Anticlue

Six Sigma Creating SMART Project Goals

"We want to become the most powerful, influential, and respected Healthcare information technology department in the world."

Take a moment and consider the above goal? Is it obtainable? How do you measure the success of obtaining such a goal? While this is a goal, from a Six Sigma perspective it needs to be transformed into something achievable, clear, concise, and measurable.

A better example of a project goal is, "We agree we reduce break fix issues in our production environment by 50 percent within three months." This goal is clearly defined because it's SMART: Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, and within a clear Time frame for reaching the goal.

Six Sigma's SMART methodology helps keep a project team focused and dedicated to a common goal. While improvement projects are typically complex, lengthy, and involve a cross functional team of people from different work areas, a project goal helps ensure that the sigma team stays focused and on-track.

There are five guidelines for making a project goal SMART:

• Make the goal Specific - The goal should be exact regarding what the team hopes to accomplish.
• Make the goal Measurable - When a project goal is measurable, the team knows exactly when the goal has been achieved and what has been achieved.
• Make sure the goal is Agreed upon - Everyone involved in the process in question, especially all Six Sigma team members, must agree to the goal and agree that its successful completion is important. At some point, all team members and project stakeholders will be asked to contribute their time and resources to the project. Agreement commits everyone to achieving the same goal.
• Make sure the goal is Realistic - Whether a goal is realistic depends on the resources and needs of the organization. Make sure the goal is neither too ambitious nor too trivial. Make it just right.
• Make sure the goal has a Time frame - Like all the elements of the project goal, the time frame should be realistic. The time frame should be achievable yet limited enough to make the goal valuable to the company.

Creating the goal for a Six Sigma improvement project requires that the team follow five guidelines for making the goal SMART.