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@tomoreilly – Good Luck! As you are probably aware, Agile methods are very circular. I would look at DfSS for software topics.

Tom, having been a 20 year veteran in the Agile space, I would invite you to turn a critical eye to most of its methods. Internally, it has very weak metrics (story points, velocity, etc), but its followers believe otherwise. In addition, the iterative approach to developing software looks good on paper, but does not create a flow of work. Therefore, agile methods tend to create their own bottlenecks and opportunities for quality issues.

I partly agree with @Straydog . In my opinion Agile is still a bit more than just being compliant with the I phase of DMAIC. DMAIC is just one of the Lean Six Sigma methodologies to apply to a process depending on many factors besides the goal that you are following. At this point I just refer to DMADV, DFSS, DMAIIC etc. depending on whether there is already a process that should be improved or if there is none yet.

However, I think there is still a lot of potential regarding the combination of Agile and LSS from a scientific point of view. The idea itself of grooming Agile and LSS is out there for a few years already and you can find a few good blog posts on that.

Unfortunately there is a lack of good scientific resources for this topic. I am also interested in this @tomoreilly . If you have found already recommendable scientific papers or books, I would appreciate it if you could provide us a few information about where to find them. I will start writing my Master’s thesis on exactly that topic in a few weeks from now. But I am already looking for existing resources.