How to improve the efficiency of an organization?

Lean, Agile, and Six Sigma strategies are mostly used in IT organizations to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of work. Let’s read more about the Agile strategy. Many companies use Lean, Agile and Six Sigma to improve IT organizations' effectiveness and efficiency.

Difference between Lean, Agile, and Six Sigma

The Lean Method is a set of tools developed to reduce the waste associated with the flow of materials and information in a process from start to finish. The goal of Lean is to identify and eliminate non-essential and non-value-added steps in the business process in order to streamline production and improve overall quality.

The Six Sigma methodology is based on the concept that issues or defects, due to process variation, can be reduced using statistical tools. The ideal goal is to fix a process so that it will be 99.9997% defect free or produce only 3.4 Defects per million opportunities. For example, this could mean 3-4 broken pieces of glasses in one million produced, or 3-4 customer calls with waiting times more than a certain limit defined by the company.

The combination of these 2 is known as Lean Six Sigma or LSS. Lean Six Sigma first emphasizes the use of Lean methodologies and tools to identify and remove what is completely unnecessary, and then follows that with the use of Six Sigma methodologies.

With the growth of global competition, today’s customers are very demanding and want organizations to improve both the quality and grade of their products or services. Organizations will not survive if they continue to make products or provide services the same way as before, with the same style. The only solution changes in the current style. Business agility is the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost-efficiently in response to changes in the business environment. Agility is a concept that incorporates the ideas of flexibility, balance, and adaptability. The PMI Agile (for more info) can help to enhance this concept.

Agile strategy can be applied to any and all of the issues facing companies, from high-level strategic opportunities to day-to-day operational challenges. It helps by empowering people at every level to resolve issues, execute the plan brilliantly and maximize the total value delivered to customers and stakeholders. Today the top management is struggling with an endless stream of issues. These range from constant new strategic choices on markets, products, and businesses to operational problems impacting monthly and yearly targets.

Improvement and change in style is required at each level. People need to communicate differently, changes are required in team cohesiveness, and leadership styles of agile practitioners. Agile strategy's approach to design is based on a problem-solving approach using creativity and in-depth analysis. The following are some key characteristics of a successful Agile business strategy:

o Agile Mentality: An agile organization is capable of rapid adaptation in response to unexpected and unpredicted changes and events, market opportunities, and customer requirements.

o Iterative Approach (Inspect and Adapt): With technological advancement, time to market is shrinking which results in continuous validation of strategies through constant customer feedback and new competitor’s innovation. All elements of the strategic lifecycle need to be iterative.

o Unique Value Proposition: A company must introduce distinctive product features, services, or activities in order to be unique at others.

o Mutually Reinforcing Value Chains: An organization’s business strategy needs to be reflected in a distinctive value chain. For example, a company’s product development should reinforce its approach to the IT processes, and both should leverage the way it conducts after-sales service.

o Continuity of Direction: To build a strong reputation in the market, continuous value delivery to the customers is a necessity.

Using agile to manage your projects, you can significantly reduce your risks and increase your chance of success. The team working on agile projects interacts frequently with customers and stakeholders, in defining, prioritizing, building, testing, and using the most important features. This way live feedback is immediately shared with the team.

Lean and Six Sigma were traditional management practices, rooted in the 20th century, which have become a significant barrier to exceptional performance. For 21st century, the right choice for the company’s decision makes is agile strategy, which provides a new mental model, language, and toolkit.

Agile strategic management recognizes that you need to build learning and a degree of flexibility into the decision making process. This can be achieved by the PMI ACP Training. This training is useful to all candidates and competency levels ranging from highly experienced project managers to those new to the industry.