Six Sigma is Bullshit

--------=[ { Six Sigma is Bullshit } by Scott Arciszewski | 2013-10-27 ]=-------

Today while reviewing my textbook for my Intro to IT Project Management course,
I came across a section dedicated to Six Sigma. After reading two pages of vapid
drivel that didn't explain _anything_, I decided to look it up on Google. What I
found was extremely irritating, so I'm going to sum Six Sigma up once and for
all in a clear and concise format.

WHAT IS SIX SIGMA?
Six Sigma is systemic perfectionism. When a company says they follow a Six Sigma
process, they mean that they don't fuck around or accept excuses. Everything has
to be perfect. You are only allowed 3.4 errors per million opportunities, which
means 3.4 defects per million units produced or 3.4 dissatisfied customers per
million served. They're ironing out the wrinkles, using one of two formalized
business processes: DMAIC or DMADV. Look them up if you're curious.

Let me begin by saying that something like Six Sigma undoubtedly has its place
in our society. If you're producing ball bearings for manned spacecraft, making
damn sure your margin of error is as close to the rounding error of a double
precision IEEE 754 floating point number as humanly possible. (And if you can
get it that low and something happens, you can always shift the blame to the
IEEE; they're like the Canada of computer science!) Six Sigma probably doesn't
even go far enough when it comes to the distribution of public key factors on
the Internet (ideally, they should all be unique). I'm sure nuclear chemists,
theoretical physicists, structural engineers designing the new children's
hospital, and the Perl Underground could chime in with examples for why their
field needs such a formalized machination of pedantry, but for the rest of the
civilized world, Six Sigma is bullshit.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH SIX SIGMA?
Uncertainty is part of nature. And I don't just mean at the subatomic level,
where all sorts of counter-intuitive but totally natural fuckery takes place.
Trying to squeeze an absurdly high amount of signal out of a process and ensure
virtually zero noise is simply not practical for most people or businesses. But
more importantly, doing so will result in disaster: By ironing out the wrinkles,
you make systems more prone to tear apart under stress. By emphasizing an almost
religious adherence to the statistical mean, outliers become traumatic events.
Organizations become fragile. How much easier is it to shatter ice than water?

Let me put it into Elder Scrolls IV - The Shivering Isles terms: The real world
is Sheogorath, Six Sigma is Jyggalag. Does that help?

Perfectionism is incompatible with an unignorable aspect of any business,
regardless of the industry: The human element.

How do people learn? Fundamentally, through one of two processes:
1. Asking questions to themselves (or others) to obtain new knowledge and form
   better questions, repeat ad naueseum.
2. Making mistakes.

Hell, our species owes its very existence to billions of years of DNA
transcription errors leading to advantageous mutations.

By embracing the dogma of the bell curve, you eliminate human compassion and the
environment in which human creativity flourishes. That isn't line noise, that's
the heart-beat of your workforce. Perfect order is stasis, and our markets are
far too dynamic for that nonsense.

OKAY, YOU DON'T LIKE SIX SIGMA; IS THERE A POINT TO ALL THIS?
Yes, actually. I have two points:

 I. Why is such an anal-retentive and inhuman quality management process being
    introduced in the textbook for a class that will most likely not benefit
    from knowing it, as most of its graduates will not be demanded to become
    perfect robots in order to keep a roof over their head?

    Most businesses don't need Six Sigma, and if you're in a field that does,
    then you're in the minority and their training program should cover all
    of that crap for you.

II. Why was the textbook explanation so terrible?

I have a hypothesis: Someone (probably General Electric) wanted to legitimize
their process by publishing it in project management textbooks and exposing new
employees to the name, but they didn't want to succinctly explain what it was
because anyone who was offered a clear and concise definition of Six Sigma and
its implications would say, "Wow, what a load of needlessly painstaking horse-
shit! I'm just gonna aim for a 95% success rate and be happy with that."

So, in short, I believe it was a marketing decision. "Get our name out there,
but don't let people build up a rational immune response to its doctrine."

Also, using karate belt colors is lame. Drop the Mr. Miyagi complex already;
it's fucking embarrassing and comes across as elitist.

---------------------------------=[ CONTACT ]=----------------------------------

https://twitter.com/voodooKobra                        ,--> scott@arciszewski.me
https://s.arciszewski.me          Hatemail goes here--'

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