Whatever happened to Six Sigma?

Re:Whatever happened to Six Sigma? by jdgoesmarching on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @05:04PM (#20881404)

I don't see this as a bad thing even though it's framed that way. As you said, project management is hard and the field isn't that that old, especially in tech. Processes and techniques will come and go as we learn from the old and build up the new. One might even say we ~iterate~ on them.

Six sigma is a manufacturing process that was shoehorned into business and software development. There were some great concepts that probably influenced later methodologies, that's far from being a useless fad. You wouldn't call the sledgehammer a fad because we have jackhammers now.

To tie the analogy together, these are just tools. We would both probably agree that having the best tools don't matter if you don't have good, well-trained people behind them.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Whatever happened to Six Sigma? by all_blue_chucks on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @05:23PM (#20881568)

I'm not saying methodologies are useless; having some structure is better than winging it. But they are absolutely fads. Nowhere is this more clear than in the terminology. Black belts? Sprints? Punting? Scrum masters? That's pet rock level fad stuff, and I say this as an "agile" PM... who was at one point was encouraged to get a six sigma black belt by management chasing a fad.

[ Parent | on HN ]