery and conduct daily scrum (standing) meetings. Will figure out road blocks and help solve challenges on daily basis. Eg. Raw material to build the castle is not available in stock and scrum master will help to get that on time and will check for proper inventory.

Team Member: A generalizing specialist, sometimes called a crafts person, is someone who has one or more technical specialties, so that they can contribute something of direct value to the team. In our example they are masons and laborers.

When the plan is initially shared with the product owner by customer, he himself is not 100% sure about the finer details of the castle. He only had a broad plan / structure in his mind.

The entire work is divided into 3 week sprints and reviewed at the end of each sprint with the customer to view the progress made. Small product items (called back logs) are completed and handed over to customer to test the quality and check whether he or she wants any change in overall plan.

It is always better to know after 3 weeks that the project is not going in right direction rather than knowing after 1 year of work. Say, customer did not like the quality of the marble used in first product backlog (one of the rooms in the castle), then the marble could be changed and also could be replaced in first room. Think of this situation, if customer would have visited after 9 months when most of the work will already be done, then either customer would have lived with that ostracized product or there would have been a lot of rework and waste of time and effort.

So Agile’s iterative approach will help.

This also leads to continuous improvement as feedback from previous sprint is implemented in the next sprints. It leads to quicker delivery and high quality output.

So amalgamation of Agile and Six Sigma is a win-win situation and hence the combination methodology will be called ASS.

Oooppss!!!   :)