Six Sigma in Project Management for Software Companies

Abstract

Six Sigma approach is considered as a very successful tool in manufacturing quality improvement. From the last two decades, Six Sigma has helped many companies e.g., Honda, American Express, Ford, Honda, General Electric, Sony, Hitachi, Motorola, Texas Instruments etc. to be successful. The goal of any “Six Sigma” improvement effort made by the company is to obtain a long-lasting defect rate of only 3.4 defective parts-per-million (PPM) manufactured. Recently, the Six Sigma approach was introduced in the software development industry. Some software companies are making an attempt to adapt Six Sigma for their business and development processes so that they can improve their process by lowering the amount of defects and all. But there are some misconceptions about the applicability of Six Sigma in the software industry. Furthermore there is no generic software quality amendment or improvement solution predicated on Six Sigma approach. So there is a demand to invalidate or negate the misconceptions related to the applicability of Six Sigma and to develop a generic software company quality amendment or improvement solution predicated on Six Sigma approach. In this paper we take a primary step to search out such a solution for the software companies so that they can manage their projects successfully with fewer defects, better quality and high customer satisfaction. The paper starts from Six Sigma concept identification and manufacturing investigation. After conducting some interviews, a case study and several other case studies reviews from the industries, we elaborate our method so that we can find out the way to improve the process and manage the projects effectively. We expect paper to be useful enough for the software or IT companies when applying Six Sigma in their company for Process Amendment or improvement & Project Management. This research paper includes the DMAIC methodology in order to manage the projects in the software companies so as have less defects, more client satisfaction, more repeat clients, better quality and good return on investment.