I love the new year because it means new beginnings, new challenges. And if we speak in the context of business operations, a new year can mean new opportunities for improvement.
Perhaps, a most obvious indicator of a service or product delivered with quality in mind is doing things “just right” — not too early, not too late, but just in time.
As I scoured the web for new year insights in relation to Six Sigma, I found an interesting parable on iSixSigma Software/IT.
Mama Bear, the deployment leader in the consumer products unit, liked her porridge “fast.” In fact, Mama Bear usually prefered to eat her porridge before it is cooked. Her deployment effort had been under way for about a year, and had caused a lot of grumbling and growling from the neighborhood bears because they did not like uncooked porridge (lots of unfocused activity). They preferred well-cooked outcomes (real demonstrated benefits). So, the Bears executive committee decided it just was not going to put up with it any more, and insisted the deployment team make a plan for a hot breakfast.
As all good planning processes do, the planning process began by developing a list of all the things necessary to prepare a hot breakfast (a work breakdown structure). There were several sub-teams – one to procure the ingredients (define objectives and select projects), one to do the cooking (execute the selected projects), one to set the table (address change management issues) and one to do the serving (evaluate benefits realized). Each group was asked to develop their own to-do list and estimate the time and effort required for each item on the list.
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
