What is Project Closure in Six Sigma
Typically, by describing a project closure, you can identify project completion criteria. This, in turn, helps identify performance improvements and additional opportunities. It is a formal project summation in which the project team can officially close the project. It allows for the quick handover of deliverables and documentation. Inefficiently done, it will reduce the level of project success and incorrectly identify additional opportunities.
What the steps involved in project closure process?
The project closure process involves closing out all project activities after the Control phase of a Six Sigma project and it consists of five steps:
- The process starts with gathering the project team, which consists of all Belts involved in the project. The team updates the relevant records and reports of the various phases of the Six Sigma project. The project team also establishes procedures that help validate and document deliverables and formalize acceptance of those deliverables.
- The Master Black Belt reviews all documents and the project management plan to ensure that all project work is complete, the objectives are met, and the deliverables are achieved.
- The process owner verifies project results by comparing them with customer and stakeholder expectations and requirements and conducts financial audits. The process owner also tracks down the results of the project including process metrics and financial savings.
- Using the project results and the inputs from team members, the Green Belt prepares best practices and lessons learned reports and writes a final report or presentation of the project.
- The process owner officially declares the closure of the project.
Describe the role of closeout meetings in six sigma projects?
Closeout meetings are sessions held during the project closeout process and they involve all the stakeholders of the project. During a closeout meeting, the participants discuss the work and capture lessons learned and the best practices of the Six Sigma implementation. Based on the outcome of the meetings, the process owner will prepare a Six Sigma case study of the project. Closeout meetings typically follow a formal agenda and may require official minutes to be recorded. Not all organizations or projects require closeout meetings. Some organizations require the minutes from closeout meetings to be completed in full, approved by management, and preserved in a specific manner.
How are lessons learned report prepared?
Lessons learned reports are documents that capture salient and helpful information about work done in a project or project phase; they identify both the project team’s strengths and areas for improvement. They can be formal or informal, depending on the organizational norms or requirements. They are compiled for the benefit of future project teams, so that people can capitalize on the organization’s knowledge base about work that has already been done, avoid repeating mistakes, and benefit from ongoing organizational learning.
Analyses include adequacy of personnel, time, equipment and money, effectiveness of the entire project, how well the project was tracked, how well top management and project sponsors were informed of the project’s status, and how well the project team performed together.
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In a recent Lean Six Sigma Project kick-off meeting of one of my clients, after the teams presented their project charters, the business leader made an extempore announcement that the best and most successful Lean Six Sigma project will receive a special recognition and the team members will be lucratively rewarded.
Immediately few of them wanted to know what criteria will be used for selection. The business leader indicated that I will be the one who will define the criteria for successful Lean Six Sigma Project.
Factors that I consider among the criteria for success of Lean Six Sigma Projects are arranged in the descending order of their importance in the below list:
- Project Scope – Lean Six Sigma projects without well defined scope are bound to fail, but they end up creating a lot of mess around. Scope usually refers to the boundaries of any project. A poorly defined project is one which hasn’t balanced the Project Goal, Scope and Timelines. Also, poorly communicated scope and not defining what is out of scope are equally important and to be addressed.
- Retains interest and commitment of the resources – Improvement projects are successful when its team members contribute their best. Lean Six Sigma projects usually challenge the existing paradigm. Hence without whole hearted and continued participation of the team members, no project will be successful. The sponsor/champion and the Green Belt/Black Belt are entrusted to retain the interest and commitment of the resources.
- Attracts adequate buy-in from key stakeholders – Stakeholders of any project could either be the decision makers, important players who influence the decisions or even impacted parties. Successful Lean Six Sigma projects will have to manage the expectations of all the above stakeholders from time to time and create adequate buy-in. Rather than focusing too much on technical root cause analysis, the emphasis should be on how Lean Six Sigma project can bring about mid-to-large scale change in the organization.
- Flawless execution– Immaterial of the breadth and depth of the analysis done in any Lean Six Sigma project, what sticks out is execution. Well led and implemented project is bound to be successful, as even the quality of data collected and analysis is a function of the flawless execution. Adherence to weekly team meetings, project milestones and tollgates reviews are some simple and easy signs to evaluate execution. Further unbiased data collection and analysis, open minded assessment of solutions, in depth piloting and sustained monitoring are additional measures of flawless execution.
- Identifiable impact on customers – As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so is the success of any Lean Six Sigma in positive impact it creates on customers. Usually organizations evaluate the success of projects based on the performance of the CTQ (before-after studies). While this is definitely a good way to assess the impact, more often than not, such movements in CTQs aren’t felt by the customers. Considering several other business parameters to validate the impact of the CTQ, including post improvement Voice of Customer may be a very good method. For example, a reduction in defects certainly will reduce the rework effort, increase productivity, reduce complaints, apart from increasing customer satisfaction.
- Making a discovery – Any successful Lean Six Sigma project should un-earth something new, make a discovery about the problem. A project without a discovery could mean we are fixing obvious things. In order to ensure the project team makes a discovery, the quality of work done in the Measure and Analyze phase have to be evaluated. Have the teams identified all possible causes to the problem? Have they collected data of good quality and quantity? Have they holistically analyzed the data to make the discovery? And finally what is the discovery?
Based on my experience with Lean Six Sigma in the last 2 decades, I would consider these 6 factors as significant elements of successful project.
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