Six Sigma For It Management A Pocket Guide

The companion follow-up to one of the bestselling Six Sigma books ever published An alarming number of Six Sigma projects are failing--not because of misuse of Six Sigma's statistical tools but because of internal politics and poor communication between team members and the rest of the organization. The Rath & Strong's Six Sigma Team Pocket Guide helps team leaders and members reverse this trend, explaining the interpersonal and political skills needed to make each Six Sigma project a success. Written in the "pocket guide" format that proved so successful with the first Rath &Strong guide, and based on the firm's popular Six Sigma training workshops, this handy reference will show Six Sigma team leaders and members how to: Get buy-in and cooperation from all levels of the organization Lead or participate in productive team meetings Plan the people/team side just as they would plan the technical side

Six Sigma provides a quantitive methodology of continuous (process) improvement and cost reduction, by reducing the amount of variation in process outcomes. The production of a product, be it a tangible product like a car or a more abstract product like a service, consists of a series of processes. All processes consist of a series of steps, events, or activities. Six Sigma measures every step of the process by breaking apart the elements within each process, identifying the critical characteristics, defining and mapping the related processes, understanding the capability of each process, discovering the weak links, and then upgrading the capability of the process. It is only by taking these steps that a business can raise the ‘high-water mark’ of its performance. IT is now a fundamental part of business and business processes; this book demonstrates how IT can be made to work as an enabler to better business processes, and how the Six Sigma approach can be used to provide a consistent framework for measuring process outcomes. ITIL defines the ‘what’ of Service Management; Six Sigma defines the ‘how’ of process improvement; together they are a perfect fit of improving the quality of IT service delivery and support. The Six Sigma approach also provides measures of process outcomes, and prescribes a consistent approach in how to use these metrics. This Pocket guide, provides a coherent view and guidance for using the Six Sigma approach successfully in IT service organisations. It particularly aims to merge ITIL and Six Sigma into a single approach for continuous improvement of IT service organizations.

Many references on Six Sigma stress the importance of defining processes. All too often, practitioners on a Six Sigma project rely on flowcharts for this crucial step. Unfortunately, flowcharts only show decision points, and the steps taken to reach those decisions are overlooked, including vital departmental interactions and communication patterns. This is the focus of Defining and Analyzing a Business Process: A Six Sigma Pocket Guide, which helps to fill the gaps found on flowcharts and provides a more complete big-picture view of the processes. This pocket guide details a methodology on how to analyze your existing processes. The book uses two distinct approaches: first a Business Interaction Model and second an Integrated Flow Diagram. Once the analysis phase is complete, the pocket guide presents a method on how to innovate your process to optimize its operation. The book moves away from the theory and jumps headlong into a systemic approach to change. As a pocket guide, it can easily be used as a reference or as a teaching aid, and is ideal for anyone who uses processes at any level.

Six Sigma Project Management: a Pocket Guide provides a step-by-step approach to implementing a Six Sigma project, that can be easily applied within any type of organization. Author Jeffrey Lowenthal has written an easy to use, pocket-sized guidebook, specifically applying the practices of Six Sigma to project management. Based on the authores own experiences and case studies, Six Sigma Project Management: a Pocket Guide explains how to best manage projects using the Six Sigma initiative. At the heart of this book is the Six-Step Six Sigma Methodology, which serves as a roadmap for change, a sequential model that can be followed when deploying a sigma initiative within any company. This short and concise guide is straightforward and contains many graphics and flowcharts, which makes the information easy to follow and the book simple to use.

TWO PROVEN TOOLS FOR SUCCESS IN ONE STEP-BY-STEP POCKET GUIDE Whether you've been using Six Sigma for years or are just starting to, you know it takes hard work to get it right. But WorkOut, developed by General Electric, can increase Six Sigma's success. Rath & Strong's WorkOut for Six Sigma Pocket Guide shows you how, with an action-ready game plan that you can apply to your initiative - right now. Learn how to: Set the stage for Six Sigma's success Find out if you're in trouble - and get back on track Make a good Six Sigma initiative even better See actual results--in less than three months "If you want to bring the power of WorkOut to Six Sigma, this pocket guide is an invaluable tool."--Ron Ashkenas, co-author of The GE Work-Out Six Sigma: A data-driven approach to meeting customer requirements, solving process problems, and achieving bottom-line results. WorkOut: The revolutionary problem-solving program that brings management and workers together to bust bureaucracy. Companies worldwide use Six Sigma to measure and improve performance. Others use WorkOut to get quick bottom-line results and empower their workforce. But few enjoy the enormous success General Electric achieved by combining these approaches. Rath & Strong shows you how to get that synergy, with a handy pocket guide full of charts, checklists, assessment tools, and cases that help you: Prepare for, reenergize, or enhance a Six Sigma initiative Use a fast, simple alternative to Six Sigma Make your culture more participative, data-driven, and customer-focused Engage your front-line workers in Six Sigma

Six Sigma provides a quantitive methodology of continuous (process) improvement and cost reduction, by reducing the amount of variation in process outcomes. The production of a product, be it a tangible product like a car or a more abstract product like a service, consists of a series of processes. All processes consist of a series of steps, events, or activities. Six Sigma measures every step of the process by breaking apart the elements within each process, identifying the critical characteristics, defining and mapping the related processes, understanding the capability of each process, discovering the weak links, and then upgrading the capability of the process. It is only by taking these steps that a business can raise the ‘high-water mark’ of its performance. IT is now a fundamental part of business and business processes; this book demonstrates how IT can be made to work as an enabler to better business processes, and how the Six Sigma approach can be used to provide a consistent framework for measuring process outcomes. ITIL defines the ‘what’ of Service Management; Six Sigma defines the ‘how’ of process improvement; together they are a perfect fit of improving the quality of IT service delivery and support. The Six Sigma approach also provides measures of process outcomes, and prescribes a consistent approach in how to use these metrics. This Pocket guide, provides a coherent view and guidance for using the Six Sigma approach successfully in IT service organisations. It particularly aims to merge ITIL and Six Sigma into a single approach for continuous improvement of IT service organizations.