Six Sigma and IT Solution

I haven’t found that basing the SDLC or IT service models on DMAIC work out very well. Many tools seem applicable to IT but turn into monsters when there are huge numbers of requirements and variables as in a typical IT project. For instance QFD for requirements analysis? FMEA for test plans? SS does work well for improving IT processes themselves and for specific parts of an IT project. Book recommendation: “Six Sigma Software Quality Improvement: Success Stories from Leaders in the High Tech Industry” by Vic Nanda and Jeffrey A. Robinson. This includes case studies that should be relevant to your research.

We do projects like this all the time. For many of our projects on the business side of the chemical industry, the improvement phase results in a custom-developed dashboard, business intelligence solution, new or modified SAP transaction, or similar IT solutions. Occasionally a six sigma project results in an entirely new IT system being implemented. We do a lot better at maintaining the gains from projects when the changes from the project are coded into systems.

We definitely need alignment between six sigma and IT for these types of projects. Depending on complexity, we can have one or more IT analysts as project resources, one or more IT analysts as team members, or even have a full-blown IT project with its own project manager run as a subproject to the six sigma project once the six sigma project gets to the improve phase.

I’m not entirely sure what you are trying to research. If an IT solution is used as part of the improve (or control) phase of a six sigma project, I don’t see how there can’t be “alignment” between six sigma and IT. I suppose the IT requirements could be “thrown over the wall” and the six sigma project declared closed when IT becomes involved, but that doesn’t make much sense. Maybe I am not reading your question correctly.