Page 249 - Lean six sigma demystified

Chapter 6 Tr an S a C T iona L Six Sigm a 227

6. Evaluate alternative solutions.
7. Develop business requirements to prevent the problem and an action plan
for implementation.

insights

Using the basic tools of Six Sigma, anyone can learn to use what I call the Dirty
30 process for Six Sigma software in a day or less to find the root causes of trans-
action errors. Once a team has found the root causes of these errors, it’s just a
matter of changing the code to eliminate these errors forever.
Whether it’s a wireless billing system or a claims-processing system for an
HMO, hundreds of people spend their lives fixing the fallout from these infor-
mation system errors.
If you’re a CIO or IT manager, can you really afford to let your client con-
tinue to eat the ongoing costs for fixing these errors? Errors caused by system
requirements that are too tight, too loose, or just plain missing? What if you
could analyze the cause of these errors in a matter of days? How will this help
leverage your legacy systems to create new value?

Conclusion

Until you get to where you can prevent errors in requirements, design, code, and
test, every system release could benefit from a simple, yet rigorous approach to
analyzing and eliminating postimplementation errors. The Dirty 30 process is
ideal because the data required to implement it is collected by most systems

automatically. Then all it takes is 4 to 8 hours of analysis to identify the root cause
of each error. Most of the time, the root cause will reside in the requirements.
One of the positive by-products of this approach is that the systems analysts
learn first hand how their requirements and designs most often fail. This allows
them to learn how to make their next set of requirements or designs more
robust. It also gives the user a closer look at the intricacies of software and the
complexities involved. And if you aren’t going to start using the Dirty 30 pro-
cess, what are you going to use to mistake-proof your systems and releases?
Until software engineering finds ways to prevent all of the possible defects
inherent in software development, the Dirty 30 process will provide a simple
way to tune up a system release and move the application ever closer to Six
Sigma performance.