Six Sigma

Before talking about 6 Sigma, I want to make a point about business theory: If something can be done by anyone and everyone, you don't want to do that.

The theory is that if the market has too many producers, the market is perfect and therefore the market price does not allow to make a profit. It is worse in practice, because if you start a bakery and anyone can begin to sell bread on the street, then it means you won't be able to sell yours and the commodities needed to make bread will get really expensive because of all the demand.

After a while companies will begin to bankrupt but in the mean time companies will try to gain market share by lowering their prices below the production costs in order to make other companies file for the 11th chapter.

Until they run out of money.

Therefore, you should try to enter markets with a very high barrier of entrance. That is what explains why people study: The loose some years of making a profit while studying, but at the same time, later in life they can perform jobs that other people can't, meaning they can have higher wages and sometimes their wages are so high that they are paid by the hour of effective work.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma assumes that you want to improve the quality of your products by reducing the "variation", assuming that you produce repetitive stuff like fridges, cars, etc.

The variation is measured by using the standard deviation called sigma, which is a gauss bell, and sigma...

The Problem with Six Sigma

The problem with six sigma is that it assumes you are doing always the same thing, but in software if you do that you are a moron.

Writing software is simmilar to theory building.

Not only that but companies that try six sigma see no improvement, but fail miserably in the market.

Why is that?

They are focusing on the wrong stuff.

Toyota

Toyota learned what was needed even before six sigma was started. While six sigma allows failure to happen and then measures it and puts it in a graphic, Toyota and lean management in general, stop the production line and find out why the problem happened in the first place in order to avoid this problems.

This eliminates waste and more importantly, avoids people hiding their mistakes in order to pass some meaningless objective defined in a chart. The most important key factor of lean management is that you, the worker on the assembly line, can stop the system!!!

It empowers you because now you are in control.

That's why I think building software is like building cars, although to be more clear it is more like building a prototype, or several evolutionary prototypes, until you make it right.