Since General Electric adopted Six Sigma, a process-improvement strategy developed by Motorola in the 1980s, in the 1990s, the term/methodology has become a catch phrase for quality improvement. And although originally intended for use in manufacturing and the supply chain as a way to reduce or eliminate defects, the data-driven, process-improvement strategy has since been applied to other sectors and services, including IT.
So how can a process-improvement strategy such as Six Sigma benefit your IT organization? CIO.com asked IT as well as Six Sigma and other experts. They provided seven reasons why adopting a process-improvement strategy makes good business sense, no matter what business you are in.
1. It can help you make better decisions. "IT organizations usually have large numbers of change initiatives running in parallel, addressing a wide range of factors," says Jim Shulkin, vice president of Marketing at Daptiv, a provider of on-demand project portfolio management software.