Lesson Learned:  One Size Does Not Fit All

Recognize that one curriculum will likely not be applicable to all product delivery disciplines¹

We learned the hard way that not all curriculums are necessarily applicable to all the different disciplines associated with successful product delivery.   Like many other commercial and consumer products developed and delivered today, Xerox devices are made up of both electromechanical or hardware and software elements.   In fact, more of today’s product functions and overall capabilities are driven by software.  Xerox products are no exception.  Though we knew there were fundamentally differences between the two initial DfLSS programs’ content, the initial success of the Electromechanical program put a statistical tool bias on the Design for Lean Six Sigma Software content and curriculum.  It took significant effort and time to convince the DfLSS Launch Team  and leadership that the lower depth and breadth of statistics and the inclusion of Lean Software Development was appropriate for the Xerox software community.  Some of this was due to the fact that we were treading on new ground with our Software DfLSS initiative and there were not many benchmark Design for Lean Six Sigma Software programs developed or deployed.  Some of the issues also had to do with the hesitation by a few Software DfLSS Core Team and software community members to accept any statistical tools.  The DfLSS Launch Team  felt strongly that for DfLSS to be successful and products to be delivered more effectively, efficiently and predictably, that all disciplines needed to have a common “language.”  By that, when electromechanical engineers were talking about setting up a Design of Experiment and engaged the software and system engineers on critical set points controlled by software, everyone knew exactly what was being talked about.  The debate on the depth and breadth of statistics in the Software Design for Lean Six Sigma curriculum became heated and emotional at times.

Finally, with the help of a Lean Six Sigma trained Master Black Belts who formally was a software developer we able to converge on a reasonable solution.   She lead a DMEDI  (DfLSS for process development) project aimed at capturing the Voice of the Customer and Voice of the Business  and translating it to what level of statistics and overall content needed to be incorporated into the Software DfLSS program.  This was a hard lesson to learn as time, momentum and a significant amount of resources were squandered delivering a curriculum and content that the software community was not going to embrace.  A similar discussion and debate took place when we looked to develop a DfLSS curriculum for the in-bound marketing population.  Looking back, we should have realized earlier that “one size will not fit all” and that there is a delicate balance that needed to be established between having that common DfLSS language, tools and methods and giving the appropriate content flexibility for each different discipline. 

One thing that helped with that balance is having common terminology and tools.  To help enable this all three disciplines (electromechanical, software and inbound marketing) were required to take MoreSteam.com ’s DMAIC Green Belt on-line training as a prerequisite to their instructor-led training.  This helped establishing a common set of terms and the downloaded Excel^®-based templates gave all disciplines a similar starting point.  When it got to the DfLSS portion of the training, convergence on single set of terminology and practices became a bit more difficult. 

When I sit back and look at the Lean Six Sigma community of consultants and training providers, it is sort of interesting that almost everyone has converged on the DMAIC  and diverged on Design for Lean Six Sigma terminology and roadmap s.  From all accounts, DMAIC has become an industry standard terminology and work process.  However, if you look at Design for Lean Six Sigma providers you find a long list of different roadmaps.  These include:  IDOV  (Identify, Design, Optimize and Validate), CDOV  (Concept, Design, Optimize and Validate), DMEDI  (Define, Measure, Explore, Design and Implement), DMADV  (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design and Verify), DCDOV  (Define, Concept, Design, Optimize and Validate), DVP&PV  (Design Verification, Production and Process Validation) and the list goes on.  Each DfLSS provider has a different set of acronyms they use to separate their initiative from their competitors.  However, if you put the roadmaps side by side, you find that most follow a similar set of basic steps and use similar methods.  Even though there is some variability between roadmaps where phase boundaries are drawn, it appears that most DfLSS roadmaps are more similar than the different process acronyms would suggest. 

We also found that most consulting firms specialized in one discipline or another and very few had electromechanical, software and in-bound marketing integrated together.   This meant we had to bring in multiple consulting partners to deliver a fully integrated, multi-disciplined Design for Lean Six Sigma program.   When we brought in different consulting partners in for the three different disciplines, we had to take the time and expense of converging not only the DfLSS roadmap s, but some of the tools they used so to our Xerox product delivery teams, they looked consistent.  This meant changing consultant’s training materials and exposing them to a different set of DfLSS software tools.  This sounds easy, but it’s not.  It was a necessary step however to ensure consistency across the various disciplines

¹Norman E. Fowler, “Lessons Learned from an Unconventional Design for Lean Six Sigma Deployment”, Morrisville, NC, Lulu Press Inc., 2008.

 

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