I often hear the phrase, “All’s well that ends well.” I get the impression that I shouldn’t mind the bumpy road to my destination so long as I get there safely. Well, yes. Getting to my destination or achieving my goal should be the most important. But wouldn’t it be better to start out my journey the right way? I’m sure there’s no harm in that. I believe that if I start right I will most likely end right, too.
The same goes for any Six Sigma deployment. Sure, the bottomline, or company profits, is all important, but there’s no harm in starting the deployment right. For the deployment to start right, the Six Sigma team needs to develop a project charter.
A project charter is part of the Define phase in the DMAIC roadmap. It defines all the interactions of the team members. According to Zack Swinney, the project charter can make or break your deployment project. It can make it by specifying necessary resources and boundaries that will in turn ensure success; it can break it by reducing team focus, effectiveness and motivation.
Thomas Pyzdek identified the six steps in the chartering process.
1. Obtain a problem statement.
2. Identify the principal stakeholders.
3. Create a macro flowchart of the process.
4. Select the team members.
5. Identify the training to be received by the team.
6. Select the team leader.
Swinney, on his part, identified the necessary project areas as follows:
1. Project Title. Name the project with a properly descriptive title that will allow others to quickly view and select your project based on the keywords and phrases.
2. Black Belt/Green Belt. Identify the project leader so management knows who’s leading the efforts, and others can locate the leader for gathering further knowledge at a later date.
3. Mentor/Master Black Belt. Identify a resource for the project leader to ‘lean on’ if any project questions or issues arise (and they always do).
3. Project Start Date. For documentation purposes.
4. Anticipated Project End Date. The duration of the project will provide the leader and team adequate time to complete the project, given business conditions, work-load, holiday schedules, and such.
5. Cost of Poor Quality. Quantify any cost of poor quality, may it be in the form of scrap, excess hours, or violations and fines.
The following areas echo that which are identified by Pyzdek above.
6. Process Importance. Identify the process that you’re improving and determine its importance of doing so.
7. Process Problem. Identify the problem of the process you’ve selected to improve.
8. Process Start/Stop Points. Bound the project with a start and stop point.
9. Project Goals. Set challenging but realistic goals.
10. Process Measurements. Specify all measurements you think may be necessary, but make sure that they are within the scope (process start/stop points) of your project.
11. Team Members. Identify the poeple who wil act as sponsor, project leader, and subject matter experts.
12. Project Time-Frame. Monitor the phases of Six Sigma methodology and emphasize the major milestones. Read more…
Download project charter templates here.
Sources:
Project Charter
Defining Six Sigma Projects
