Resources for Success

Avoid training Belts who have to look for projects. Instead, identify problems...then projects...then people.

• Identify issues when you’re setting your strategic goals, e.g. during early Hoshin planning steps.
• Prioritize projects and select a limited number that can be sourced and completed with the targeted timeframes.
• Match team members’ knowledge, skills and experience with specific projects.

Don’t force fit industry roadmaps if they don’t align with your approach. If your organization uses proprietary Lean project management tools or has developed its own process improvement vocabulary, reinforce your continuous improvement culture by creating custom project roadmaps. You can reinforce your unique distinctiveness and provide a systematic project management platform.

Guide project teams with a consistent template of critical questions. The most common questions should be developed for each phase of each project roadmap, e.g. Quick Improvement, A3, PDCA, DMAIC, DCDOV, DMEDI, IDOV. Doing so will focus teams on structured problem-solving and reduce the tendency to jump to solutions. The benefit is reducing the support needed from Master Black Belts and coaches.

Maintain a project environment of complete transparency by providing broad access to stakeholders across the organization. Project team progress and current reports are always available to view. Let champions, sponsors, and executives “pull” information on-demand without tasking team members with report requests.

Create a library of Lean Six Sigma project examples for reference across the organization. Problem solving can be expedited by enabling teams to review previous A3 reports, root cause analysis, and results for similar projects.