Six Sigma and Project Management

One great presentation by Daniel Castle (www.castlequality.com) at PMI was about the Project Manager being a Change Agent (and a BlackBelt :-)).
Dan's idea is to emphasize on Customer needs rather than wants. Evidently, as most of us (implementers) know, that the customer rarely knows his IT needs, but has great understanding of the business he runs.

This is exactly what PMBOK, ITIL, CoBit and other frameworks make abundantly clear. In fact the ITSM and ITIL are about efficiently and effectively leveraging IT to achieve desired business outcomes, even at the definition level. They were never about the IT capabilities or the technologies used. Somehow lost in translation, is that the constraints in the Project Management (scope, schedule and cost), which are too focused on delivery and completion rather than fulfilling the desired "Business Outcome". The question Dan wants to ask, while defining things, is the simple "What are you trying to accomplish?"

Specifically in terms of the improvement projects(Improvement in the process, quality or the business model/design), the deterministic mindset towards the project may deter us from understanding and achieving the outcomes the Customer/ Business needed. Frequent interactions with the stakeholders is so important to the Project Manager, that irrespective of those constraints, customer satisfaction is assured.

Improvement methodologies like Six Sigma do concentrate on the specific customer goals, with metrics. The involved mindset changes required to in using these methodologies (eg.; Sixsigma: Defects in Million NOT Defects in Hundred) is with a data driven approach and demonstrated cost savings(isn't that everyone wants?).

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