DocQment, newsletter of the STC Quality SIG, June 2002.

Choosing a Six-Sigma Project

Some come to Six Sigma, others have Six Sigma thrust upon them. This reshaping of an old saying summarizes a Green or Black Belt's relationship with Six Sigma methodologies. Some of us decide to pursue the Six Sigma path; others are encouraged, urged, or sometimes even forced to do so by company management. Similarly, some Belts are able to choose their own Six Sigma projects while others are handed projects from higher in the organization.

While it can be difficult to undertake a task not of one's own choosing, working on an assigned project does take some of the guesswork out of the Six Sigma certification process. Identifying a project worthy of the Six Sigma methodologies can be challenging, frustrating, and illuminating. Finding a project within a discipline (such as technical communications) that is outside the "typical" Six Sigma arena – which until recently focused on manufacturing activities – can be especially tough.

Here are some questions to help technical communicators choose projects that can utilize their particular skills and satisfy the rigors of the Six Sigma processes. Along the way, you will find some ideas for projects that you may want to pursue.

Is this project going to save money?

One of Six Sigma's chief goals is cost savings. If a successful project will be nice but won't enhance your bottom line at all, it's probably not a good one. For example, you may want to explore the impact of changing your documentation's font from Times New Roman to Optima. The change will affect the way your documents look, but probably won't make a difference in production costs. However, exploring innovative ways to reduce the number of pages you have to print (which may include a font change), which will lower your printing costs, is worth consideration.

Does the project involve a clearly-defined process?

Where does the activity start and stop? Plan to concentrate your Six Sigma work within those beginning and ending points. Otherwise, you may find yourself drifting outside the project scope, stumbling over unrelated issues and losing focus. A project description saying "The documentation development process is bad" likely won't be acceptable. A focused problem statement such as "The need for repeated content reviews causes late delivery of manuals and delays release of product" helps ensure approval of your project. After your process improvements prove successful, you can apply them to the broader process. While you are defining your process, also identify the process owner, who will be a key stakeholder in the success of your project.

Who are your customers?

Six Sigma aims not just for customer satisfaction, but customer delight. You cannot delight the customers unless you hear their voices and know what they want. Obviously the end users of your products, the readers of your documentation, are customers. Don't forget people inside your organization who are your customers. The hotline staff that supports your products, the sales and marketing staffers who promote your products, the training instructors who use your manuals to teach, and the subject matter experts who review your work are all possible customers of your process. Do you know (or can you find out) how customers use the output from your process? Are you able to find out what is important to the customers about this output?

What is a "defect" in your process?

Six Sigma focuses on the elimination of defects in products or processes, so you need to know what defects are and be able to count them. For technical communicators, this is often a sticky question. After all, every keystroke as we write is a potential for a typographical error – a defect. You may need to identify defects at a higher level. For example, you may want to focus on documents that fail your review processes, or reviews returned after the due date. You can then ask what made that document fail review, or what caused the review to come in late, and then work on improvements.

Is your process measurable?

Many of the Black Belt tools require measurements, a legacy of Six Sigma's manufacturing history. Look at what you can measure and report: number of days in the review cycle, number of pages produced, number of errors found during review, and so on. Your process will begin and end with measurements assessing the current capability of the process, and its state once it is improved.

Is this issue important to your business?

You may be passionately devoted to your cause but, if the rest of the business doesn't care about it, you probably do not have a good Six Sigma project. Ask yourself what key business issue is related to this project. If the business issue is confined to your own sphere of operation, it's too limited. If the issue affects the business at large, pursue it. For example, a process improvement that reduces translation cycle time and enables faster product delivery to your overseas market is a definite Six Sigma candidate.

Does the project have organizational support?

The organization should care about the project and want to make it happen. Your management should endorse your efforts, provide you with necessary resources, and make it possible for you to invest time in the project. The process owner should approve of your actions and authorize you to collect data and make changes in the process. If you think any of the stakeholders will be reluctant or even hostile when presented with your improvements, make an effort to resolve the conflicts early to smooth the way for implementation.

Once you have satisfactorily answered these questions, you're ready to charter your project and begin. The next article in this series will examine a Technical Communications Black Belt project and see how it was completed, step by step.

Jill Finan is a past president of the STC Rochester Chapter. She is a recently-certified Black Belt at Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson Company.

Reprinted with permission from Proof Sheet, the newsletter of the STC Rochester Chapter.