Business Value! Business Contribution!

There is an emergence of the mindset of providing value to business. I guess we want to address the age-old problem of IT being viewed as overhead.

I have always said that we should treat out IT projects as if we were a small business. In that world, everything we procure for the business needs to provide a tangible bottom-line value....or, we don't acquire it. If we did this to our IT projects, despite kicking and screaming customers, we would stop being just an expense in organizations.

I say this principle is the essence of Six Sigma.

Now, having said that, I am running into ITIL V3 -- pretty much an evolution of ITIL into the same business value mindset. Basically, it is the same principles from ITIL V2 except, instead of focusing on process, it starts with Strategy, which is really defining value to the business.

Process Improvement using 6Sigma Handbook?

At my last assignment, a client asked me to create a 'cookie cutter' step-by-step for process improvement employing the 6Sigma approach. It took years of experience and Business Excellence training to model the 'common sense' techniques into a recipe I could implement (though no individual step in the process was new to me or even remotely revolutionary).

Sounded impossible at first. But, big ideas are usually many simple ideas ingeniously put together. I started out with a framework of 11 steps, then developed the individual ideas by example, employing a tool in my repertoire. I think, for straight-forward ideas, the recipe should work fine.

I may have just come up with my own version of the steps to improving process. I may elaborate on the idea and turn it into a handbook.