Agile Tagged Improvement Insights

Improvement Insights Blog

Posts tagged "Agile"

Agile Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training for Results

21st Century Quality is changing how companies implement Lean Six Sigma. Here’s how:

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“Over the last couple of years I’ve been going all of the Quality conferences, and I’ve seen some presentations that I think point us in a useful direction in terms of how to go about implementing Quality and getting results more quickly, and to accelerate, to develop some exponential growth in terms of how we achieve these results.

“About a year and a half ago I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference in Phoenix , and I saw Christus Health, and they talked about how they started out trying to do the traditional “Big Sigma Black Belt / Green Belt” whole thing, but they weren’t getting any results.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.

Where are the Quality Tools at ASQ WCQI?

Having reviewed the quality tool usage in posters at ASQ WCQI, I have to ask: Where are the Quality Tools?

 

 

“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was at the ASQ World conference and I looked at the team posters – you know, the improvement posters that were located in the exhibit hall. Surprisingly, out of all of all these little posters that were out there were there only two control charts, there were about five fishbone [diagrams], maybe one Pareto chart, but most the rest of it was line and bar charts.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, QI Macros.

Agile – Fail Fast, Fail Forward

Agile Silicon Valley Companies have this motto: Fail Fast, Fail Forward. Here’s how it applies to Lean Six Sigma:

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was out at the ASQ World Conference this year and I was observing this guy talking about exponential growth, and he was saying that in Silicon Valley they have a motto: “Fail Fast, Fail Forward.”

“Now I think everybody worries about failing in their first project or whatever it is. No, “fail fast, fail forward,” that’s the Agile approach to things: Rapid iteration to converge on a better world, right?

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights.

Hacking Lean Six Sigma Training

In the early 1990s, I took a control chart class that lasted five days. We learned decision trees and how to calculate control chart formulas with a calculator. I knew that the phone company would never tolerate five-day trainings for 70,000 employees and I knew that few of our employees would tolerate calculating these formulas manually. The only way to remove this barrier was to automate it. Here’s how I did it.

Let’s stop teaching people things they don’t need to know. It’s waste. When I automated everything, it shortened the training and increased retention and results. You can too.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.

Will It Work Here?

Agile Lean Six Sigma approach will rapidly answer this question. One-day Yellow Belt problem solving will get results where Green Belt and Black Belt training may not.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was out at the Lean Six Sigma World Conference in San Antonio there was a very interesting presentation about Yellow Belt trainings. What they found was that if they did it a certain way (which is the way I’ve been doing it for the last twenty years) that they got better results. Well, that’s kind of cool, right?

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Minimally Invasive Lean Six Sigma Training

One big pharma company embraced a more Agile approach to implementing Lean Six Sigma and achieved quick results. How did they do it?

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference for ASQ in Phoenix and Novartis gave a whole presentation about implementing Lean and Six Sigma around their sales process. It turns out they didn’t actually apply Lean and Six Sigma to the sales process, they simply optimized everything around it that supported their reps going out into the field and how the reps got paid, but they didn’t really do anything about the sales process.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Process Before Projects

You’ve heard the phrase “Cart before the horse?” Well one Agile company learned a similar phrase during their implementation. Save yourself a lot of time and effort by learning this simple phrase.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software]. I was at the ASQ Lean Six Sigma conference and there was a whole presentation on a company that had implemented Agile for software development, and I was kind of stunned to discover that I think they said they spent $15 million implementing Agile. Well, if you’re spending that much money, I’m not sure you’re being Agile, but anyway…

“So the one thing that they really said about implementing Agile for software improvement, the mistake they made was they started doing projects before they improved the process.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights.

Accelerating Lean Six Sigma Exponentially

At the ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference in Phoenix, they said that the world is accelerating exponentially. Is Lean Six Sigma accelerating exponentially? If we use Agile methods to accelerate Lean Six Sigma, we can move Lean Six Sigma into the 21st century.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Lean Mean Six Sigma

Is it possible to accelerate Lean Six Sigma using Agile? Yes! Find out how.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.

1/8/19 QI Macros Webinar

Almost 50 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to use some of the useful features of QI Macros, as well as some of the new features introduced in recent versions of the software.

Some attendees were familiar with the software and already use it, some had only begun to use it; all were interested in learning new ways that QI Macros can help them with their Agile Lean Six Sigma and Quality Improvement efforts. (You can hear him answering questions and comments typed in by webinar attendees.)



If you saw a feature demonstrated in the webinar that might have been added to QI Macros after the version you’re using (for instance, the “Find Tool” search feature or the automated Value Stream Map), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Excel, QI Macros, Webinar.