Project Management Articles

A project can fail for a combination of reasons. By understanding why projects fail, outsourcers can plan ahead to avoid potential problems.

An outsourcing company should consider many different factors when choosing a global IT partner. Among these criteria should be data security.

Communication barriers can be overcome if preemptive measures are taken by the outsourcing company and the vendor. An efficient communication plan can play an important role in the development of an outsourced project.

Lean Six Sigma is a philosophy that aims at the improvement in value provision to the customer, improvement in process flows and elimination of waste. Lean deals with waste by shortening the time gap between the order and the shipment. The organization is based on six steps for continuous improvement. These steps are value, value stream, flow, pull, perfection and replication.

In the current business scenario, organizations strive towards exceeding the customer's expectations and achieving a competitive edge over rivals. This comes as an outcome of the long term planning, an achievable vision towards the goal and continuous improvement in the processes.

The success of the Six Sigma project is not based on how good or bad the Green Belts and Black Belts have worked; it is highly dependent on the strong base of project sponsorship and project charter. Often Six Sigma is thought of as a quick fix solution for problems of the organization. However, the success of Six Sigma is dependent on its long term implementation.

The need for training in Lean Six Sigma arises when organizations decide that they want to go the Lean way. Training includes understanding the various methodologies, problem areas, operational flaws and an understanding of the metrics.

Selecting the right improvement projects and developing a project pipeline is necessary to the success of the Six Sigma initiative. Projects that are too large can be unmanageable. Such an initiative stands a chance of failing.

Most of us would like to work in clean and tidy workplaces. Often the productivity of employees will be affected by how the workplace is arranged. A cluttered, untidy place will put off employees and there will be large amount of waste in such cases.

There are different activities undertaken in call centers; planning, call routing, after-call operations, research operations on unresolved calls, reporting and staff scheduling. The most important function is the handling of calls, inbound as well as outbound. This function is repeated a number of times throughout the day and needs lots of improvement.

Lean Six Sigma is a very systematic and comprehensive approach towards solving real-life problems. Lean is popular for the accuracy in analysis, logic backed by data, easy improvement metrics and quantifiable benefits and cost savings.

Project management is all about making things happen. It's about bringing successful completion to a project accomplishing predetermined goals and objectives. The main challenge for a project manager is to achieve all these goals and objectives while adhering to other constraints such as time and budget.

Communication is an integral part of Six Sigma projects. It starts from the project charter and moves ahead with the project reviews, also called milestones or tollgate reviews. The project charter defines all major issues related to the project, right from the start to the planned "last date", process problems, relevance of the processes, process goals, measurements and so on.

In the modern competitive age, success is the mantra for life, whereas failure spells death and decay. Inefficiency or lack of speed implicit in failure is unacceptable and unpardonable. The competitive ethos of the contemporary world places enormous demands on us; we have no choice but to perform or perish.

Many are of the view that the Six Sigma Training and Total Quality management is the same; in other words it (TQM) is an old wine in a new bottle (Six Sigma). However, Six Sigma and TQM are two different things, with Six Sigma being relatively newer than TQM.