Watts Humphrey’s Personal Software Process(SM) and Team Software Process(SM) have achieved dramatically better outcomes than any other approach as illustrated by results Humphrey reported in his keynote address to the 2008 World Conference on Software Quality. Data he has collected in conjunction with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) indicate a typical CMMI "level 1" group delivers 7.5 defects per KLOC. level 5 groups deliver 1.05 defects per KLOC, while TSP teams deliver only .06 defects per kloc! That is a more than 90% reduction from level 5!
TSP results from Microsoft show similar quality improvement and in addition they report an 81% improvement in productivity.
Clearly this method works extremely well, but equally clearly it has not been widely adopted. Why does it work so well? Why is it not more widely used? Perhaps we can gain insight into both questions by thinking about how people learn and change (or not).
To access the complete article, www.Process-fusion.net/pdfs/Reflections on PSP and TSP.PDF
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Are Lean and/or Six Sigma Right for My Business, Or Just for the "Big Guys"?
To download the complete White Paper, http://process-fusion.net/default.asp?id=6
Perhaps you’ve seen an article that described how Jack Welsh used Six Sigma in General Electric to bring $8 billion to the bottom line. Or perhaps you’ve heard about the dramatic reductions in cycle time and waste achieved by using Lean methods in the Toyota Production System. Both of these methods of business process improvement have been around now for more than 20 years and have achieved dramatic results in a majority of larger firms and in many governmental units worldwide. Penetration in smaller organizations has been much more limited.
This paper describes how you can determine if these methods are adaptable to your situation. I describe how the key features of these proven methods can be adapted to smaller businesses and to smaller units within larger entities – an application of the Pareto Principle (the “80/20” rule). I describe a “low-calorie” approach that will deliver a large part of the potential benefit of Lean and Six Sigma at a fraction of the usual cost. These methods can be scaled to fit – they’re not just for the big guys!
As there are many misconceptions about what these methods actually are I begin with a straight-forward description of each method and then get into how you might go about deciding if they are appropriate for your organization.
Perhaps you’ve seen an article that described how Jack Welsh used Six Sigma in General Electric to bring $8 billion to the bottom line. Or perhaps you’ve heard about the dramatic reductions in cycle time and waste achieved by using Lean methods in the Toyota Production System. Both of these methods of business process improvement have been around now for more than 20 years and have achieved dramatic results in a majority of larger firms and in many governmental units worldwide. Penetration in smaller organizations has been much more limited.
This paper describes how you can determine if these methods are adaptable to your situation. I describe how the key features of these proven methods can be adapted to smaller businesses and to smaller units within larger entities – an application of the Pareto Principle (the “80/20” rule). I describe a “low-calorie” approach that will deliver a large part of the potential benefit of Lean and Six Sigma at a fraction of the usual cost. These methods can be scaled to fit – they’re not just for the big guys!
As there are many misconceptions about what these methods actually are I begin with a straight-forward description of each method and then get into how you might go about deciding if they are appropriate for your organization.
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