A Symbiotic Relationship

Craig is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and has worked with ProjectManagement.com for the last six years developing the various HEADWAY processes (Project, Change and Portfolio). He has hosted a series of webinars and is a business intelligence subject matter expert.

  Business Intelligence   Risk Management   Strategy  

As a business intelligence practitioner, you have a great deal to offer any organization that is trying to improve its bottom line through process improvement efforts. Over the course of the last year, I have been involved in efforts to bring standardization, process and consistency to a large, multi-faceted company. My role as a business process management specialist has been to assist the company in identifying key business challenges and to scope out and lead business process change projects.

As part of these efforts, I have been required to apply Lean Six Sigma techniques to some of these efforts. While the Lean Six Sigma approach is rarely linked with business intelligence, it is a concept that relies heavily on data, measures and analysis to support and encourage process improvement efforts. These can be provided by the BI function in the organization. The two disciplines can work together in a symbiotic relationship--one requiring data to solve problems, the other requiring problems for the data it can provide.

Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that brings together the quality concepts of Lean (reduce waste) and Six Sigma (reduce variation) to create great efficiencies in a process. The goal is to create a process that is as efficient and value-adding as possible. It does this using a process improvement methodology called DMAIC, a methodology has five major …

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