What is Lean added to Six Sigma? The answer is speed. It puts speed in the Six Sigma deployment. The first principle of Lean Six Sigma is: Delight your customers with speed and quality. The second principle says: Improve process flow and speed. Lean Six Sigma emphasizes that speed is directly tied to excellence.
Lean Six Sigma provides the opportunities to streamline the company’s core processes. and help determine what the core processes are, and then focus on making them flow smoothly.
For example, core processes in software development would be naming conventions and coding standards, a configuration management system, an automated build process, a suite of automated unit tests that are built and maintained as part of the code, daily build/integrate/test cycles, acceptance testing integrated into the development process, and usability testing immediately after the features are implemented. Assuring that these disciplines are in place is fundamental to the smooth flow of any software development process.
As they say, when you add Lean to Six Sigma, you start to think about the slow processes, because you begin to understand that a combination of speed, discipline, and excellence is a sure way to success.
Read more Why the Lean in Lean Six Sigma?
