Six Sigma Drives Portal Project

Computerworld - GE Power Systems uses its homegrown Project Management Methodology (PMM) to guide project teams through the risks and complexities of IT system development. Its users say PMM aids productivity, speeds implementations and helps answer that often mystifying question, "What do I do next?"
"You know what to do," says Samir Saini, IT sales program manager at GE Power. "It's a menu: I have to do A, B and C to get to Toll Gate 1, and D, E and F to get to Toll Gate 2. So it's just a matter of execution."
Every major IT project has a dedicated group -- which reports to a Six Sigma quality group, not to IT -- whose members serve as consultants, mentors and facilitators. For example, they schedule and plan the Toll
Gate reviews, Saini says.
"GE Power Systems is steeped in Six Sigma," says Jim Young, a former GE consultant who served as one of the project managers during development of the sales portal. "That means sales is in Six Sigma and IT is in Six Sigma -- they are all working toward that next belt."
Schenactady, N.Y.-based GE Power awards "belts" -- green belts, black belts, master black belts and so on -- to recognize employees' expertise and achievements in quality disciplines. "So it's an entire thought process, it's not just IT beating on salespeople to attend a meeting," Young says. "When you call a meeting, they are happy to go because they have to have meetings heading toward a deliverable, and if they are part of the deliverable, they are part of the belt."
PMM was at first a manual system, with many paper forms to be filled out. It was a "time-consuming process that added bureaucracy instead of IT controllership," says Venki Rao, an IT leader in global sales and marketing. And, over time, different groups modified the system to suit their unique application needs. "This created confusion and frustration for the project managers over which set of documents to use," he says.
As a result, GE Power Systems' Six Sigma quality team created the Digital PMM, an online workflow tool. "It asks a series of questions via a wizard that then picks the right steps with the right people at the right time and gives each team a tailored project timeline with steps and templates," Rao says. "It allows us to have electronic Toll Gate meetings with digital sign-offs, and to store projects in one common repository."
Young sums up the Digital PMM this way: "Because itwas so clear, so crisp, so exact, that's why we got through the seven Toll Gates into production in six months. The methodology keeps you from wandering around looking for people and products and answers. Everything is online."