Is there such a thing as a cookie cutter recipe for the Six Sigma for IT?

I have had an opportunity for an interview where an interviewer asked me whether I could come up with a recipe for the Six Sigma approach in IT. Another individual even asked if this is valid.



The response is, generally, yes. But, the approach will not hold for 100% of the cases. It will, however, hold for a good majority. When I talk about what it is that will not hold, I am referring to the specific tools in the toolkit.



I created such a process for a client and went through the template with them on my last day with them. I think they'll do fine with most of the material. Where I anticipate they would run into ambiguity is identifying the measures (to create the baseline). This, by the way, is a very crucial part of the project definition as it determines the success factor for completion of the effort. There is a generic list of metrics one can use in IT. What I proceeded to do was to list these and indicated that if this list did not contain what was required for this specific application, that a more specialized inspection might be required.

Again, for the most part, the formula will work for a good number of applications, just not every one. Well, that's why there's people like me.......