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This technique is similar to multivoting in its purpose, but the method is slightly different.

You first create a list of ideas (blue), then you vote on them (green), and then you take the final results, announce them and discuss them (red).

The difference here between this and the multivoting technique is that the generation of ideas is done separately by members, and the results are pooled together. This can also be done by sending responses remotely to, say, subject matter experts (SMEs) or stakeholders, for example.

The purpose, however, is the same, to generate ideas on what problems to handle next and to develop a group consensus on which of them have highest priority, so there is buy-in from the group going forward. Even if your pet project wasn’t voted on, you can at least have the satisfaction that your idea had an airing before the group.

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We’re coming to the end of the material in the Green Belt Body of Knowledge under the Define portion of the DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) methodology of Six Sigma.  This series of posts covers various brainstorming tools used  by teams such as multivoting, nominal group technique, and force field analysis.

Here are the steps of multivoting. You first create a list of ideas (blue), then you vote on them in a series of rounds (green), and then you take the final results, announce them and discuss them (red).

The purpose of this team approach is to achieve a consensus of which items have a priority based on the opinions of those on the team.

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In the last post I discussed many of the issues that can impede the development of group dynamics. The last type of issue I listed was that of cultural issues. I wanted to go further into this topic in this post using the cultural dimensions developed by Geert Hofstede.

His theory is that different countries have different cultures or value-systems that be compared by looking at several dimensions along which these cultures can be said to reside. He started out with four different dimensions, and the theory has gradually grown to six of them.

Let’s take a look at each of these dimensions in turn.

For these six cultural dimensions, here are some examples of countries or regions that have high, medium, or low values in each dimension. In the case of countries, their scores are given on a ranking scale from 1 (lowest) to 120 (highest).

Knowing the difference between cultures can be the first step in avoiding cultural miscues between team members from those cultures, and eventually developing cross-cultural leadership.

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In the previous post I discussed the process of team development, according to the stages set forth by the American psychologist Bruce Tuckman. Those are the stages that develop if everything develops  well. What are the some of the challenges that can occur that could prevent arrest the development of a team?

These problems range from psychological differences (red), organization issues (blue), ego conflicts (green), and cultural differences (purple).

These above are examples of the different sources of conflict that might occur. However, the last one, that of cultural differences, is an increasingly important topic in teams that are international or global. So the next post deals in more detail with these cultural differences.

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Another important topic in the Define phase of DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) in Six Sigma is that of team dynamics and performance. One of the subtopics to be addressed in this topic is that of how teams develop in the first place.

The American psychologist Bruce Tuckman did research in the theory of group dynamics, and in 1965 came up with his 4 stages of group or team development, to which he added a fifth stage in 1977.

The following is a chart which sums up these stages. Notice that the role of the manager changes with each stage, from a relatively “hands on” approach at first to a more supervisory role, and finally to someone who recognizes achievement of the team and of individuals.

The Adjourning/Transforming stage was the one that Tuckman created in 1977. The importance of this for project management is that it is where a review of the project both in its positive aspects (rewarding) and negative aspects (lessons learned for future projects) takes place.

These stages are not what every team goes through; they represent the potential stages of growth. . It is certainly possible that a team may stay in the stage of Storming (stage 2) during the entire project. The group may start coming together in the Norming stage, but never achieve that focused intensity as a group marked by the Performing Stage. Since all projects have an end, the team will break up, but it is up to the manager to make sure the recognition of achievement and review of lessons learned takes place.

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This post contains a revelation that a DTM shared with me recently about how to approach doing advanced speeches from different manuals in the Advanced Communication series.

I’ve been in Toastmasters for two years now, and this is the year that I made the transition from doing speeches in the Competent Communicator manual to doing speeches from Advanced Communication Manuals. In April of this year, I got my Competent Communicator award and was looking forward to doing speeches from two different manuals in the Advanced Communication series (there are about a dozen in all).

I am a dual club member, with one of the clubs being my “home” club and another one that is more of a professional networking club, since it consists of project managers which is what my profession is now. So I picked two manuals, The Entertaining Speaker and Speaking to Inform. I figured I would do the entertaining speeches at my home club, and the informative speeches at my professional club.

That seemed to work out well, but then at the end of the year, I had a chance to do one of the speeches from The Entertaining Speaker at my professional club.  One of the Distinguished Toastmasters (DTMs) in our club saw that speech, and then subsequently saw the last one of the informative speeches I did out of the Speaking to Inform  manual. He said that the informative speech I did was “getting boring” in comparison to the other speech I had done previously.

This may seem harsh criticism, but he explained why he said it.   He said that I needed to establish the same rapport with the audience that I did during the entertaining speeches, so that people would connect with me and then be interested in the information I was presenting. If I did that, then my informative speeches would be entertaining as well, and therefore get the message across better.

Well, it’s about a dry subject, I rationalized, and at first I just thought that his criticism may not have been justified. But the more I thought about it, I realized that he was right.

I had divided my mind artificially between the entertaining speeches I did in the one club and the informative speeches I did in the other. With the entertaining speeches I was experimenting with different styles and I was really growing in terms of my delivery of a speech. On the other hand, with the informative speeches I was concerned about whether I was getting the information across, and not necessarily how I was delivering it.

What the DTM told me meant that I needed to tear up my artificial barriers in my mind and do a speech that was at once BOTH informative and entertaining. A dry, aloof style may be fine for a professor giving a lecture, but a speech is not the same as a lecture. You can use emotion to reach out to an audience and connect with them, and then since they care about you or relate to you in some way, whatever you tell them is going to have a bigger impact.

So having finished the Advanced Communicator Bronze by finishing both these manuals, I have vowed that in 2013, I was going to go for two different manuals, but I was not going to make the same mistake. I would use them TOGETHER to make ALL of my speeches better. I needed to connect to the art of telling a story so I picked the Storytelling Manual. And because of my growing interest in leadership, I picked Speeches by Management as my other manual.  But in expanding my ability to tell a story to the audience, I can then use that ability in my other manual to inspire the team members whom I am managing.

So my message for 2013 is, don’t work on one manual at a time. Use two different manuals and alternate doing speech projects from either one of them. Then see if the lessons you learned in one manual can’t teach you a thing or two in doing the speeches for the other manual.

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Lana Wachowski is the co-director with her brother Andy of the recent movie Cloud Atlas as well as such films as The Matrix Trilogy, and V for Vendetta. I saw the movie and read a review of the movie in the New York Review of Books.* I was reminded of the fact that Ken Wilber, the philosopher who wrote A Theory of Everything, stands was her philosophical muse in the same way that Joseph Campbell was to George Lucas, who based Star Wars on the “monomyth” described in Campbell’s The Hero of A Thousand Faces. Having read Ken Wilber’s book mentioned above, I decided to go deeper into his philosophical writings by reading his magnum opus, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (aka SES) and take some notes while I go through the book. I will do posts regarding his book from time to time as I take some “time off” from writing about my usual subjects of project management, quality control, and globalization.

(The review can be found at http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/02/ken-wilber-cloud-atlas/).

1. The Three Books of SES

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality actually is three books, two books plus the footnotes to both. The first book contains his notes on Integral Theory, which looks at experience from a series of different perspectives. The second book discusses the barriers that people face in opening up their vision to the different perspectives of Integral Theory. The third book contains the “graduate level” discussion of many of the points brought up in the first and second books.

2. First Book, Chapter 1: The Web of Life (review)

The first chapter, The Web of Life, introduced the modern ecological meme of the “Web of Life”, and how it is related to its philosophical forerunner in the Middle Ages called the Great Chain of Being.

The intellectual history of this relationship shows three main overall stages, the medieval or pre-modern synthesis of the Great Chain of Being, the break-up of that synthesis with the rise of modern science, and the new post-modern synthesis that emerged during the latter part of the 20^th century called The Web of Life.

These two memes are from two different worldviews (medieval and post-modern), and yet they share the same structure of a “nest of concentric circles” which Ken Wilber referred to as a “holarchy”, to differentiate it from a linear vertical relationship (hierarchy) or linear horizontal relationship (heterarchy).

The Great Chain of Being and the Web of Life are two philosophical memes which represent a holarchy, and I believe that’s why he presented them in this first chapter before he presented the details of holons, which come in the next chapter.

3. First Book, Chapter 2: The Pattern that Connects

The second chapter, after having introduced by example what a holarchy is, he then spends the next chapter describing what he refers as to as holons. A holarchy is a series of nested holons, where each thing or process is a part of a larger whole, and so can be considered technically a part or a whole, but BOTH. This term was coined by Arthur Koesler, but you can see it’s philosophical significance as finally solving the philosophical dilemma of “the one and the many.” The universe can be seen as the sum of its parts (“the many”) or the totality or whole (“the one”). Which is the more essential or “real”?

Plato was a proponent of the “one over many” school, saying in the Republic:“We customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each collection of many things to which we apply the same name.”
Heraclitus on the other hand thought that the world consisted of many parts, some of which were in opposition to each other, and that the opposition between these parts was what held them together as One. Democritus, with his theory of atoms, was a proponent that the parts (atoms) were the most important. So one theme running through Greek Philosophy is explaining the relationship of the One to the Many. The concept of holons, where objects or processes are both One (the whole containing smaller parts) and the Many (a part of a larger whole) bridges these two themes very well.

In the next post, I will list the 20 tenets or principles that Ken Wilber has developed for these holons regarding how they are interrelated, how they develop or evolve, and how they sometimes devolve or dissipate. This is probably the most arcane of the chapters, even according to Ken Wilber, but I think some examples will allow people to relate to the underlying principles of what he’s trying to get across.

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A. Performance Metrics:  purpose

What are the ways you can measure how successful your Six Sigma project has been in improving quality or decreasing the number of defects?

Before we go into the metrics and definitions, let’s say what “defects” and “defective” mean. Something has a defect if the result or outcome of a process is not what is expected. Something went wrong. The product may still be usable: a car with chipped paint can still be driven.

So some engineers use “defective” to mean a product which is not usable. Oops, we forgot to put an engine in that car: well, that’s a defective car because it can’t be driven. However, for the purpose of quality control, “defective” simply means “contains a defect,” whether that defect is cosmetic or whether it actually affects the function of the part as intended. (So just be careful to make sure you are on the same page in terms of your definition as those you are communicating to).

There can be different types of defects in a single part based on different causes.

B. Performance Metrics–Definitions

Here is a list of the Performance Metrics which are spelled out and then given an acronym if one is commonly used. The description is given of what this metric means.

C.  Performance metrics–Discussion and examples

1. Percentage Defective

This is defined as the

(Total number of defective parts)/(Total number of parts) X 100

So if there are 1,000 parts and 10 of those are defective, the percentage of defective parts is (10/1000) X 100 = 1%

2. PPM

Same as the ratio defined in metric 1, but multiplied by 1,000,000. For the example given above, 1 out of 100 parts are defective means that 10,000 out of 1,000,000 will be defective so the PPM = 10,000.

NOTE: The PPM only tells you whether or not there exists one or more defects. To get a clear picture on how many defects there are (since each unit can have multiple defects), you need to go to metrics 3, 4, and 5.

3. Defects per Unit

Here the AVERAGE number of defects per unit is calculated, which means you have to categorize the units into how many defects they have from 0, 1, 2, up to the maximum number. Take the following chart, which shows how many units out of 100 total have 0, 1, 2, etc., defects all the way to the maximum of 5.

The average number of defects is DPU = [Sum of all (D * U)]/100 =

[(0 * 70) + (1 * 20) + (2 * 5) + (3 * 4) + (4 * 9) + (5 * 1)]/100 = 47/100 = 0.47

4. Defects per Opportunity

How many ways are there for a defect to occur in a unit? This is called a defect “opportunity”, which is akin to a “failure mode”. Let’s take the previous example in metric 3. Assume that each unit can have a defect occur in one of 6 possible ways. Then the number of opportunities for a defect in each unit is 6.

Then DPO = DPU/O = 0.47/6 = 0.078333

5. Defects per Million Opportunities

This is EXACTLY analogous to the difference between the Percentage Defective and the PPM, metrics 1 and 2, in that you get this by taking metric 4, the Defects per Opportunity, and multiplying by 1,000,000. So using the above example in metric 3:

DPMO = DPO * 1,000,000 = 0.078333 * 1,000,000 = 78,333

6. Rolled through Yield

This takes the percentage of units that pass through several subprocesses of an entire process without a defect.

The number of units without a defect is equal to the number of units that enter a process minus the number of defective units. Let the number of units that enter a process be P. The number of defective units is D. Then the first-pass yield for each subprocess or FPY is equal to (P – D)/P. One you get each FPY for each subprocess, you multiply them altogether.

If the yields of 4 subprocesses are 0.994, 0.987, 0.951 and 0.990, then the RTY = (0.994)(0.987)(0.951)(0.990) = 0.924 or 92.4%.

 7. Process Sigma

What is a Six Sigma process? It is the output of process that has a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, with an upper specification limit (USL) and lower specification limit (LSL) set at +3 and -3, respectively. However, there is also the matter of the 1.5-sigma shift which occurs over the long term.

The result is the following two charts, one without and one with the 1.5-sigma shift.

 This is from ASQ’s website under Quality Process. Refer to this site for more detailed information on the theory and mathematics behind this 1.5-sigma shift.

 http://asq.org/quality-progress/2009/08/34-per-million/perusing-process-performance-metrics.html

 8. Cost of poor quality

Also known as the cost of nonconformance, this takes the cost it takes to take care of defects either

a) internally, i.e., before they leave the company, through scrapping, repairing, or reworking the parts, or

b) externally, i.e., after they leave the company, through costs of warranty, returned merchandise, or product liability claims and lawsuits.

 This is obviously more difficult to calculate because the external costs can be delayed by months or even years after the products are sold. It’s best, therefore, to measure those costs which are relatively easy to calculate and quickly available, i.e., the internal costs of poor quality.

 The above are some of the metrics you can use BEFORE your Six Sigma Project and then AFTER your project to show that the countermeasures you have devised have had a positive effect. How certain can you be of this? That is the subject of the measurement section, which comes after this Define section of the Body of Knowledge is done.

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This is the last in the series of posts on 7 different management tools that can be used on Six Sigma projects.   This last tool of activity network diagramsi is used when you have decided on a Six Sigma Project, and you need to know how long it is going to take.  Also, you need to be in a position to be able to figure out whether you can compress the schedule to reduce the time it takes to do the project.  Finally, you need to plan on effective risk management to make sure that the project stays on schedule.

To do this, you need to create an activity network diagram. Once you create the diagram you need to figure out the critical path, which is the path from the start to the finish of the project with the longest cumulative duration. Those activities on the critical path may not be delayed without delaying the schedule as a whole. Other activities that are NOT on the critical path may be delayed for a certain period of time without affecting the schedule, and the amount of “wiggle room” in the schedule for any given activity is called the float of that activity.

First step is creating the activity network diagram.

6.5.2. Critical path method

To determine how long a project will take, you need to find out the critical path, that is, the sequence of activities in the network diagram that is the longest. Other paths along the network will yield sequences of activities that are shorter than the critical path, and they are shorter by an amount equal to the float. This means that activities that have float could be delayed by a certain amount without affecting the schedule. Activities along the critical path have a float of zero. This means that any delay along the critical path will affect the schedule.

Here’s an outline of the critical path methodology.

a. You create a network diagram of all the activities.

b. You label each activity with the duration derived from process 6.4 Estimate Activity Durations.

c. You do a forward pass to determine the early start and early finish date of all activities, from the start of the project to the end of the project.

d. Once at the end of the project, you do a backward pass to determine the late start and late finish date of all activities, from the end of the project to the start of the project.

e. For each activity, you use the results of c and d to calculate the float of each activity.

f. All activities that have 0 float are on the critical
path for that project.

Let’s take a look at the methodlogy in general.

Step 1. For each activity, create a matrix which will contain the duration, the early start, the early finish, the late start, late finish, and float for a particular activity.

Here are the meanings of the numbers in the boxes:

Activity Number: you can label them A through Z, or 1 through N, just as long as each activity has a unique identifier.

Duration: this is the number that you should get as an output of the 6.4 Estimate Activity Durations process.

Early Start (ES): The Early Start is the number you begin the analysis with to do the forward pass. It is defined as 0 for the first activity in the project. The Early Start for subsequent activities is calculated in one of two different ways, which will be demonstrated below.

Early Finish (EF): This is the next number you go to in the forward pass analysis. It is taken by adding the number in the ES box plus the number in the Duration box.

Late Finish (LF): The Late Finish is the number you begin the analysis with to do the backward pass. It is defined to be equal to the number in the Early Finish box for the last activity in the project. The Late Finish for preceding activities is calculated in one of two different ways, which will be demonstrated below.

Late Start (LS): This is the next number you go to in the backward pass analysis. It is taken by subtracting the number in the Duration box from the number in the LF box.

Float: Once ES, ES, LF, and LS are determined, the float is calculated by either LS – ES or LF – EF. Just remember that a piece of wood will float to the top of the water, so the float is calculated by taking the bottom number and then going upward and subtracting the number that’s on the top of it.

Step 2.

For activity A, the first activity in the project, ES = 0.

Step 3.

Then EF for activity A is simply ES + duration. Let’s say activity A takes 5 days. Then EF = 0 + 5 = 5.

Step 4.

The forward pass for activity A is complete. Let’s go on to activity B.

Since activity B has only one predecessor, activity B, the ES for activity B is simply equal to the EF of activity A, which was 5.

Then the EF for activity B is taken by adding the ES of to the duration of activity B or 3, giving EF = 5 + 3 = 8.

There’s one more situation that we have to discuss and that is if an activity has more than one predecessor.

Let’s assume the durations for each activity are as follows:

Assume Activity A and Activity B are both done concurrently at the start of the project, and both need to be done in order for Activity C to start. Well, before we do the formal forward pass analysis, what does logic tell us? Activity A takes 5 days; Activity B takes 3 days. Both activity A and B have to be done before Activity C can take place. In this case the start date of the project is considered to be 0. Can Activity C take place on day 3, when activity B is done? No, because Activity A isn’t completed yet, and you need BOTH A and B to be done. The earliest possible start date for Activity C will be day 5, because only on that date will both A and B be done.

So this illustrates the other way of calculating ES for an activity B. If there are multiple predecessors, then the ES is equal to the LARGEST of the ES of the predecessor activities.

Step 5.

Now, let’s assume we are at the end of the project at activity Z.

EL = ES + duration gives us EL = 95 + 5 + 100. So the project will take 100 days according to our forward pass calculation.

Now, we have the backward pass.

We start this out by stating as a principle that the late finish or LF date for the last activity in the project is equal to the EF date.

Then, of course, the late start date or LS = LF – duration = 100 – 5 = 95.

Step 6.

Now we go in the reverse direction towards the beginning of the network diagram, this time filling out the bottom LS and LF boxes for each activity.

If the activity has one successor, then the LF for the predecessor activity equals the LS for the successor of activity. But if there are more than one predecessor activity, then here’s what you do. For the forward pass, you take the highest EF of all predecessors.

For the backward pass, you take the lowest LS of all successors. Let’s see how this works.

Let’s assume the forward pass is done on A, B, and C. We do the backward analysis and we get to the following point. What is the LF of activity A?

Well, activity B and activity C are both successors of A. In this case, activity B has an LS of 6 and activity C has an LS of 5. The earliest LS is therefore 5, and so LS of activity A is 5.

Step 7.

What is the float? Take LF – EF (or LS – ES) for each of the activities.

So the float of B is 1, and the float of A and C are 0. Therefore A and C are on the critical path.

If you were trying to shorten the length of the project you could do it by crashing or adding more resources to a specific activity to get it done in less time. Or you could fast track an activity so that if you have two activities that normally come one right after the other like this:

you can take the second activity and fast track it by starting it BEFORE the first activity is completed.

In this case, you don’t have increased cost like you do when you are crashing an activity, but you do have increased risk based on the need to coordinate the activities being done partly at the same time. The only time when fast tracking might cost additional resources would be if the people who are doing activity 1 and activity 2 are the same people.

In any case, you can see how the critical path lets you know what activities are critical to maintain the planned schedule, but it also shows you where you can compress the schedule most effectively, and gives you indications as to where the higher risk areas will be in the schedule. Those activities that have several predecessor activities that MUST be done first will need more scrutiny than those that only have one predecessor, for example.

This concludes the review of the 7 management tools that are used in Six Sigma. They are not exclusively used in Six Sigma, of course, but they are tools for brainstorming, for analyzing, and for planning a Six Sigma project.

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In a way, a process decision program chart is similar to failure mode effects analysis in that it tries to map out the ways things can wrong, but not with respect to the design, but with respect to the process itself. It is a way of mapping out countermeasures to those things that can go wrong, and so could be considered a tool of risk management.  Risk management is especially important when projects are complex and the schedule constraint is tight (i.e., no delays permissible).

Here’s the procedure.   Please note that this tool requires the output of Management Tool #2: Tree Diagrams which was covered in a previous post.

Here’s an example taken from ASQ’s Learn About Quality feature regarding this tool. This is taken as an example of a medical group that is trying to improve the patient care for those patients that have chronic illnesses like diabetes.

You can see the first level objective, the second level activities, and the third level tasks.

On the fourth level, you see the example of two tasks that have listed the risks associated with them that might prevent those tasks being carried out. The fifth level has countermeasures listed to prevent those risks from occurring. The practical countermeasures are marked with an O and the impractical ones are marked with an X.

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