I recently became Lean Six Sigma (LSS) White Belt certified through my current employer. My company’s intention is to white belt certify all employees while continuing with more advanced certifications for management. The question this raises with me, and a question that has been raised by many others, is how does an LSS initiative align with an EA initiative?
My take is that they are complimentary, but one does not fully embody the other and they both should operate independently. I think it is extremely healthy for LSS principles to permeate the EA Team and be part of the team’s culture (as it should be for the entire enterprise), however, that doesn’t mean the EA Team can, or should own the application and promotion of LSS throughout the enterprise.
LSS is defined as a set of process improvement tools for reducing waste associated with the flow of materials and information in a process (moresteam.com, n.d.). Enterprise Architecture, as my EA Foundations I class at Penn State taught me, is defined as the process of translating business vision and strategy in effective enterprise change. The scope of each is very different; process improvement versus strategic planning.
Another way of highlighting the distinction is this; LSS is focused on optimizing the current-state, while EA is focused on defining the future-state. With such different scopes and objectives, it seems clear that they are separate initiatives, and one should not own the other. With that said, there should certainly be plenty of joint planning, participation, and knowledge sharing. An LSS initiative will benefit by having knowledge of the future-state and enterprise-level changes that are forthcoming, while EA will benefit from a culture of “lean” and from the business knowledge obtained by LSS process improvement efforts.
One final point. My posting thus far assumes that there is a central LSS team that is training, mentoring, and leading the charge for process improvements throughout the enterprise. This may be the typical model for most enterprises when they first adopt LSS, however, it does not have to remain that way. Once an enterprise matures its LSS capabilities to the point it permeates the entire enterprise and is truly embedded into the culture, it is possible to disband the centralized LSS team. One of LSS’ strongest proponents, Xerox, recently did just that, as the following excerpt from the Democrat & Chronicle states (Daneman, 2014).
In a memo to employees earlier this month, president of corporate operations Herve Tessler said that Xerox, having met its goal of “embedding the principles and practices of (Lean Six Sigma) within the business ... we no longer have a need for a centralized LSS function and (will) disband the corporate LSS team.”
My final thoughts on EA and LSS can be summarized by saying that 1) enterprises should embrace both, 2) if LSS is not in place, then EA should encourage the adoption, 3) they are separate initiatives, EA should not try to own LSS, and 4) EA should engage and partner with LSS for knowledge sharing and for, of course, keeping EA’s own processes “lean”.
References
Moresteam.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.moresteam.com/new-to-lean-six-sigma.cfm#lean
Daneman, Matthew. (2014). Xerox cutting back on Lean Six Sigma program, jobs. Retrieved from http://safechild.org/categoryparents/preventing-bullying/
I really like the post! Years ago when getting certified as an enterprise architect I asked the same question about Lean and Six Sigma. The answer I got was one that wasn't surprising snd not dissimilar to your analysis. Process improvements and quality go hand in hand with enterprise architecture. Designs and decisions made by EA must take into consideration the operational impacts to those who support the process. In my experience often EA doesn't speak to time, nor investment. Taking it one step further, EA will usually ignore the process impact and that of course can degrade the value stream effectively nullifying any tangible investment gains.
ReplyDeleteScott,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on two counts - one for the belt, and the other for this great post. In the context of establishing future state communication, I would place Lean Six Sigma as an important set of principles that EA needs to strongly consider when working on the architectures.
I remember the excitement of being part of an Operational Excellence program, because the efficiency goals simply make sense to everyone. Lean principles helped to meet the challenges of product development, bring more innovative solutions, shortened development and production cycle times, and millions saved in development and productions costs. The principles are indeed great for streamlining all processes - perhaps to include those of EA's, and general waste reduction. Its popularity is not surprising.
IT systems indeed, should embody and participate in promoting these principles, in support of new product development, and should enable rapid response for product changes. In addition to how these principles help create architectures which facilitate execution of strategy in the area of production, lean principles can also be applied to the EA development process itself, and for all other domain architecture developments as well.
Particularly on the EA application, we can adopt the lean management method of value stream mapping for the next step of designing future state vs. current state later. We definitely will come back to this discussion.
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Lean Six Sigma can successfully involve a series of individuals with differing levels of capacity and techniques to make outstanding renovations in any type of business.
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