{"appState":{"pageLoadApiCallsStatus":true},"categoryState":{"relatedCategories":{"headers":{"timestamp":"2023-01-02T12:01:12+00:00"},"categoryId":34249,"data":{"title":"Project Management","slug":"project-management","image":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"parentCategory":{"categoryId":34225,"title":"Business","slug":"business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"}},"childCategories":[],"description":"Project managers have their own language: six sigma, agile, scrum, gantt, lean, sprint — all in the name of getting the job done. More than 300 articles can help you gain fluency, too.","relatedArticles":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles?category=34249&offset=0&size=5"},"hasArticle":true,"hasBook":true,"articleCount":357,"bookCount":9},"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"}},"relatedCategoriesLoadedStatus":"success"},"listState":{"list":{"count":10,"total":357,"items":[{"headers":{"creationTime":"2016-03-27T16:47:22+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-10-26T12:33:43+00:00","timestamp":"2022-10-26T15:01:02+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"Scrum For Dummies Cheat Sheet","strippedTitle":"scrum for dummies cheat sheet","slug":"scrum-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"Learn about the project management framework scrum, which focuses on people, communications, the product, and flexibility.","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"Scrum ensures transparency, inspection, and adaptation to enable a focus on continuous improvement, scope flexibility, team input, and delivering quality products. Scrum aligns with the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, which focus on people, communications, the product, and flexibility.\r\n\r\nThis Cheat Sheet outlines the main principles of the scrum project management method.","description":"Scrum ensures transparency, inspection, and adaptation to enable a focus on continuous improvement, scope flexibility, team input, and delivering quality products. Scrum aligns with the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, which focus on people, communications, the product, and flexibility.\r\n\r\nThis Cheat Sheet outlines the main principles of the scrum project management method.","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":9158,"name":"Mark C. Layton","slug":"mark-c-layton","description":" <p><b>Mark C. Layton,</b> &#34;Mr. Agile<sup>&#174;</sup>,&#34; is an executive and BoD advisor. He is the Los Angeles chair for the Agile Leadership Network, a Certified Scrum Trainer &#40;CST&#41;, and founder of agile transformation firm Platinum Edge. 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Layton,</b> &#34;Mr. Agile<sup>&#174;</sup>,&#34; is an executive and BoD advisor. He is the Los Angeles chair for the Agile Leadership Network, a Certified Scrum Trainer &#40;CST&#41;, and founder of agile transformation firm Platinum Edge. Mark is also coauthor of <i>Agile Project Management For Dummies.</i> <b>David Morrow</b> is a Certified Scrum Professional &#40;CSP&#41;, Certified Agile Coach &#40;ICP&#45;ACC&#41;, and an executive agile coach.</p>","authors":[{"authorId":9158,"name":"Mark C. Layton","slug":"mark-c-layton","description":" <p><b>Mark C. Layton,</b> &#34;Mr. Agile<sup>&#174;</sup>,&#34; is an executive and BoD advisor. He is the Los Angeles chair for the Agile Leadership Network, a Certified Scrum Trainer &#40;CST&#41;, and founder of agile transformation firm Platinum Edge. 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Kynaston","slug":"dean-j-kynaston","description":" <p><b>Mark C. Layton,</b> &#34;Mr. Agile<sup>&#174;</sup>,&#34; is an executive and BoD advisor. He is the Los Angeles chair for the Agile Leadership Network, a Certified Scrum Trainer &#40;CST&#41;, and founder of agile transformation firm Platinum Edge. Mark is also coauthor of <i>Agile Project Management For Dummies.</i> <b>David Morrow</b> is a Certified Scrum Professional &#40;CSP&#41;, Certified Agile Coach &#40;ICP&#45;ACC&#41;, and an executive agile coach. 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The Agile Manifesto is an intentionally streamlined expression of the core values of agile project management.</p>\n<p>“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work, we have come to value:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Individuals and interactions over processes and tools</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Working software over comprehensive documentation</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Customer collaboration over contract negotiation</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Responding to change over following a plan</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”</p>\n<p><i>Agile Manifesto Copyright 2001: Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Dave Thomas</i><i>.</i></p>\n"},{"title":"Principles behind scrum and the Agile Manifesto","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Scrum aligns with the values of the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Agile Principles. The 12 Agile Principles are a set of guiding concepts that scrum teams follow to be more lightweight, adaptive, nimble, flexible — agile — in all they do. These are the 12 principles:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.</li>\n<li>Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.</li>\n<li>Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale.</li>\n<li>Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.</li>\n<li>Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.</li>\n<li>Face-to-face conversation is the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team.</li>\n<li>Working software is the primary measure of progress.</li>\n<li>Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.</li>\n<li>Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.</li>\n<li>Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.</li>\n<li>The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.</li>\n<li>The team regularly reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.</li>\n</ol>\n"},{"title":"Scrum and the roadmap to value","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Scrum is a framework. The roadmap to value is a high-level view of how scrum and common agile techniques can be used for developing your product. A product, as defined in the <a href=\"https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Scrum Guide</em></a>, “…is a vehicle to deliver value. It has a clear boundary, known stakeholders, users or customers. A product could be a service, a physical product, or something more abstract.”</p>\n<p>The roadmap to value includes the following elements:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Product goal:</strong> The product owner identifies the product goal. The product goal is the long-term objective of your product, how it will support your company’s or organization’s strategy, and who will use the product. On longer product development efforts, revisit the product goal at least once a year.</li>\n<li><strong>Product roadmap: </strong>The scrum team (product owner, developers, and scrum master) and business stakeholders collaboratively create a product roadmap. The product roadmap is a high-level view of the product requirements, with a loose time frame for when you will develop those requirements. Identifying product requirements and then prioritizing and roughly estimating the effort for those requirements are a large part of creating your product roadmap. On longer product development efforts, revise the product roadmap at least twice a year.</li>\n<li><strong>In release planning: </strong>The product owner creates a release plan with the stakeholders and scrum team. The release plan identifies a high-level timetable for the release of a product. An agile product often has many releases, with the highest-priority features launching first. Create a release plan at the beginning of each release.</li>\n<li><strong>In sprint planning: </strong>The product owner, the scrum master, and the developers plan sprints and start creating the product within those sprints. Sprint planning takes place at the start of each sprint, where the scrum team determines the sprint goal, why it’s important to the customer, and what can be done to achieve the sprint goal. The developers break down the work into specific tasks necessary to accomplish the sprint, which comprises the sprint backlog.</li>\n<li><strong>In the daily scrum: </strong>Each day, the scrum team spends no more than 15 minutes inspecting their progress toward the sprint goal and adapting the sprint backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work. The developers can select whatever structure or techniques they want, as long as their daily scrum focuses on progress toward the sprint goal and produces an actionable plan for the upcoming work day.</li>\n<li><strong>In sprint review: </strong>At the end of every sprint, the scrum team demonstrates the sprint results or the product increment created during the sprint to the product stakeholders for feedback. The sprint review is an informal, collaborative working session to inspect progress toward the release and product goals. Based on the feedback from stakeholders, the product owner updates the product backlog.</li>\n<li><strong>The sprint retrospective: </strong>This is a meeting where the scrum team discusses how the sprint went and plans for improvements in the next sprint. Like the sprint review, you have a sprint retrospective at the end of every sprint.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Scrum accountabilities and other roles","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Scrum mobilizes the entire product team around a specific goal that the organization wants to accomplish. Scrum teams include people with three roles or accountabilities:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Developers: </strong>This is the group of people who do the work to create a product. The term developer is a generic term referring to anyone with a skill needed to take an idea or requirement and develop it into something of value for the customer. It is not a shortened form of <em>software developer</em>. Someone who programs or writes code is only one example of a type of developer on a scrum team. Some scrum teams don’t do anything related to software. Those skills are also development skills. These may include testing, designing, writing, editing, configuring, assembling, recording, and so on. Anyone else who has a hands-on role is a developer.</li>\n<li><strong>Product owner: </strong>This person is responsible for bridging the gap between the customer, business stakeholders, and developers. The product owner is an expert on the product and the customer’s needs and priorities. The product owner works with the developers daily to help clarify requirements.</li>\n<li><strong>Scrum master: </strong>This person is responsible for supporting the developers, the product owner, and the broader organization. They clear organizational roadblocks and guide the integration of agile values and principles.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Two additional roles should be considered as part of the entire product team:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Stakeholders: </strong>Stakeholders are anyone who has an interest in the product. Stakeholders are not ultimately responsible for the product, but they provide input and are affected by the product’s outcome. The group of stakeholders is diverse and can include people from different departments or even different companies.</li>\n<li><strong>Scrum mentor: </strong>A scrum mentor is someone who has experience enabling organizations to become more agile and can share that experience with a scrum team. The scrum mentor can provide valuable feedback and advice to new teams and to teams that want to perform at a higher level.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Scrum and other common artifacts","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Scrum teams use three scrum <em>artifacts</em> (deliverables) for inspection and adaption, plus three other common agile practices to develop products. As your team implements its plan, check for these artifacts and practices:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Product goal: </strong>This is an elevator pitch, or a quick summary, to communicate how your product supports the organization’s strategies. The product goal must articulate the outcomes for the product. The product goal is a scrum team’s commitment at the highest level. The product backlog emerges from the product goal in whatever way is needed to achieve the product goal.</li>\n<li><strong>Product roadmap: </strong>The product roadmap is a high-level view of the product requirements, with a loose time frame for when you will develop those requirements. The product roadmap is a common agile practice but is not a scrum artifact. It is usually the initial, high-level view of what becomes the product backlog.</li>\n<li><strong>Product backlog: </strong>The full list of what is in the scope for your product, ordered by priority. After you have your first requirement, you have a product backlog.</li>\n<li><strong>Release plan: </strong>This is a high-level timetable for the release of value to the customer. The release plan is a common agile practice, and the approach is not prescribed by scrum, although release planning is inherently part of scrum.</li>\n<li><strong>Sprint backlog: </strong>This is the goal, user stories, and tasks associated with the current sprint.</li>\n<li><strong>Increment:</strong> This is the working product functionality at the end of each sprint.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Scrum events and other common activities","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Scrum includes five essential events, and most scrum teams also participate in two common agile practices. These enhance efficiency and performance from the first day to the last day of your product development effort:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Product planning: </strong>This is the initial planning for your product. Product planning includes creating a product goal and a product roadmap and can take place in as little time as one day. Product planning is a common agile practice but is not a scrum event.</li>\n<li><strong>Release planning:</strong> This is where you set a release goal and plan the next set of product features to release and identify an imminent product launch date around which the team can mobilize. With agile product development, you plan one release at a time. Although release planning is referred to in scrum, it is a common agile practice but not an official scrum activity.</li>\n<li><strong>Sprint: </strong>A sprint is a short (usually one to two weeks in length), consistent, fixed length cycle of development in which the team creates potentially releasable product functionality for stakeholder feedback. Sprints, sometimes called iterations, typically last between one and four weeks. Sprints can last as little as one day but should not be longer than four weeks. The sprint length can change during the project, but velocity will be impacted by the duration change.</li>\n<li><strong>Sprint planning: </strong>Sprint planning is a meeting at the beginning of each sprint where the scrum team commits to a sprint goal. They also identify the requirements that support this goal and will be part of the sprint and the individual tasks it will take to complete each requirement.</li>\n<li><strong>Daily scrum: </strong>This is a 15-minute meeting held each day in a sprint. Here, scrum team members inspect their progress toward accomplishing the sprint goal and coordinate on accomplishing the day&#8217;s priorities, stating what they completed the day before, what they will focus on the current day, and whether they have any roadblocks.</li>\n<li><strong>Sprint review: </strong>This is a meeting at the end of each sprint, introduced by the product owner, where the developers demonstrate the working product functionality they completed during the sprint.</li>\n<li><strong>Sprint retrospective:</strong> This is a meeting at the end of each sprint, where the scrum team discusses what went well, what could change, and plan how to make any changes.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Scrum organizations, certifications, and resources","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The scrum community provides powerful services to help you find and develop your skills:</p>\n<h3>Scrum Alliance</h3>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://www.scrumalliance.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Scrum Alliance</a> is a not-for-profit professional membership organization that promotes understanding and use of scrum. The alliance achieves this goal by promoting scrum training and certification classes, hosting international and regional scrum gatherings, and supporting scrum user groups globally. <a href=\"https://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/groups\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Find a user group near you</a>.</p>\n<p>The Scrum Alliance offers a number of professional certifications:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)</li>\n<li>Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM)</li>\n<li>Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)</li>\n<li>Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO)</li>\n<li>Certified Scrum Developer (CSD)</li>\n<li>Advanced Certified Scrum Developer (A-CSD)</li>\n<li>Certified Scrum Professional (CSP)</li>\n<li>CSP for ScrumMasters (CSP-SM)</li>\n<li>CSP for Product Owners (CSP-PO)</li>\n<li>CSP for Developers (CSP-D)</li>\n<li>Certified Team Coach (CTC)</li>\n<li>Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC)</li>\n<li>Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) (various)</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Agile Alliance</h3>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://www.agilealliance.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Alliance</a> is the original global agile community, with a mission to help advance the 12 Agile Principles and common agile practices, regardless of approach. The Agile Alliance site has an extensive resources section that includes articles, videos, presentations, and an index of <a href=\"https://www.agilealliance.org/communities/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">independent agile community groups</a> across the world.</p>\n<h3>Scrum Guide</h3>\n<p>The free <a href=\"https://scrumguides.org/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Scrum Guide</a> is available in more than 30 languages. It can be found both online and in PDF formats available for download.</p>\n<h3>Scrum website</h3>\n<p><a href=\"http://scrum.org/\"><strong>Scrum.org</strong></a> provides tools and resources for scrum practitioners to deliver value using scrum through assessments and certifications, including:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Professional Scrum Master I, II &amp; III (PSM)</li>\n<li>Professional Scrum Product Owner I, II &amp; III (PSPO)</li>\n<li>Professional Scrum Developer (PSD)</li>\n<li>Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS)</li>\n<li>Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK)</li>\n<li>Professional Agile Leadership (PAL)</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Pattern Languages of Programs</h3>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.scrumplop.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP)</a> are methods of describing design practices within fields of expertise and often have conferences organized around them for shared learning. ScrumPLoP publishes practical patterns that have been used successfully with organizations to get started with and become successful with scrum.</p>\n<h3>Scaled Agile Framework</h3>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://scaledagileframework.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)</strong></a> is a knowledge base for implementing agile practices and scrum at scale. (SAFe is a registered trademark of Scaled Agile Inc.)</p>\n<h3>Large-Scale Scrum</h3>\n<p><a href=\"http://less.works/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)</strong></a> is a scrum scaling method that provides two different frameworks known as basic LeSS and LeSS Huge.</p>\n"},{"title":"Scrum is improving the world","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>While scrum gained momentum in software development, its roots trace back to Edward Deming and other quality improvement initiatives. Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, known as the co-inventors of scrum, built on Quality pioneer efforts, invented scrum as a free framework for use worldwide.</p>\n<p>The IT industry, particularly in software development, quickly adopted scrum because of its struggles to manage frequently changing requirements. Practitioners found agile frameworks like scrum to be a superior approach for addressing changing customer needs and technologies.</p>\n<p>Today, nearly every industry is experiencing rampant change driven by evolving technology, markets, regulations, customers, and more.</p>\n<p>Scrum is now used in multiple industries throughout the world, from education to construction, to health care, pharmaceuticals, automobile and airplane manufacturing, retail, and more. Businesses, from new startups to non-profits to established Fortune 500 giants, are adopting scrum. Products include cars that receive updates every other week, hardware manufacturing, and pandemic-driven hospital bed management.</p>\n<p>Families and individuals are even using scrum to help accomplish their personal and family financial, relationships, wedding, and even vacation goals. Across the board, scrum is changing the way the world works.</p>\n<p>If you’re wondering if scrum can help you, here is the criteria for understanding whether scrum is a good fit for you:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>You’re in a situation with limited time or funding.</li>\n<li>You have a complex problem to solve.</li>\n<li>Your solution requires innovation.</li>\n<li>You’re dealing with a dynamic, frequently changing environment.</li>\n<li>Reaching your goal requires teamwork.</li>\n<li>You need a goal or outcome-focused approach.</li>\n<li>You’re working with a distributed team (or even a non-distributed team).</li>\n<li>Your work can be decomposed.</li>\n<li>You need to be able to pivot quickly.</li>\n<li>You want early empirical feedback.</li>\n</ul>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Five years","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-10-25T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":207541},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2016-03-26T15:53:01+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-09-16T14:08:19+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-16T18:01:03+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"How to Construct and Interpret a Multi-Vari Chart for a Six Sigma Initiative","strippedTitle":"how to construct and interpret a multi-vari chart for a six sigma initiative","slug":"how-to-construct-and-interpret-a-multi-vari-chart-for-a-six-sigma-initiative","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"You can create a multi-vari chart for Six Sigma even before the data are collected. Learn the various parts of these helpful charts.","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"You don’t have to wait until your multi-vari data are collected to start creating the multi-vari chart for Six Sigma. Instead, you can build the chart, incrementally, adding more to it as you collect more data.\r\n\r\nMulti-vari charts can be drawn by hand; in fact, the process operators themselves can create them, providing those folks with a critical opportunity to invest themselves in the discovery of the root cause and the development of the solution.\r\n\r\nA multi-vari chart looks pretty much like any other two-axis plot, with time moving from left to right on the horizontal axis and the measured process output metric plotted against the vertical axis. The multiple measurements of each unit are plotted together. Consecutive unit groupings move from left to right over time. A break in the horizontal progression of the chart indicates a temporal break in the process sampling.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352311.image0.jpg\" alt=\"image0.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />\r\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>The multiple measurements taken on each unit are plotted as circles.</b> A slightly modified circle designates the first, second, and third within-unit measurements. A solid line connects the multiple measurements within each unit and graphically indicates the magnitude of variation originating within each unit — the variation contribution from positional factors.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>An average point is plotted for each unit grouping.</b> These unit averages are drawn as squares. If the multi-vari chart is drawn by hand, this average can be estimated.</p>\r\n<p class=\"child-para Remember\">The average isn’t the center point between the maximum and minimum unit measurements; instead, think of it as the “balance point” between all the unit measurements.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>A long-dashed line is drawn connecting the averages of consecutive unit groupings measured.</b> The up-and-down variation of this connecting line indicates the magnitude of variation between units, or the contribution of cyclical variation factors.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>A mark is plotted to show the overall average of the set of consecutive units measured. </b>A short-dashed connecting line is drawn between the overall average points. The up-and-down variation of this connecting line indicates the magnitude of the variation between long breaks in time, or the contribution of temporal variation factors.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Vertical lines are drawn along the horizontal axis to indicate the end of one temporal set of measurements and the beginning of the next.</b> Each vertical divider embodies a relatively long duration of unmeasured process execution time.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>The sampling pattern repeats itself for three temporal occurrences.</b> A typical multi-vari chart would continue for more temporal occurrences, always until enough process data are captured to match the historical levels of variation known to exist in the process.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Each temporal occurrence contains the measurements of three consecutive units. </b>Each cycle should contain at least three consecutive units, but up to five or six may be necessary.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Each unit consists of three measurements of the same process characteristic.</b> As with the temporal occurrences, having up to five or six measurements is sometimes useful.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<h2 id=\"tab1\" >Interpreting a multi-vari chart</h2>\r\nTo determine which category of input variable drives the performance of your process output, all you have to do is graphically decide which of the three types of variation — positional, cyclical, or temporal — displays the greatest magnitude of variation in your multi-vari chart. You can compare the variation types by homing in on each one separately.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352312.image1.jpg\" alt=\"image1.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />\r\n\r\nThe vertical range of the positional variation — indicated by the height of the gray boxes— graphically depicts the magnitude of the process variation stemming from positional input factors.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352313.image2.jpg\" alt=\"image2.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />\r\n\r\nThe vertical range between the unit averages — indicated by the height of the gray boxes — graphically depicts the magnitude of variation coming from cyclical factors.\r\n\r\nThe vertical range between the temporal averages — shown again by the height of the gray box — graphically highlights the magnitude of the variation coming from temporal factors. Temporal factors are those that only change their input value across larger gaps of time but not within single units and not between consecutive units.\r\n\r\nYou can see that the vertical magnitude of the cyclical variation exceeds that for the positional or temporal categories. That result is the voice of the process telling you that the real root cause of your process performance is associated with some factor whose input value changes between production or creation of consecutive units.\r\n\r\nThe multi-vari chart proves that all other factors that change input value within single units or change input value over longer times don’t exert a significant influence on the performance of the process.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352314.image3.jpg\" alt=\"image3.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />","description":"You don’t have to wait until your multi-vari data are collected to start creating the multi-vari chart for Six Sigma. Instead, you can build the chart, incrementally, adding more to it as you collect more data.\r\n\r\nMulti-vari charts can be drawn by hand; in fact, the process operators themselves can create them, providing those folks with a critical opportunity to invest themselves in the discovery of the root cause and the development of the solution.\r\n\r\nA multi-vari chart looks pretty much like any other two-axis plot, with time moving from left to right on the horizontal axis and the measured process output metric plotted against the vertical axis. The multiple measurements of each unit are plotted together. Consecutive unit groupings move from left to right over time. A break in the horizontal progression of the chart indicates a temporal break in the process sampling.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352311.image0.jpg\" alt=\"image0.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />\r\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>The multiple measurements taken on each unit are plotted as circles.</b> A slightly modified circle designates the first, second, and third within-unit measurements. A solid line connects the multiple measurements within each unit and graphically indicates the magnitude of variation originating within each unit — the variation contribution from positional factors.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>An average point is plotted for each unit grouping.</b> These unit averages are drawn as squares. If the multi-vari chart is drawn by hand, this average can be estimated.</p>\r\n<p class=\"child-para Remember\">The average isn’t the center point between the maximum and minimum unit measurements; instead, think of it as the “balance point” between all the unit measurements.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>A long-dashed line is drawn connecting the averages of consecutive unit groupings measured.</b> The up-and-down variation of this connecting line indicates the magnitude of variation between units, or the contribution of cyclical variation factors.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>A mark is plotted to show the overall average of the set of consecutive units measured. </b>A short-dashed connecting line is drawn between the overall average points. The up-and-down variation of this connecting line indicates the magnitude of the variation between long breaks in time, or the contribution of temporal variation factors.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Vertical lines are drawn along the horizontal axis to indicate the end of one temporal set of measurements and the beginning of the next.</b> Each vertical divider embodies a relatively long duration of unmeasured process execution time.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>The sampling pattern repeats itself for three temporal occurrences.</b> A typical multi-vari chart would continue for more temporal occurrences, always until enough process data are captured to match the historical levels of variation known to exist in the process.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Each temporal occurrence contains the measurements of three consecutive units. </b>Each cycle should contain at least three consecutive units, but up to five or six may be necessary.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Each unit consists of three measurements of the same process characteristic.</b> As with the temporal occurrences, having up to five or six measurements is sometimes useful.</p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<h2 id=\"tab1\" >Interpreting a multi-vari chart</h2>\r\nTo determine which category of input variable drives the performance of your process output, all you have to do is graphically decide which of the three types of variation — positional, cyclical, or temporal — displays the greatest magnitude of variation in your multi-vari chart. You can compare the variation types by homing in on each one separately.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352312.image1.jpg\" alt=\"image1.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />\r\n\r\nThe vertical range of the positional variation — indicated by the height of the gray boxes— graphically depicts the magnitude of the process variation stemming from positional input factors.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352313.image2.jpg\" alt=\"image2.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />\r\n\r\nThe vertical range between the unit averages — indicated by the height of the gray boxes — graphically depicts the magnitude of variation coming from cyclical factors.\r\n\r\nThe vertical range between the temporal averages — shown again by the height of the gray box — graphically highlights the magnitude of the variation coming from temporal factors. Temporal factors are those that only change their input value across larger gaps of time but not within single units and not between consecutive units.\r\n\r\nYou can see that the vertical magnitude of the cyclical variation exceeds that for the positional or temporal categories. That result is the voice of the process telling you that the real root cause of your process performance is associated with some factor whose input value changes between production or creation of consecutive units.\r\n\r\nThe multi-vari chart proves that all other factors that change input value within single units or change input value over longer times don’t exert a significant influence on the performance of the process.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/352314.image3.jpg\" alt=\"image3.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" />","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":9791,"name":"Craig Gygi","slug":"craig-gygi","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9791"}},{"authorId":9792,"name":"Bruce Williams","slug":"bruce-williams","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9792"}},{"authorId":9793,"name":"Neil DeCarlo","slug":"neil-decarlo","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9793"}},{"authorId":9794,"name":"Stephen R. Covey","slug":"stephen-r-covey","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9794"}}],"primaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":34249,"title":"Project Management","slug":"project-management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"}},"secondaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"tertiaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"trendingArticles":null,"inThisArticle":[{"label":"Interpreting a multi-vari chart","target":"#tab1"}],"relatedArticles":{"fromBook":[{"articleId":208300,"title":"Six Sigma For Dummies Cheat Sheet","slug":"six-sigma-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/208300"}},{"articleId":204999,"title":"How to Create a Cause and Effect Analysis for a Six Sigma Initiative","slug":"how-to-create-a-cause-and-effect-analysis-for-a-six-sigma-initiative","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/204999"}},{"articleId":175743,"title":"The Tools-Methods Landscape of Six Sigma","slug":"the-tools-methods-landscape-of-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175743"}},{"articleId":175736,"title":"The Six Sigma Scale","slug":"the-six-sigma-scale","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175736"}},{"articleId":175734,"title":"Six Sigma Principles","slug":"six-sigma-principles","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175734"}}],"fromCategory":[{"articleId":275133,"title":"What Is Agile Project Management?","slug":"what-is-agile-project-management","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275133"}},{"articleId":275127,"title":"Strategic Approaches to Implementing and Managing Change","slug":"strategic-approaches-to-implementing-and-managing-change","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275127"}},{"articleId":275120,"title":"Steps to Successfully Become an Agile Organization","slug":"steps-to-successfully-become-an-agile-organization","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275120"}},{"articleId":275111,"title":"Agile Project Management: Know Your Customers","slug":"agile-project-management-know-your-customers","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275111"}},{"articleId":274291,"title":"Agile Planning with the Roadmap to Value","slug":"agile-planning-with-the-roadmap-to-value","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/274291"}}]},"hasRelatedBookFromSearch":false,"relatedBook":{"bookId":282577,"slug":"six-sigma-for-dummies-2nd-edition","isbn":"9781118120354","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"amazon":{"default":"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118120353/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","ca":"https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1118120353/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","indigo_ca":"http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-9208661-13710633?url=https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/product/1118120353-item.html&cjsku=978111945484","gb":"https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1118120353/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","de":"https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/1118120353/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20"},"image":{"src":"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/six-sigma-for-dummies-2nd-edition-cover-9781118120354-203x255.jpg","width":203,"height":255},"title":"Six Sigma For Dummies","testBankPinActivationLink":"","bookOutOfPrint":false,"authorsInfo":"<p><b data-author-id=\"9791\">Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality/regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b data-author-id=\"9792\">Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co-author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b data-author-id=\"9793\">Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. </p>","authors":[{"authorId":9791,"name":"Craig Gygi","slug":"craig-gygi","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9791"}},{"authorId":9792,"name":"Bruce Williams","slug":"bruce-williams","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9792"}},{"authorId":9793,"name":"Neil DeCarlo","slug":"neil-decarlo","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9793"}},{"authorId":9794,"name":"Stephen R. Covey","slug":"stephen-r-covey","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9794"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781118120354&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-6324b9df56278\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781118120354&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-6324b9df56a2c\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Articles","articleList":null,"content":null,"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Two years","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-09-16T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":171142},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2017-03-24T03:07:08+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-08-19T17:50:54+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:19:56+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"How to Avoid Common Project Management Pitfalls","strippedTitle":"how to avoid common project management pitfalls","slug":"avoid-common-project-management-pitfalls","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"Learn what the common pitfalls are for project managers and how you can avoid them to help facilitate a successful project.","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"The pressure of having to complete a project with little time and few resources often causes people to cut corners and ignore certain issues that can significantly affect a project's chances for success. Avoid the following common pitfalls and instead address the issues early in the project to help reduce their possible negative impacts:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Framing vague project objectives:</strong> Project objectives are the results that must be achieved if the project is to be successful. The more specific the objectives, the easier it'll be for you to estimate the time and resources required to achieve them and the easier it'll be for you and your audiences to confirm they have been met.Be sure to include <em>measures </em>(the characteristics of an objective you'll use to decide if it has been achieved) and <em>specifications</em> (the values of the measures that you believe confirm that you have successfully achieved your objectives).</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Overlooking key audiences:</strong> Be sure to determine your project's <em>drivers</em> (those people who define what your project must achieve to be successful) and its <em>supporters </em>(the people who make it possible for you to accomplish your desired project's objectives). Important drivers who often get overlooked are the ultimate end users of your project's products.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Failing to document assumptions:</strong> People almost always make assumptions regarding their projects; however, they often fail to write them down because they figure everyone else is making the same ones. Documenting your assumptions allows you to confirm that all people are operating under the same set of assumptions and reminds you periodically to check whether project assumptions have been confirmed and new ones have been made.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Backing in to project schedules:</strong> <em>Backing in</em> to a project schedule entails trying to determine the time and resources you feel would enable you to achieve project success while ignoring the question of how likely it is that you'll be able to get the required amounts of time and resources.Instead of backing in, consider the time and resources that you realistically feel you would be able to secure and to explore different ways of using them to increase your chances of being able to successfully complete your project.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Not getting key commitments in writing:</strong> Not putting commitments in writing increases the chances that what people intended to commit to was different from what you thought they did commit to. In addition to increasing the accuracy of communication, writing down commitments helps those who made them to remember them and encourages people to modify the written statements when necessary.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Failing to keep the plan up-to-date:</strong> If a project is being run correctly, you and your team members should frequently consult the most current version of the project plan to confirm what each team member hast to do to produce the intended results. Not keeping the plan up-to-date means you have no reference explaining what people should be doing to successfully perform the required project work. It also suggests that adhering to the most recent version of the project plan isn't really that important, a belief that significantly reduces the chances of project success.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Not having formal change control:</strong> Failing to follow a formal process for evaluating the effect of project changes increases the likelihood that important consequences of those requested changes will be overlooked when assessing the potential effects of those changes. In addition, it makes it more likely that some of the people who will be affected by the changes may not receive timely and accurate information about what those effects may be.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Not communicating effectively:</strong> Problematic communications increase the chances that people will work with different information when performing project tasks, as well as decrease team morale and commitment to overall project success.</li>\r\n</ul>","description":"The pressure of having to complete a project with little time and few resources often causes people to cut corners and ignore certain issues that can significantly affect a project's chances for success. Avoid the following common pitfalls and instead address the issues early in the project to help reduce their possible negative impacts:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Framing vague project objectives:</strong> Project objectives are the results that must be achieved if the project is to be successful. The more specific the objectives, the easier it'll be for you to estimate the time and resources required to achieve them and the easier it'll be for you and your audiences to confirm they have been met.Be sure to include <em>measures </em>(the characteristics of an objective you'll use to decide if it has been achieved) and <em>specifications</em> (the values of the measures that you believe confirm that you have successfully achieved your objectives).</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Overlooking key audiences:</strong> Be sure to determine your project's <em>drivers</em> (those people who define what your project must achieve to be successful) and its <em>supporters </em>(the people who make it possible for you to accomplish your desired project's objectives). Important drivers who often get overlooked are the ultimate end users of your project's products.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Failing to document assumptions:</strong> People almost always make assumptions regarding their projects; however, they often fail to write them down because they figure everyone else is making the same ones. Documenting your assumptions allows you to confirm that all people are operating under the same set of assumptions and reminds you periodically to check whether project assumptions have been confirmed and new ones have been made.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Backing in to project schedules:</strong> <em>Backing in</em> to a project schedule entails trying to determine the time and resources you feel would enable you to achieve project success while ignoring the question of how likely it is that you'll be able to get the required amounts of time and resources.Instead of backing in, consider the time and resources that you realistically feel you would be able to secure and to explore different ways of using them to increase your chances of being able to successfully complete your project.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Not getting key commitments in writing:</strong> Not putting commitments in writing increases the chances that what people intended to commit to was different from what you thought they did commit to. In addition to increasing the accuracy of communication, writing down commitments helps those who made them to remember them and encourages people to modify the written statements when necessary.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Failing to keep the plan up-to-date:</strong> If a project is being run correctly, you and your team members should frequently consult the most current version of the project plan to confirm what each team member hast to do to produce the intended results. Not keeping the plan up-to-date means you have no reference explaining what people should be doing to successfully perform the required project work. It also suggests that adhering to the most recent version of the project plan isn't really that important, a belief that significantly reduces the chances of project success.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Not having formal change control:</strong> Failing to follow a formal process for evaluating the effect of project changes increases the likelihood that important consequences of those requested changes will be overlooked when assessing the potential effects of those changes. In addition, it makes it more likely that some of the people who will be affected by the changes may not receive timely and accurate information about what those effects may be.</li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Not communicating effectively:</strong> Problematic communications increase the chances that people will work with different information when performing project tasks, as well as decrease team morale and commitment to overall project success.</li>\r\n</ul>","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":8947,"name":"The Experts at Dummies","slug":"the-experts-at-dummies","description":"The Experts at Dummies are smart, friendly people who make learning easy by taking a not-so-serious approach to serious stuff.","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/8947"}}],"primaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":34249,"title":"Project Management","slug":"project-management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"}},"secondaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"tertiaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"trendingArticles":null,"inThisArticle":[],"relatedArticles":{"fromBook":[{"articleId":247926,"title":"How to Assess Your Project Stakeholders’ Power and Interest","slug":"assess-project-stakeholders-power-interest","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247926"}},{"articleId":247923,"title":"How to Use a Stakeholder Register Template","slug":"use-stakeholder-register-template","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247923"}},{"articleId":247920,"title":"How to Gather Ideas for Projects","slug":"gather-ideas-projects","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247920"}},{"articleId":247916,"title":"Handling Administrative Issues at the End of Your Project","slug":"handling-administrative-issues-end-project","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247916"}},{"articleId":247913,"title":"10 Questions to Ask Yourself as You Plan Your Project","slug":"10-questions-ask-plan-project","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247913"}}],"fromCategory":[{"articleId":275133,"title":"What Is Agile Project Management?","slug":"what-is-agile-project-management","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275133"}},{"articleId":275127,"title":"Strategic Approaches to Implementing and Managing Change","slug":"strategic-approaches-to-implementing-and-managing-change","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275127"}},{"articleId":275120,"title":"Steps to Successfully Become an Agile Organization","slug":"steps-to-successfully-become-an-agile-organization","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275120"}},{"articleId":275111,"title":"Agile Project Management: Know Your Customers","slug":"agile-project-management-know-your-customers","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275111"}},{"articleId":274291,"title":"Agile Planning with the Roadmap to Value","slug":"agile-planning-with-the-roadmap-to-value","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/274291"}}]},"hasRelatedBookFromSearch":false,"relatedBook":{"bookId":282511,"slug":"project-management-for-dummies","isbn":"9781119869818","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"amazon":{"default":"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","ca":"https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","indigo_ca":"http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-9208661-13710633?url=https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/product/1119869811-item.html&cjsku=978111945484","gb":"https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","de":"https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20"},"image":{"src":"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/9781119869818-203x255.jpg","width":203,"height":255},"title":"Project Management For Dummies","testBankPinActivationLink":"","bookOutOfPrint":true,"authorsInfo":"<p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> <b data-author-id=\"9280\">Stanley E. Portny</b>, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> <p><b><b data-author-id=\"35153\">Jonathan L. Portny</b>, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p>","authors":[{"authorId":9280,"name":"Stanley E. Portny","slug":"stanley-e-portny","description":" <p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9280"}},{"authorId":35153,"name":"Jonathan L. Portny","slug":"jonathan-l-portny","description":" <p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/35153"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119869818&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b4ca3aed\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119869818&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b4ca4533\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Articles","articleList":null,"content":null,"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Five years","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-08-19T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":236601},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2016-03-27T16:56:25+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-03-10T21:02:27+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:19:24+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"PRINCE2 For Dummies Cheat Sheet (UK Edition)","strippedTitle":"prince2 for dummies cheat sheet (uk edition)","slug":"prince2-for-dummies-cheat-sheet-uk-edition","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"PRINCE2 is an essential project management method, helping users organise, manage and direct their projects to time and within budget. 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Management","slug":"project-stages-in-prince2-project-management","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/192769"}},{"articleId":192764,"title":"Exception Plans with PRINCE2 Project Management","slug":"exception-plans-with-prince2-project-management","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/192764"}},{"articleId":192776,"title":"End Stage in PRINCE2 Project Management","slug":"end-stage-in-prince2-project-management","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/192776"}},{"articleId":192772,"title":"PRINCE2 Project Management Project Closure","slug":"prince2-project-management-project-closure","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/192772"}}],"content":[{"title":"Project start-up with PRINCE2","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>At the start-up point in the PRINCE2 project management method, you’re simply getting together enough information to check if the project is worth planning in detail and to provide key information for planning.</p>\n<p><b>Key:</b> Do this really fast.</p>\n<p><b>Decision at the end:</b> Shall we go on to full planning (initiation)?</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Put key roles in place (minimum is Project Executive and Project Manager)</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Produce the Project Brief (sketch of the project idea)</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Make sure the Business Case looks viable – but only in outline</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Make sure that the risks look acceptable – but, again, only in outline</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Plan the Initiation Stage, allowing for risk analysis and the Business Case</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Project planning with PRINCE2","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Time spent properly planning is seldom wasted, but huge amounts of project time can be wasted from inadequate plans that aren’t thought through. Take the rights steps at the project initiation stage to ensure your PRINCE2 project turns out right.</p>\n<p><b>Key:</b> Balance the amount of planning against the need for control.</p>\n<p><b>Decision at the end:</b> Do we really want to commit to run this project?</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Decide on the appropriate level of quality</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Produce Product and Activity plans for the project</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Product Product and Activity plans for the first stage after initiation</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Perform a full risk analysis</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Produce a full Business Case</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Put simple controls and reporting procedures in place</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Assemble the Project Initiation Document (PID)</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Project stages in PRINCE2 project management","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The products make superb milestones, and PRINCE2 projects, like any others, are about delivery, not about being busy. Make quite sure that products are to the specified quality.</p>\n<p><b>Key:</b> Check progress with the Product Checklist and also quality.</p>\n<p><b>Decision throughout:</b> Is everything on track or is there an exception?</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Give work out to teams and monitor each team’s progress</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Report progress regularly to the Project Board using the Highlight Report</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Monitor the progress of the stage at set intervals</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Adjust the running of the stage to ensure completion within set limits</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Immediately report any exceptions to the Project Board if limits cannot be met</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Look at any inbound Project Issues (problems and so on) and decide action</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Exception plans with PRINCE2 project management","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Exceptions in PRINCE2 projects, as in all projects need rapid but careful investigation. For example, there’s a big difference between overspending in a stage and early spending. PRINCE2 provides the method for dealing with exceptional circumstances.</p>\n<p><b>Key:</b> Find the underlying reasons, not just the superficial cause.</p>\n<p><b>Decision at the end:</b> Carry on (perhaps on a new plan) or stop the project?</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Investigate rapidly and think through options</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Report to the Project Board and get a decision on the way forward</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Re-plan the rest of the stage if needed</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Get approval to continue on the basis of the new plan</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"End Stage in PRINCE2 project management","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>In PRINCE2 projects, End Stage work is done by the Project Manager towards the end of the stage, followed by the Project Board’s meeting to decide whether or not to continue.</p>\n<p><b>Key:</b> Keep things as simple as you can. Don’t write huge reports.</p>\n<p><b>Decision at the end:</b> Authorise the next stage, or stop the project?</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Check that the current stage work is complete, or almost complete</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Plan the next stage, updating the Project Plan as necessary</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Update the Business Case and Risk Log to reflect the latest information</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Produce a report on the current stage for the Project Board</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Hold the End Stage meeting of the Project Board (End Stage Assessment)</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"PRINCE2 project management project closure","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The work at this point in a PRINCE2 project is done by the Project Manager towards the end of the last stage to prepare for the Project Board meeting which confirms closure.</p>\n<p><b>Key:</b> Double-check everything’s done, including any final testing.</p>\n<p><b>Decision at the end:</b> Is everything done and can you close the project?</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Check everything is complete or, in the case of premature close, that as much as possible has been salvaged from the project to minimise wastage</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Consider work needed in the organisation after the project (Follow-on Actions) including Post Project Review to measure benefits delivery</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Report on the project, giving final cost, time, and quality information and commenting on the achievement of objectives</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Consider and pass on the lessons learned (good and bad) from this project</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Two years","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-03-10T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":209054},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2018-12-19T18:30:55+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-02-25T13:42:23+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:19:15+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"Project 2019 For Dummies Cheat Sheet","strippedTitle":"project 2019 for dummies cheat sheet","slug":"project-2019-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"This Cheat Sheet provides you with tips and tricks for taking full advantage of Microsoft Project 2019 and gaining expertise.","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"Project 2019, the most recent incarnation of Microsoft’s popular project management software, offers a tremendous wealth of functionality. Microsoft Project 2019 however, probably isn’t like any other software you’ve ever used, so mastering it can seem a daunting process. This Cheat Sheet provides you with tips and tricks for doing what you do every day as a project manager.","description":"Project 2019, the most recent incarnation of Microsoft’s popular project management software, offers a tremendous wealth of functionality. Microsoft Project 2019 however, probably isn’t like any other software you’ve ever used, so mastering it can seem a daunting process. This Cheat Sheet provides you with tips and tricks for doing what you do every day as a project manager.","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":19071,"name":"Cynthia Snyder Dionisio","slug":"cynthia-snyder-dionisio","description":" <p><b>Cynthia Snyder Dionisio</b> is a project management consultant, trainer, and author. She also leads the team that creates the <i>PMBOK Guide,</i> the standard for project management that is published by the Project Management Institute. She has written more than a dozen books, including <i>A Project Manager&#39;s Book of Forms</i> and <i>A Project Manager&#39;s Book of Tools and Techniques.</i> \t ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/19071"}}],"primaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":34249,"title":"Project Management","slug":"project-management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"}},"secondaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"tertiaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"trendingArticles":null,"inThisArticle":[],"relatedArticles":{"fromBook":[{"articleId":262082,"title":"How to Develop a Microsoft Project Communications Management Plan","slug":"how-to-develop-a-microsoft-project-communications-management-plan","categoryList":["technology","software","microsoft-products","project"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/262082"}},{"articleId":262079,"title":"How to Share Microsoft Project Resources","slug":"how-to-share-microsoft-project-resources","categoryList":["technology","software","microsoft-products","project"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/262079"}},{"articleId":262072,"title":"How to Manage Resources in Microsoft Project 2019","slug":"how-to-manage-resources-in-microsoft-project-2019","categoryList":["technology","software","microsoft-products","project"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/262072"}},{"articleId":262063,"title":"Continuous Learning from Microsoft Project 2019 Projects","slug":"continuous-learning-from-microsoft-project-2019-projects","categoryList":["technology","software","microsoft-products","project"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/262063"}},{"articleId":262053,"title":"How to Enter Project Information into Microsoft Project 2019","slug":"how-to-enter-project-information-into-microsoft-project-2019","categoryList":["technology","software","microsoft-products","project"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/262053"}}],"fromCategory":[{"articleId":275133,"title":"What Is Agile Project Management?","slug":"what-is-agile-project-management","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275133"}},{"articleId":275127,"title":"Strategic Approaches to Implementing and Managing Change","slug":"strategic-approaches-to-implementing-and-managing-change","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275127"}},{"articleId":275120,"title":"Steps to Successfully Become an Agile Organization","slug":"steps-to-successfully-become-an-agile-organization","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275120"}},{"articleId":275111,"title":"Agile Project Management: Know Your Customers","slug":"agile-project-management-know-your-customers","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275111"}},{"articleId":274291,"title":"Agile Planning with the Roadmap to Value","slug":"agile-planning-with-the-roadmap-to-value","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/274291"}}]},"hasRelatedBookFromSearch":false,"relatedBook":{"bookId":281776,"slug":"microsoft-project-2019-for-dummies","isbn":"9781119565123","categoryList":["technology","software","microsoft-products","project"],"amazon":{"default":"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/111956512X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","ca":"https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/111956512X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","indigo_ca":"http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-9208661-13710633?url=https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/product/111956512X-item.html&cjsku=978111945484","gb":"https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/111956512X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","de":"https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/111956512X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20"},"image":{"src":"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/microsoft-project-2019-for-dummies-cover-9781119565123-203x255.jpg","width":203,"height":255},"title":"Microsoft Project 2019 For Dummies","testBankPinActivationLink":"","bookOutOfPrint":false,"authorsInfo":"<p><b data-author-id=\"19071\">Cynthia Snyder Dionisio</b> is a project management consultant, trainer, and author. She also leads the team that creates the <i>PMBOK Guide,</i> the standard for project management that is published by the Project Management Institute. She has written more than a dozen books, including <i>A Project Manager's Book of Forms</i> and <i>A Project Manager's Book of Tools and Techniques.</i> \t </p>","authors":[{"authorId":19071,"name":"Cynthia Snyder Dionisio","slug":"cynthia-snyder-dionisio","description":" <p><b>Cynthia Snyder Dionisio</b> is a project management consultant, trainer, and author. She also leads the team that creates the <i>PMBOK Guide,</i> the standard for project management that is published by the Project Management Institute. She has written more than a dozen books, including <i>A Project Manager&#39;s Book of Forms</i> and <i>A Project Manager&#39;s Book of Tools and Techniques.</i> \t ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/19071"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119565123&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b23754a9\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119565123&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b2375e82\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Cheat Sheet","articleList":[{"articleId":258501,"title":"How to Create Your Schedule with Microsoft Project 2019","slug":"","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/258501"}},{"articleId":258498,"title":"12 Microsoft Project 2019 Shortcut Keys","slug":"","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/258498"}},{"articleId":258495,"title":"Helpful Websites to Hone Microsoft Project 2019 Expertise","slug":"","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/258495"}}],"content":[{"title":"How to create your project schedule ","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">Microsoft Project 2019 makes it easy to set your project schedule. In just ten easy steps, you will be on your way to project management success!</span></p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">Enter the project information, such as the project name and start date.</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">Develop a work breakdown structure to organize your work.</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">Enter the tasks needed to create the WBS deliverables.<br />\n</span><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">Don’t forget to indicate if you want manual or auto-scheduled tasks, and the task type.</span></li>\n<li>Link your tasks to show dependencies and create a network diagram</li>\n<li>Enter the resources who will work on your project, their cost/rate, and the time they have available.</li>\n<li>Estimate the effort or duration for each task.</li>\n<li>Assign resources to each task.</li>\n<li>Resolve any resource conflicts.</li>\n<li>Balance schedule, cost, resource, and performance constraints to meet stakeholder expectations.</li>\n<li>Baseline your schedule.</li>\n</ol>\n"},{"title":"Shortcut keys","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Microsoft Project 2019 maximizes efficiency as you manage projects — but Project 2019 shortcuts also save you time at the keyboard. Here are some shortcut keys you’ll use all the time when building and working with a Project schedule.</p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>Keystroke</th>\n<th>Result</th>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ctrl+N</td>\n<td>Opens a new blank Project</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Alt+Home</td>\n<td>Moves to the beginning of the project</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Alt+End</td>\n<td>Moves the end of a project</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Alt+Right Arrow</td>\n<td>Moves the timeline to the right</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Alt+Left Arrow</td>\n<td>Moves the timeline to the left</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Shift+F2</td>\n<td>Opens the Task Information dialog box</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ctrl+F</td>\n<td>Displays the Find dialog box</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ctrl+Z</td>\n<td>Undoes the previous action</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ctrl+P</td>\n<td>Displays the Print preview in the Backstage</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ctrl+S</td>\n<td>Saves the file</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Alt+Shift+Hyphen (–)</td>\n<td>Hides subtasks</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Alt+Shift+Plus Sign (+)</td>\n<td>Shows subtasks</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n"},{"title":"Helpful websites for honing Project 2019 skills","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\">Whether you consider project management an art or skill, Microsoft Project 2019 helps you do it better. Enhance your Microsoft Project expertise by visiting websites that offer templates and third-party add-ins for Microsoft Project and other project management information. Check out the following websites:</span></p>\n<p>·<span style=\"font: 7pt 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;\">         </span><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\"><a href=\"http://www.pmi.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Project Management Institute</a></span></p>\n<p>·<span style=\"font: 7pt 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;\">         </span><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\"><a href=\"http://www.projectmanagement.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ProjectManagement.com</a></span></p>\n<p>·<span style=\"font: 7pt 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;\">         </span><span style=\"margin: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia',serif;\"><a href=\"http://templates.office.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Templates.office.com</a></span></p>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"One year","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-02-16T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":258505},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2020-09-16T19:26:50+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-02-22T16:21:46+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:19:10+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"Project Management All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet","strippedTitle":"project management all-in-one for dummies cheat sheet","slug":"project-management-all-in-one-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"Learn about the four project life-cycle phases and the five processes of project management that a successful project manager needs to know.","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"Successful organizations create projects that produce desired results in established time frames with assigned resources. As a result, businesses are increasingly driven to find project managers who can excel in this type of work environment. To get started in project management, you should understand the phases of a project’s life cycle, processes involved in project management, and the basic tasks you’re expected to perform.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_273434\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"556\"]<img class=\"size-full wp-image-273434\" src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/project-management-concept.jpg\" alt=\"project management\" width=\"556\" height=\"377\" /> © Michail Petrov / Shutterstock.com[/caption]","description":"Successful organizations create projects that produce desired results in established time frames with assigned resources. As a result, businesses are increasingly driven to find project managers who can excel in this type of work environment. To get started in project management, you should understand the phases of a project’s life cycle, processes involved in project management, and the basic tasks you’re expected to perform.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_273434\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"556\"]<img class=\"size-full wp-image-273434\" src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/project-management-concept.jpg\" alt=\"project management\" width=\"556\" height=\"377\" /> © Michail Petrov / Shutterstock.com[/caption]","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":33422,"name":"Georgette C. 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Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> <b data-author-id=\"9280\">Stanley E. Portny</b>, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p>","authors":[{"authorId":9280,"name":"Stanley E. Portny","slug":"stanley-e-portny","description":" <p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9280"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119700265&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b1e9d68f\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119700265&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b1e9dfeb\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Cheat Sheet","articleList":[{"articleId":0,"title":"","slug":null,"categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/"}}],"content":[{"title":"The 4 phases of a project’s life cycle","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>A project’s <em>life cycle</em> is the series of phases that the project passes through as it goes from its start to its completion. A <em>phase</em> is a collection of logically related project activities that culminates in the completion of one or more project deliverables. Every project, whether large or small, passes through the following four project life-cycle phases:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Starting the project:</strong> This phase involves generating, evaluating, and framing the business need for the project and the general approach to performing it and agreeing to prepare a detailed project plan. Outputs from this phase may include approval to proceed to the next phase, documentation of the need for the project and rough estimates of time and resources to perform it (often included in a project charter), and an initial list of people who may be interested in, involved with, or affected by the project.</li>\n<li><strong>Organizing and preparing:</strong> This phase involves developing a plan that specifies the desired results; the work to do; the time, cost, and other resources required; and a plan for how to address key project risks. Outputs from this phase may include a project plan that documents the intended project results and the time, resources, and supporting processes needed to create them.</li>\n<li><strong>Carrying out the work:</strong> This phase involves establishing the project team and the project support systems, performing the planned work, and monitoring and controlling performance to ensure adherence to the current plan. Outputs from this phase may include project results, project progress reports, and other communications.</li>\n<li><strong>Closing the project:</strong> This phase involves assessing the project results, obtaining customer approvals, transitioning project team members to new assignments, closing financial accounts, and conducting a post-project evaluation. Outputs from this phase may include final, accepted, and approved project results and recommendations and suggestions for applying lessons learned from this project to similar efforts in the future.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>For small projects, this entire life cycle can take just a few days. For larger projects, it can take many years! In fact, to allow for greater focus on key aspects and to make it easier to monitor and control the work, project managers often subdivide larger projects into separate phases, each of which is treated as a mini-project and passes through these four life-cycle phases. No matter how simple or complex the project is, however, these four phases are the same.</p>\n"},{"title":"The 5 processes of project management","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p><em>Project management</em> is the process of guiding a project from its beginning through its performance to its closure. Project management includes five sets of processes:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Initiating processes:</strong> Clarifying the business need, defining high-level expectations and resource budgets, and beginning to identify audiences that may play a role in your project</li>\n<li><strong>Planning processes:</strong> Detailing the project scope, time frames, resources, and risks, as well as intended approaches to project communications, quality, and management of external purchases of goods and services</li>\n<li><strong>Executing processes:</strong> Establishing and managing the project team, communicating with and managing project audiences, and implementing the project plans</li>\n<li><strong>Monitoring and controlling processes:</strong> Tracking performance and taking actions necessary to help ensure project plans are successfully implemented and the desired results are achieved</li>\n<li><strong>Closing processes:</strong> Ending all project activity</li>\n</ul>\n<p>These five process groups help support the project through the four phases of its life cycle. 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Executing processes guide the project tasks performed when carrying out the work, and closing processes are used to perform the tasks that bring the project to an end.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://dummies-wp-admin.dummies.com/software/microsoft-office/project/ten-project-management-pitfalls-and-how-to-avoid-them/\">Successfully performing</a> these processes requires the following:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Information:</strong> Accurate, timely, and complete data for the planning, performance monitoring, and final assessment of the project</li>\n<li><strong>Communication:</strong> Clear, open, and timely sharing of information with appropriate individuals and groups throughout the project’s duration</li>\n<li><strong>Commitment:</strong> Team members’ personal promises to produce the agreed-upon results on time and within budget</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Project manager’s jobs","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Historically, the performance rules in traditional organizations were simple: Your boss made assignments; you carried them out. Questioning your assignments was a sign of insubordination or incompetence.</p>\n<p>But these rules have changed. Today your boss may generate ideas, but you assess how to implement them. You confirm that a project meets your boss’s (and your organization’s) real need and then determine the work, schedules, and resources you require to implement it.</p>\n<p>Handling a project any other way simply doesn’t make sense. The project manager must be involved in developing the plans because she needs the opportunity to clarify expectations and proposed approaches and then to raise any questions she may have <em>before</em> the project work begins.</p>\n<p>The key to project success is being proactive. 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He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. 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it is based on the ideas of “Continuous Incremental Improvement” and “Respect for People.”</p>\n<h2>Focus on the fundamentals</h2>\n<p>The basic principles of Lean are</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Focus on effectively delivering value to your Customer</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Respect and engage the people</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Improve the Value Stream by eliminating all types of waste</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Maintain Flow</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Pull Through the System</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Strive for Perfection</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Your customer tells you what they value</h2>\n<p>You customer defines value or value-added with the following three conditions:</p>\n<ol class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">It must transform the product or service.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">The customer must be willing to “pay” for it.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">It must be done correctly the first time.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>If you don’t meet all three of these criteria, then you have non-value-added activities or waste.</p>\n<h2>What’s “waste” anyway?</h2>\n<p>Waste comes in three main forms:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Mura</b> or waste due to variation</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Muri</b> or waste due to overburdening or stressing the people, equipment or system</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Muda</b> also known as the “seven forms of waste”</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The following are the wastes most commonly associated with Lean:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Transportation:</b> Is there unnecessary (non-value-added) movement of parts, materials, or information between processes?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Waiting:</b> Are people or parts, systems or facilities idle — waiting for a work cycle to be completed?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Overproduction:</b> Are you producing sooner, faster, or in greater quantities than the customer is demanding?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Defects:</b> Does the process result in anything that the customer would deem unacceptable?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Inventory:</b> Do you have any raw materials, work-in-progress (WIP), or finished goods that are not having value added to them?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Movement:</b> How much do you move materials, people, equipment, and goods within a processing step?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><b>Extra Processing:</b> How much extra work is performed beyond the standard required by the customer?</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Sometimes you will also hear “the disengagement of people&#8221; identified as a form of muda.</p>\n"},{"title":"Behaviors of a Lean leader","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Lean leaders effectively exhibit the following behaviors every day. They know how the business serves the customer by</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Understanding what customers want, need, and value, or what will thrill them</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Knowing how the business satisfies the customer</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Improving the effectiveness of how the business satisfies the customer</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>They build ability in the people through</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Guiding problem solving — root cause, right problem, right resources</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Leading from <i>gemba</i>; applying 3Gen</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Asking open-ended, probing questions</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>They show a continuous improvement mindset by</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Continually challenging the status quo</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Knowing that there is always room for improvement</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Understanding that the customer changes — what delights today is a necessity tomorrow</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>They focus on process and results by</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Obtaining results</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Ensuring that how the results are achieved is the most effective utilization of all resources, in the direction of the ideal state</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Improving how the organization accomplishes results</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>They demonstrate an understanding of the value stream at a macro and micro level through</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Knowing what the customer requires and how the value stream satisfies them</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Having knowledge of the overall value stream, including tributaries</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Asking questions when changes are made at the local level to ensure that the team understands how the change will impact the customer and the rest of the value stream</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>They create a culture to sustain improvement by</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Identifying, modeling, and encouraging Lean behaviors</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Finding the lessons in every “failure” — blame does not foster improvement or innovation</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Respecting and improving standards — questions when the organization is deviating from the standard</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Leading a Lean organization","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>To create a sustaining Lean organization, you lead differently. Lean leaders lead from <i>gemba</i><i>,</i> where the action happens. They know the only way to truly understand what is happening is to go to the place where the action occurs. Once there, they apply 3Gen or the 3 Actuals:</p>\n<ol class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><i>genchi</i> — (like <i>gemba</i>) go to the actual place</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><i>genbutsu</i> — observe the actual product, process or service</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><i>genjitsu</i> — gather actual facts</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n"},{"title":"Using Lean to define and improve the value stream","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The value stream includes all of the activities, materials, people, and information that must flow and come together to provide your customer the value they want, when they want it and how they want it. You identify the value stream on a value-stream map, using specific icons.</p>\n<p>You improve the value stream by following the Plan-Do-Check-Act process (sometimes called the Plan-Do-Study-Act process). The 3P Methodology (Production Preparation Process) is used upfront to design products and processes before they are in the final form. By creating an environment of safety and order, you can more easily identify where waste happens. The process for this environment is sort, straighten, scrub, systematize, and standardize while eliminating any unsafe conditions; this is known as 5S+.</p>\n<h2>Example value-stream map (VSM)</h2>\n<p>When you have created your VSM, you will identify areas for improvement. Here is an example of a VSM showing the current state of the process and several potential areas for improvement.</p>\n<div class=\"imageBlock\" style=\"width: 535px;\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/317805.Lean.jpg\" alt=\"The current-state VSM markup for a salad company.\" width=\"535\" height=\"466\" /></p>\n<div class=\"imageCaption\">The current-state VSM markup for a salad company.</div>\n</div>\n"},{"title":"Defining waste in the Lean system","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Waste comes in three main forms:</p>\n<ol class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Mura or waste due to variation</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Muri or waste due to overburdening or stressing the people, equipment or system.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Muda also known as the “seven forms of waste”.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>The following are the wastes most commonly associated with Lean.</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Transportation: Is there unnecessary (non-value added) movement of parts, materials, or information between processes?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Waiting: Are people or parts, systems or facilities idle &#8211; waiting for a work cycle to be completed?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Overproduction: Are you producing sooner, faster or in greater quantities than the customer is demanding?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Defects: Does the process result in anything that the customer would deem unacceptable?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Inventory: Do you have any raw materials, work-in-progress (WIP) or finished goods that are not having value added to them?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Movement: How much do you move materials, people, equipment and goods within a processing step?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Extra Processing: How much extra work is performed beyond the standard required by the customer?</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Sometimes you will also hear “the disengagement of people&#8221; identified as a form of muda.</p>\n<p>Muda comes in two flavors called Type-1 muda and Type-2 muda. What’s the difference? In both cases it fails to meet all three criteria for value-added as defined by your customer.</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Type I muda — Non-value added, but necessary for the system to function. Minimize this until you can eliminate it.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Type II muda — Non-value added and unnecessary. Eliminate this first!</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"The Kaizen Project PDCA, or PDSA, Cycle of Lean","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The term <i>Kaizen</i> is derived from two Japanese characters; <i>kai</i>, meaning “change” and <i>zen</i> meaning “continuous improvement.” Eliminating waste in the value stream is the goal of <i>Kaizen</i>. The PDCA (or PDSA) Cycle is the Lean working structure –the system for executing Kaizen. The acronym stands for:</p>\n<ol class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Plan.</p>\n<p class=\"child-para\">Create a plan for change, identifying specifically what you want to change. Define the steps you need to make the change, and predict the results of the change.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Do.</p>\n<p class=\"child-para\">Carry out the plan in a trial or test environment, on a small scale, under controlled conditions.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Check (or study).</p>\n<p class=\"child-para\">Examine the results of your trial. Verify that you’ve improved the process. If you have, consider implementing it on a broader scale. If you haven’t improved the process, go back and try again.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Act.</p>\n<p class=\"child-para\">Implement the changes you’ve verified on a broader scale. Update the standard operating procedures.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"One year","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-02-18T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":208353},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2016-03-27T16:49:37+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-02-17T22:10:46+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:19:09+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"Project Management For Dummies Cheat Sheet","strippedTitle":"project management for dummies cheat sheet","slug":"project-management-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"Because of the ever-growing array of huge, complex, and technically challenging projects in today's world, effective project managers are in higher demand than ","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"Because of the ever-growing array of huge, complex, and technically challenging projects in today's world, effective project managers are in higher demand than ever before.\r\n\r\nPeople need the tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their project management assignments, such as confirming a project's justification, developing project objectives and schedules, maintaining commitment for a project, holding people accountable, and avoiding common project pitfalls.","description":"Because of the ever-growing array of huge, complex, and technically challenging projects in today's world, effective project managers are in higher demand than ever before.\r\n\r\nPeople need the tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their project management assignments, such as confirming a project's justification, developing project objectives and schedules, maintaining commitment for a project, holding people accountable, and avoiding common project pitfalls.","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":9280,"name":"Stanley E. Portny","slug":"stanley-e-portny","description":" <p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9280"}}],"primaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":34249,"title":"Project Management","slug":"project-management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"}},"secondaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"tertiaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"trendingArticles":null,"inThisArticle":[],"relatedArticles":{"fromBook":[{"articleId":247926,"title":"How to Assess Your Project Stakeholders’ Power and Interest","slug":"assess-project-stakeholders-power-interest","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247926"}},{"articleId":247923,"title":"How to Use a Stakeholder Register Template","slug":"use-stakeholder-register-template","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247923"}},{"articleId":247920,"title":"How to Gather Ideas for Projects","slug":"gather-ideas-projects","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247920"}},{"articleId":247916,"title":"Handling Administrative Issues at the End of Your Project","slug":"handling-administrative-issues-end-project","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247916"}},{"articleId":247913,"title":"10 Questions to Ask Yourself as You Plan Your Project","slug":"10-questions-ask-plan-project","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/247913"}}],"fromCategory":[{"articleId":275133,"title":"What Is Agile Project Management?","slug":"what-is-agile-project-management","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275133"}},{"articleId":275127,"title":"Strategic Approaches to Implementing and Managing Change","slug":"strategic-approaches-to-implementing-and-managing-change","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275127"}},{"articleId":275120,"title":"Steps to Successfully Become an Agile Organization","slug":"steps-to-successfully-become-an-agile-organization","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275120"}},{"articleId":275111,"title":"Agile Project Management: Know Your Customers","slug":"agile-project-management-know-your-customers","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275111"}},{"articleId":274291,"title":"Agile Planning with the Roadmap to Value","slug":"agile-planning-with-the-roadmap-to-value","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/274291"}}]},"hasRelatedBookFromSearch":false,"relatedBook":{"bookId":282511,"slug":"project-management-for-dummies","isbn":"9781119869818","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"amazon":{"default":"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","ca":"https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","indigo_ca":"http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-9208661-13710633?url=https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/product/1119869811-item.html&cjsku=978111945484","gb":"https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","de":"https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/1119869811/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20"},"image":{"src":"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/9781119869818-203x255.jpg","width":203,"height":255},"title":"Project Management For Dummies","testBankPinActivationLink":"","bookOutOfPrint":true,"authorsInfo":"<p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> <b data-author-id=\"9280\">Stanley E. Portny</b>, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> <p><b><b data-author-id=\"35153\">Jonathan L. Portny</b>, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p>","authors":[{"authorId":9280,"name":"Stanley E. Portny","slug":"stanley-e-portny","description":" <p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9280"}},{"authorId":35153,"name":"Jonathan L. Portny","slug":"jonathan-l-portny","description":" <p><b>Jonathan L. Portny, MBA, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project management and is a certified Project Management Professional. His father,<b> Stanley E. Portny, PMP<sup>&#174;</sup>,</b> was an internationally recognized expert in project management and the author of all previous editions of <i>Project Management for Dummies.</i></p> ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/35153"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119869818&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b1d7cf3a\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119869818&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b1d7d9c3\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Cheat Sheet","articleList":[{"articleId":168463,"title":"Project Management Basics: Confirming Your Project's Justification","slug":"project-management-basics-confirming-your-projects-justification","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/168463"}},{"articleId":168402,"title":"Project Management Tips for Developing Meaningful Project Objectives","slug":"project-management-tips-for-developing-meaningful-project-objectives","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/168402"}},{"articleId":168462,"title":"Project Manager Skill: Developing Achievable Project Schedules","slug":"project-manager-skill-developing-achievable-project-schedules","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/168462"}},{"articleId":168459,"title":"For Project Managers: How to Elicit and Sustain Commitment for Projects","slug":"for-project-managers-how-to-elicit-and-sustain-commitment-for-projects","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/168459"}},{"articleId":168401,"title":"Effective Project Management: How to Hold People Accountable","slug":"effective-project-management-how-to-hold-people-accountable","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/168401"}},{"articleId":168461,"title":"How to Avoid Common Project Management Pitfalls","slug":"how-to-avoid-common-project-management-pitfalls","categoryList":[],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/168461"}}],"content":[{"title":"Confirming your project's justification","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>A key requirement for project management success is knowing why the project was created in the first place. In addition to helping ensure that the appropriate objectives and desired results are framed at the outset, this knowledge energizes project team members and fuels their commitment to achieve those objectives and results.</p>\n<p>Take the following steps to determine your project’s justification:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Identify your project’s drivers and determine their needs and expectations. <em>Project drivers</em> are people for whom you perform the project; they have some authority to define the results of the project.</li>\n<li>Look for existing statements that confirm your project’s support of your organization’s priorities. Consult your organization’s long-range plan, annual budget, capital expenditures plan, and key performance indicators, or KPIs, as well as notes from meetings where your project was proposed and discussed. Also contact the people who attended those meetings.</li>\n<li>When checking with people or written documents for confirmation of your project’s justification, do the following:</li>\n<li>Try to find several sources for the same piece of information (the more independent sources you find that corroborate the same information, the more likely that information is correct).</li>\n<li>Get information from primary sources (a <em>primary source</em> contains the original information; a <em>secondary source</em> is someone else’s report of the information from the primary source).</li>\n<li>Use written sources because they provide a constant and enduring record of the information and they reduce the chances that the information will be altered, filtered, or misinterpreted (inadvertently or purposely) before you see it.</li>\n<li>When speaking with people about important information, have at least one other person present to increase the likelihood of accurately interpreting the speaker’s message.</li>\n<li>Write down all information you obtain from meetings.</li>\n<li>Plan to meet with key audiences at least two times. Your first meeting gets them thinking about issues; your second meeting allows you to clarify any ambiguities or inconsistencies from the first session.</li>\n<li>Confirm what you heard in meetings with written sources and compare perceptions and opinions to written, factual data (from primary sources, ideally). Reconcile any discrepancies.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Tips for developing meaningful project objectives","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>As a project manager, developing concise and unambiguous <i>project objectives</i> (or statements of your project&#8217;s desired results) increases the chances that you&#8217;ll successfully accomplish them. Follow these pointers to ensure your project objectives are crystal clear:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Focus on outcomes rather than activities. (For example, &#8220;produce a final, approved report&#8221; is preferable to &#8220;read and review draft report.&#8221;)</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Make sure your objectives are SMART (<b>s</b>pecific, <b>m</b>easurable, <b>a</b>ggressive, <b>r</b>ealistic, and <b>t</b>ime-sensitive).</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Use clear language — no technical jargon or acronyms.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Make sure every objective has at least one measure and every measure has at least one performance target. For example, if the narrative statement of your objective is &#8220;to develop a new product,&#8221; one measure would be &#8220;target completion date&#8221; and the performance target for that measure would be a specific date.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Developing achievable project schedules","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Producing your project&#8217;s results on schedule is an essential requirement for its success. To have the greatest chance of completing your project on time, you need to develop a project schedule that&#8217;s achievable, responsive to your client&#8217;s needs, and understood and supported by all project team members.</p>\n<p>Take the following steps to create a realistic and attainable project schedule:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Identify all required activities.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Break down activities into sufficient detail. For example, instead of including a single activity named &#8220;determine requirements for new product&#8221; in your schedule, break it down further into &#8220;review correspondence,&#8221; &#8220;interview salespeople,&#8221; &#8220;conduct focus groups,&#8221; and &#8220;prepare a report of the requirements for the new product.&#8221;</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Always consider both <i>duration</i> (the number of work periods required to perform an activity) and <i>interdependencies</i> (the order in which activities are performed) as you develop your project schedule.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Identify your strategy for performing each activity before you estimate its duration.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Factor in the availability of resources (such as the number of hours each day in May that the manufacturing engineer will be able to work on your project).</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Recognize and write down all assumptions related to your project and its schedule. For example, if you don&#8217;t yet know what your project budget is, write down that you&#8217;ll assume your budget will be $100,000 until you find out otherwise.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Identify and plan for all significant project schedule risks (such as whether the redesign of the company financial system will cause your project to be delayed).</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Reexamine and revise, if necessary, your original schedule after your project is approved and before you start work on it.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Involve your <i>project drivers</i> (people for whom you perform the project) and <i>supporters</i> (people who help perform your project) in developing the schedule.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"How to elicit and sustain commitment for projects","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>You can&#8217;t do your project alone; as project manager, you need your team members to work together to successfully reach the project&#8217;s final objectives and goals.</p>\n<p>Follow these tips to bring enthusiasm and commitment to your project team (and to maintain both throughout your project&#8217;s life cycle):</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Clarify project benefits for the organization and for individual team members.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Involve team members in the planning process.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Help people see that the project plan is feasible.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Address issues, concerns, and questions promptly and openly.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Provide frequent, meaningful feedback to your team members.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Acknowledge people&#8217;s contributions.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Holding people accountable","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>When people accept a responsibility, they give you the right to hold them accountable for their performance. Even if you technically have no direct authority over a person on your project team, act as if you have the authority, unless you&#8217;re specifically told otherwise.</p>\n<p>Here are some effective ways to hold the people on your project team accountable:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Involve the people who have authority over your team members.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Be specific regarding desired results, time frames, and resource budgets.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Get your team members&#8217; commitment.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Put all commitments in writing.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Agree on a plan for monitoring your team members&#8217; progress and follow it.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Tell others on your project about the commitments made.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Create a sense of urgency and importance about the project.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Express appreciation for the effort put in and the results achieved.</p>\n</li>\n<li>Meet your commitments to your team so they know you practice what you preach.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Avoiding common project management pitfalls","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The pressure of having to complete a project with little time and few resources often causes people to cut corners and ignore certain issues that can significantly affect a project&#8217;s chances for success.</p>\n<p>Avoid the following common pitfalls and, instead, address the issues early in the project to help reduce their possible negative impacts:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Framing vague project objectives:</strong> Project objectives are the results that must be achieved if the project is to be successful. The more specific the objectives, the easier it&#8217;ll be for you to estimate the time and resources required to achieve them and the easier it&#8217;ll be for you and your audiences to confirm they have been met.Be sure to include <em>measures </em>(the characteristics of an objective you&#8217;ll use to decide if it has been achieved) and <em>specifications</em> (the values of the measures that you believe confirm that you have successfully achieved your objectives).</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Overlooking key audiences:</strong> Be sure to determine your project&#8217;s <em>drivers</em> (those people who define what your project must achieve to be successful) and its <em>supporters </em>(the people who make it possible for you to accomplish your desired project&#8217;s objectives). Important drivers who often get overlooked are the ultimate end users of your project&#8217;s products.</li>\n<li><strong>Failing to document assumptions:</strong> People almost always make assumptions regarding their projects; however, they often fail to write them down because they figure everyone else is making the same ones.Documenting your assumptions allows you to confirm that all people are operating under the same set of assumptions and reminds you periodically to check whether project assumptions have been confirmed and new ones have been made.</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Backing in to project schedules:</strong> <em>Backing in</em> to a project schedule entails trying to determine the time and resources you feel would enable you to achieve project success while ignoring the question of how likely it is that you&#8217;ll be able to get the required amounts of time and resources.Instead of backing in, consider the time and resources that you realistically feel you would be able to secure and to explore different ways of using them to increase your chances of being able to successfully complete your project.</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Not getting key commitments in writing:</strong> Not putting commitments in writing increases the chances that what people intended to commit to was different from what you thought they did commit to. In addition to increasing the accuracy of communication, writing down commitments helps those who made them to remember them and encourages people to modify the written statements when necessary.</li>\n<li><strong>Failing to keep the plan up to date:</strong> If a project is being run correctly, you and your team members should frequently consult the most current version of the project plan to confirm what each team member hast to do to produce the intended results.Not keeping the plan up to date means you have no reference explaining what people should be doing to successfully perform the required project work. It also suggests that adhering to the most recent version of the project plan isn&#8217;t really that important, a belief that significantly reduces the chances of project success.</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Not having formal change control: </strong>Failing to follow a formal process for evaluating the effect of project changes increases the likelihood that important consequences of those requested changes will be overlooked when assessing their impacts. In addition, it makes it more likely that some of the people who will be affected by the changes may not receive timely and accurate information about what those effects may be.<br />\nFollow the change control process even when a scope change does not necessarily require a budgetary change. No-cost change orders help define and document the new scope and avoid future misunderstandings.</li>\n<li><strong>Not communicating effectively:</strong> Problematic communications increase the chances that people will work with different information when performing project tasks, as well as decrease team morale and commitment to overall project success.</li>\n</ul>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Two years","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":208004},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2016-03-27T16:52:02+00:00","modifiedTime":"2022-02-14T20:32:51+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:19:06+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"Six Sigma For Dummies Cheat Sheet","strippedTitle":"six sigma for dummies cheat sheet","slug":"six-sigma-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"Six Sigma is a set of tools and techniques that help businesses improve. 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The correct tools and use of the Six Sigma scale and methods will keep your data dependable and reusable.","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":9791,"name":"Craig Gygi","slug":"craig-gygi","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9791"}},{"authorId":9792,"name":"Bruce Williams","slug":"bruce-williams","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9792"}},{"authorId":9793,"name":"Neil DeCarlo","slug":"neil-decarlo","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9793"}},{"authorId":9794,"name":"Stephen R. Covey","slug":"stephen-r-covey","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. 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He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b data-author-id=\"9792\">Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co-author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b data-author-id=\"9793\">Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. </p>","authors":[{"authorId":9791,"name":"Craig Gygi","slug":"craig-gygi","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9791"}},{"authorId":9792,"name":"Bruce Williams","slug":"bruce-williams","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9792"}},{"authorId":9793,"name":"Neil DeCarlo","slug":"neil-decarlo","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9793"}},{"authorId":9794,"name":"Stephen R. Covey","slug":"stephen-r-covey","description":" <p><b>Craig Gygi</b> is Executive VP of Operations at MasterControl, a leading company providing software and services for best practices in automating and connecting every stage of quality&#47;regulatory compliance, through the entire product life cycle. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. <b>Bruce Williams</b> is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co&#45;author of <i>Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies</i> and <i>The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM</i>. <b>Neil DeCarlo</b> was President of DeCarlo Communications. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9794"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781118120354&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b1ab1563\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781118120354&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221b1ab1fc3\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Cheat Sheet","articleList":[{"articleId":175735,"title":"What Is Six Sigma?","slug":"what-is-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175735"}},{"articleId":175734,"title":"Six Sigma Principles","slug":"six-sigma-principles","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175734"}},{"articleId":175736,"title":"The Six Sigma Scale","slug":"the-six-sigma-scale","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175736"}},{"articleId":175733,"title":"The DMAIC Method of Six Sigma","slug":"the-dmaic-method-of-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175733"}},{"articleId":175743,"title":"The Tools-Methods Landscape of Six Sigma","slug":"the-tools-methods-landscape-of-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/175743"}}],"content":[{"title":"What is Six Sigma?","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Generally, Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools that help businesses improve their processes. It&#8217;s a problem-solving methodology that helps enhance business and organizational operations. It can also be defined in a number of other ways:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">A quality level of 3.4 defects per million opportunities</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">A rate of improvement of 70 percent or better</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">A data-driven, problem-solving methodology of Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">An initiative taken on by organizations to create bottom-line breakthrough change</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Six Sigma principles","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Six Sigma is based on a handful of basic principles, and these principles create the entire Six Sigma arrangement. Here are Six Sigma’s fundamental principles:</p>\n<ul class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\"><i>Y</i>=<i>f</i>(<i>X</i>) + <i>ε</i><i>:</i> All outcomes and results (the<i>Y</i>) are determined by inputs (the<i>X</i>s) with some degree of uncertainty (å).</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">To change or improve results (the Y), you have to focus on the inputs (the<i>X</i>s), modify them, and control them.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Variation is everywhere, and it degrades consistent, good performance. Your job is to find it and minimize it!</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Valid measurements and data are required foundations for consistent, breakthrough improvement.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Only a critical few inputs have significant effect on the output. Concentrate on the critical few.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Every decision and conclusion has risk (<i>ε</i>), which must be weighed against the context of the decision.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"The Six Sigma scale","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The Six Sigma scale shows how well a vital feature performs compared to its requirements. The higher the sigma score, the more efficient the feature is. This table shows the universal Six Sigma scale:</p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>Sigma Level (Z)</th>\n<th>Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO)</th>\n<th>Percent Defects (%)</th>\n<th>Percent Success (Yield %)</th>\n<th>Capability (CP)</th>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>1</td>\n<td>691,462</td>\n<td>69</td>\n<td>31</td>\n<td>0.33</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>2</td>\n<td>308,538</td>\n<td>31</td>\n<td>69</td>\n<td>0.67</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>3</td>\n<td>66,807</td>\n<td>6.7</td>\n<td>93.3</td>\n<td>1.00</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>4</td>\n<td>6,210</td>\n<td>0.62</td>\n<td>99.38</td>\n<td>1.33</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>5</td>\n<td>233</td>\n<td>0.023</td>\n<td>99.977</td>\n<td>1.67</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>6</td>\n<td>3.4</td>\n<td>0.00034</td>\n<td>99.99966</td>\n<td>2.00</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n"},{"title":"The DMAIC method of Six Sigma","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>The DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) project method is a formalized problem-solving process of Six Sigma. It’s made-up of five steps to apply to any procedure of a business to improve effectiveness.</p>\n<ol class=\"level-one\">\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Define: Set the context and objectives for your improvement project.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Measure: Determine the baseline performance and capability of the process or system you’re improving.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Analyze: Use data and tools to understand the cause-and-effect relationships in your process or system.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Improve: Develop the modifications that lead to a validated improvement in your process or system.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"first-para\">Control: Establish plans and procedures to ensure that your improvements are sustained.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n"},{"title":"The tools and methods of Six Sigma","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Having the right tools and knowing how to apply them to your Six Sigma projects will help you produce accurate, acceptable, and reusable outcomes. Here’s an overview of the Six Sigma landscape:</p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/323548.image0.jpg\" alt=\"image0.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"933\" /></p>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Two years","lifeExpectancySetFrom":"2022-02-14T00:00:00+00:00","dummiesForKids":"no","sponsoredContent":"no","adInfo":"","adPairKey":[]},"status":"publish","visibility":"public","articleId":208300},{"headers":{"creationTime":"2016-03-27T16:46:54+00:00","modifiedTime":"2021-09-22T14:06:56+00:00","timestamp":"2022-09-14T18:18:38+00:00"},"data":{"breadcrumbs":[{"name":"Business, Careers, & Money","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34224"},"slug":"business-careers-money","categoryId":34224},{"name":"Business","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34225"},"slug":"business","categoryId":34225},{"name":"Project Management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"},"slug":"project-management","categoryId":34249}],"title":"Lean Six Sigma For Dummies Cheat Sheet","strippedTitle":"lean six sigma for dummies cheat sheet","slug":"lean-six-sigma-for-dummies-cheat-sheet","canonicalUrl":"","seo":{"metaDescription":"Lean Six Sigma has been proven to improve business performance and make your teams more productive. Learn the basics here.","noIndex":0,"noFollow":0},"content":"Are you ready to adopt the proven methods of Lean Six Sigma to improve business performance and make your teams more productive? Remind yourself of the key principles of this powerful strategy so that your business runs smoothly and efficiently.","description":"Are you ready to adopt the proven methods of Lean Six Sigma to improve business performance and make your teams more productive? Remind yourself of the key principles of this powerful strategy so that your business runs smoothly and efficiently.","blurb":"","authors":[{"authorId":9063,"name":"John Morgan","slug":"john-morgan","description":" <p><b>Roger Burghall</b> is Associate Partner at Catalyst Consulting and a highly experienced business consultant and change manager. <b>Vince Grant</b> is a Director of Catalyst Consulting and an expert in Lean Six Sigma methodologies. <b>John Morgan</b> is the author of <i>Lean Six Sigma For Dummies.</i></p>","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9063"}},{"authorId":9064,"name":"Martin Brenig-Jones","slug":"martin-brenig-jones","description":" <p><b>Martin Brenig-Jones</b> is CEO of Catalyst Consulting, Europe&#8217;s leading Lean Six Sigma solutions provider. He has 30 years of experience in Quality and Change Management.</p> <p><b>Jo Dowdall</b> has 21 years of experience as a Continuous Improvement profes&#173;sional, coach, trainer, and advocate. She is an accomplished Quality Manager and Master Black Belt. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9064"}}],"primaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":34249,"title":"Project Management","slug":"project-management","_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/categories/34249"}},"secondaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"tertiaryCategoryTaxonomy":{"categoryId":0,"title":null,"slug":null,"_links":null},"trendingArticles":null,"inThisArticle":[],"relatedArticles":{"fromBook":[{"articleId":140650,"title":"Kai Sigma — An Approach to Rapid Improvement","slug":"kai-sigma-an-approach-to-rapid-improvement","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140650"}},{"articleId":140651,"title":"Why Lean Six Sigma Projects Miss Schedule and Budget","slug":"why-lean-six-sigma-projects-miss-schedule-and-budget","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140651"}},{"articleId":140652,"title":"A Case Study for Failure Modes Effects Analysis and Lean Six Sigma","slug":"a-case-study-for-failure-modes-effects-analysis-and-lean-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140652"}},{"articleId":140645,"title":"Value with Lean Six Sigma","slug":"value-with-lean-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140645"}},{"articleId":140646,"title":"Lean Six Sigma's Key Principles","slug":"lean-six-sigmas-key-principles","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140646"}}],"fromCategory":[{"articleId":275133,"title":"What Is Agile Project Management?","slug":"what-is-agile-project-management","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275133"}},{"articleId":275127,"title":"Strategic Approaches to Implementing and Managing Change","slug":"strategic-approaches-to-implementing-and-managing-change","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275127"}},{"articleId":275120,"title":"Steps to Successfully Become an Agile Organization","slug":"steps-to-successfully-become-an-agile-organization","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275120"}},{"articleId":275111,"title":"Agile Project Management: Know Your Customers","slug":"agile-project-management-know-your-customers","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/275111"}},{"articleId":274291,"title":"Agile Planning with the Roadmap to Value","slug":"agile-planning-with-the-roadmap-to-value","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/274291"}}]},"hasRelatedBookFromSearch":false,"relatedBook":{"bookId":281583,"slug":"lean-six-sigma-for-dummies","isbn":"9781119796718","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"amazon":{"default":"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119796717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","ca":"https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1119796717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","indigo_ca":"http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-9208661-13710633?url=https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/product/1119796717-item.html&cjsku=978111945484","gb":"https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1119796717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20","de":"https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/1119796717/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wiley01-20"},"image":{"src":"https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/lean-six-sigma-for-dummies-3rd-edition-cover-9781119067351-203x255.jpg","width":203,"height":255},"title":"Lean Six Sigma For Dummies","testBankPinActivationLink":"","bookOutOfPrint":true,"authorsInfo":"<p><p><b>Martin Brenig-Jones</b> is CEO of Catalyst Consulting, Europe&#8217;s leading Lean Six Sigma solutions provider. He has 30 years of experience in Quality and Change Management.</p> <p><b><b data-author-id=\"34606\">Jo Dowdall</b></b> has 21 years of experience as a Continuous Improvement profes&#173;sional, coach, trainer, and advocate. She is an accomplished Quality Manager and Master Black Belt. <p><b><b data-author-id=\"9064\">Martin Brenig-Jones</b></b> is CEO of Catalyst Consulting, Europe&#8217;s leading Lean Six Sigma solutions provider. He has 30 years of experience in Quality and Change Management.</p> <p><b>Jo Dowdall</b> has 21 years of experience as a Continuous Improvement profes&#173;sional, coach, trainer, and advocate. She is an accomplished Quality Manager and Master Black Belt.</p>","authors":[{"authorId":34606,"name":"Jo Dowdall","slug":"jo-dowdall","description":" <p><b>Martin Brenig-Jones</b> is CEO of Catalyst Consulting, Europe&#8217;s leading Lean Six Sigma solutions provider. He has 30 years of experience in Quality and Change Management.</p> <p><b>Jo Dowdall</b> has 21 years of experience as a Continuous Improvement profes&#173;sional, coach, trainer, and advocate. She is an accomplished Quality Manager and Master Black Belt. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/34606"}},{"authorId":9064,"name":"Martin Brenig-Jones","slug":"martin-brenig-jones","description":" <p><b>Martin Brenig-Jones</b> is CEO of Catalyst Consulting, Europe&#8217;s leading Lean Six Sigma solutions provider. He has 30 years of experience in Quality and Change Management.</p> <p><b>Jo Dowdall</b> has 21 years of experience as a Continuous Improvement profes&#173;sional, coach, trainer, and advocate. She is an accomplished Quality Manager and Master Black Belt. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9064"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_adhesion_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119796718&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221afeca1ba\"></div></div>","rightAd":"<div class=\"du-ad-region row\" id=\"article_page_right_ad\"><div class=\"du-ad-unit col-md-12\" data-slot-id=\"article_page_right_ad\" data-refreshed=\"false\" \r\n data-target = \"[{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;business-careers-money&quot;,&quot;business&quot;,&quot;project-management&quot;]},{&quot;key&quot;:&quot;isbn&quot;,&quot;values&quot;:[&quot;9781119796718&quot;]}]\" id=\"du-slot-63221afecac51\"></div></div>"},"articleType":{"articleType":"Cheat Sheet","articleList":[{"articleId":140646,"title":"Lean Six Sigma's Key Principles","slug":"lean-six-sigmas-key-principles","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140646"}},{"articleId":140647,"title":"How to Use DMAIC in Lean Six Sigma","slug":"how-to-use-dmaic-in-lean-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140647"}},{"articleId":140645,"title":"Value with Lean Six Sigma","slug":"value-with-lean-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140645"}},{"articleId":140648,"title":"How to Tackle Waste with Lean Six Sigma","slug":"how-to-tackle-waste-with-lean-six-sigma","categoryList":["business-careers-money","business","project-management"],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/articles/140648"}}],"content":[{"title":"Lean Six Sigma's key principles","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>Lean Six Sigma is a powerful, proven method of improving business efficiency and effectiveness. In a nutshell, here are the key principles of Lean Six Sigma to bear in mind:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Focus on the customer.</li>\n<li>Identify and understand how the work gets done (the <em>value stream</em>).</li>\n<li>Manage, improve and smooth the process flow.</li>\n<li>Remove non-value-adding steps and waste.</li>\n<li>Manage by fact and reduce variation.</li>\n<li>Involve and equip the people in the process.</li>\n<li>Undertake improvement activity in a systematic way.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"How to use DMAIC in Lean Six Sigma","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>To undertake improvement activity in your existing business processes in a systematic way using Lean Six Sigma, you need to employ the useful framework of DMAIC:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Define:</strong> Projects start with a problem that needs solving. Make sure everyone involved knows their role, why you’re doing the project and what you’re trying to achieve with the project.</li>\n<li><strong>Measure: </strong>The work you’ve done in the Define stage is based on what you think the problem is. During the Measure stage you need to clarify things by seeing how the work gets done and how well.</li>\n<li><strong>Analyze:</strong> Now you know what’s happening, it’s time to find out why, but don’t jump to conclusions. Manage by fact to check out the possible causes and get to the root cause.</li>\n<li><strong>Improve: </strong>Okay, you know about the process and the problem. Now, in the Improve stage, you need to find a way to address the root cause, so come up with some ideas, select the best one and test it out.</li>\n<li><strong>Control: </strong>You need to implement the solution, and ensure you achieve and hold the gain you’re looking for. Putting a control plan in place is vital to ensure that the process is carried out consistently.</li>\n</ul>\n"},{"title":"Value with Lean Six Sigma","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>When you’re trying to improve value for your customers with Lean Six Sigma, remember that in your customers’ eyes, <em>value</em> is what they’re willing to pay for:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The right products and services</li>\n<li>At the right time</li>\n<li>At the right price</li>\n<li> At the right quality</li>\n</ul>\n<p>For a step to be value-adding, it must meet the following three criteria:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The customer has to care about the step.</li>\n<li>The step must either physically change the product or service in some way, or be an essential prerequisite for another step.</li>\n<li>The step must be actioned &#8220;right first time.&#8221;</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Try to remove steps that don’t meet these criteria, but recognize that you may want to retain some non-value-adding steps, perhaps for regulatory or financial reasons, for example.</p>\n<p>You need to identify and understand the value stream and eliminate waste and non-value-adding steps. As little as 10 to 15 percent of process steps add value, often representing only 1 percent of the total process time.</p>\n"},{"title":"How to tackle waste with Lean Six Sigma","thumb":null,"image":null,"content":"<p>You can improve process flow in a number of ways using Lean Six Sigma, including by reducing waste. The seven categories of waste are sometimes identified by the acronym Tim Wood:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>T</strong>ransportation: Moving materials and output unnecessarily.</li>\n<li><strong>I</strong>nventory: Overproduction resulting in too much work in progress or stock.</li>\n<li><strong>M</strong>otion: Inappropriate siting of teams or equipment.</li>\n<li><strong>W</strong>aiting: Equipment failure, for example, which causes delays.</li>\n<li><strong>O</strong>verprocessing: Performing unnecessary processing steps.</li>\n<li><strong>O</strong>verproduction: Producing more stock or producing it earlier than needed.</li>\n<li><strong>D</strong>efects: Dealing with rework.</li>\n</ul>\n"}],"videoInfo":{"videoId":null,"name":null,"accountId":null,"playerId":null,"thumbnailUrl":null,"description":null,"uploadDate":null}},"sponsorship":{"sponsorshipPage":false,"backgroundImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"brandingLine":"","brandingLink":"","brandingLogo":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0},"sponsorAd":"","sponsorEbookTitle":"","sponsorEbookLink":"","sponsorEbookImage":{"src":null,"width":0,"height":0}},"primaryLearningPath":"Advance","lifeExpectancy":"Two 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Project Management Articles

Project managers have their own language: six sigma, agile, scrum, gantt, lean, sprint — all in the name of getting the job done. More than 300 articles can help you gain fluency, too.

Articles From Project Management

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Project Management Scrum For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 10-26-2022

Scrum ensures transparency, inspection, and adaptation to enable a focus on continuous improvement, scope flexibility, team input, and delivering quality products. Scrum aligns with the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, which focus on people, communications, the product, and flexibility. This Cheat Sheet outlines the main principles of the scrum project management method.

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Project Management How to Construct and Interpret a Multi-Vari Chart for a Six Sigma Initiative

Article / Updated 09-16-2022

You don’t have to wait until your multi-vari data are collected to start creating the multi-vari chart for Six Sigma. Instead, you can build the chart, incrementally, adding more to it as you collect more data. Multi-vari charts can be drawn by hand; in fact, the process operators themselves can create them, providing those folks with a critical opportunity to invest themselves in the discovery of the root cause and the development of the solution. A multi-vari chart looks pretty much like any other two-axis plot, with time moving from left to right on the horizontal axis and the measured process output metric plotted against the vertical axis. The multiple measurements of each unit are plotted together. Consecutive unit groupings move from left to right over time. A break in the horizontal progression of the chart indicates a temporal break in the process sampling. The multiple measurements taken on each unit are plotted as circles. A slightly modified circle designates the first, second, and third within-unit measurements. A solid line connects the multiple measurements within each unit and graphically indicates the magnitude of variation originating within each unit — the variation contribution from positional factors. An average point is plotted for each unit grouping. These unit averages are drawn as squares. If the multi-vari chart is drawn by hand, this average can be estimated. The average isn’t the center point between the maximum and minimum unit measurements; instead, think of it as the “balance point” between all the unit measurements. A long-dashed line is drawn connecting the averages of consecutive unit groupings measured. The up-and-down variation of this connecting line indicates the magnitude of variation between units, or the contribution of cyclical variation factors. A mark is plotted to show the overall average of the set of consecutive units measured. A short-dashed connecting line is drawn between the overall average points. The up-and-down variation of this connecting line indicates the magnitude of the variation between long breaks in time, or the contribution of temporal variation factors. Vertical lines are drawn along the horizontal axis to indicate the end of one temporal set of measurements and the beginning of the next. Each vertical divider embodies a relatively long duration of unmeasured process execution time. The sampling pattern repeats itself for three temporal occurrences. A typical multi-vari chart would continue for more temporal occurrences, always until enough process data are captured to match the historical levels of variation known to exist in the process. Each temporal occurrence contains the measurements of three consecutive units. Each cycle should contain at least three consecutive units, but up to five or six may be necessary. Each unit consists of three measurements of the same process characteristic. As with the temporal occurrences, having up to five or six measurements is sometimes useful. Interpreting a multi-vari chart To determine which category of input variable drives the performance of your process output, all you have to do is graphically decide which of the three types of variation — positional, cyclical, or temporal — displays the greatest magnitude of variation in your multi-vari chart. You can compare the variation types by homing in on each one separately. The vertical range of the positional variation — indicated by the height of the gray boxes— graphically depicts the magnitude of the process variation stemming from positional input factors. The vertical range between the unit averages — indicated by the height of the gray boxes — graphically depicts the magnitude of variation coming from cyclical factors. The vertical range between the temporal averages — shown again by the height of the gray box — graphically highlights the magnitude of the variation coming from temporal factors. Temporal factors are those that only change their input value across larger gaps of time but not within single units and not between consecutive units. You can see that the vertical magnitude of the cyclical variation exceeds that for the positional or temporal categories. That result is the voice of the process telling you that the real root cause of your process performance is associated with some factor whose input value changes between production or creation of consecutive units. The multi-vari chart proves that all other factors that change input value within single units or change input value over longer times don’t exert a significant influence on the performance of the process.

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Project Management How to Avoid Common Project Management Pitfalls

Article / Updated 08-19-2022

The pressure of having to complete a project with little time and few resources often causes people to cut corners and ignore certain issues that can significantly affect a project's chances for success. Avoid the following common pitfalls and instead address the issues early in the project to help reduce their possible negative impacts: Framing vague project objectives: Project objectives are the results that must be achieved if the project is to be successful. The more specific the objectives, the easier it'll be for you to estimate the time and resources required to achieve them and the easier it'll be for you and your audiences to confirm they have been met.Be sure to include measures (the characteristics of an objective you'll use to decide if it has been achieved) and specifications (the values of the measures that you believe confirm that you have successfully achieved your objectives). Overlooking key audiences: Be sure to determine your project's drivers (those people who define what your project must achieve to be successful) and its supporters (the people who make it possible for you to accomplish your desired project's objectives). Important drivers who often get overlooked are the ultimate end users of your project's products. Failing to document assumptions: People almost always make assumptions regarding their projects; however, they often fail to write them down because they figure everyone else is making the same ones. Documenting your assumptions allows you to confirm that all people are operating under the same set of assumptions and reminds you periodically to check whether project assumptions have been confirmed and new ones have been made. Backing in to project schedules: Backing in to a project schedule entails trying to determine the time and resources you feel would enable you to achieve project success while ignoring the question of how likely it is that you'll be able to get the required amounts of time and resources.Instead of backing in, consider the time and resources that you realistically feel you would be able to secure and to explore different ways of using them to increase your chances of being able to successfully complete your project. Not getting key commitments in writing: Not putting commitments in writing increases the chances that what people intended to commit to was different from what you thought they did commit to. In addition to increasing the accuracy of communication, writing down commitments helps those who made them to remember them and encourages people to modify the written statements when necessary. Failing to keep the plan up-to-date: If a project is being run correctly, you and your team members should frequently consult the most current version of the project plan to confirm what each team member hast to do to produce the intended results. Not keeping the plan up-to-date means you have no reference explaining what people should be doing to successfully perform the required project work. It also suggests that adhering to the most recent version of the project plan isn't really that important, a belief that significantly reduces the chances of project success. Not having formal change control: Failing to follow a formal process for evaluating the effect of project changes increases the likelihood that important consequences of those requested changes will be overlooked when assessing the potential effects of those changes. In addition, it makes it more likely that some of the people who will be affected by the changes may not receive timely and accurate information about what those effects may be. Not communicating effectively: Problematic communications increase the chances that people will work with different information when performing project tasks, as well as decrease team morale and commitment to overall project success.

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Project Management PRINCE2 For Dummies Cheat Sheet (UK Edition)

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-10-2022

PRINCE2 is an essential project management method, helping users organise, manage and direct their projects to time and within budget. This Cheat Sheet presents you with a few tips and wrinkles to get the best from PRINCE2.

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Project Management Project 2019 For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

Project 2019, the most recent incarnation of Microsoft’s popular project management software, offers a tremendous wealth of functionality. Microsoft Project 2019 however, probably isn’t like any other software you’ve ever used, so mastering it can seem a daunting process. This Cheat Sheet provides you with tips and tricks for doing what you do every day as a project manager.

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Project Management Project Management All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-22-2022

Successful organizations create projects that produce desired results in established time frames with assigned resources. As a result, businesses are increasingly driven to find project managers who can excel in this type of work environment. To get started in project management, you should understand the phases of a project’s life cycle, processes involved in project management, and the basic tasks you’re expected to perform.

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Project Management Lean For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-18-2022

To understand how to apply Lean in any organization, you should know the basics: the principles, the definitions of value and waste, how to lead effectively, and how to define and improve the value stream. You should also be aware of how a Lean leader thinks and acts.

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Project Management Project Management For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-17-2022

Because of the ever-growing array of huge, complex, and technically challenging projects in today's world, effective project managers are in higher demand than ever before. People need the tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their project management assignments, such as confirming a project's justification, developing project objectives and schedules, maintaining commitment for a project, holding people accountable, and avoiding common project pitfalls.

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Project Management Six Sigma For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-14-2022

To apply Six Sigma to your business and produce the best results, you need to understand what Six Sigma is, the principles of Six Sigma, and the DMAIC problem-solving method. The correct tools and use of the Six Sigma scale and methods will keep your data dependable and reusable.

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Project Management Lean Six Sigma For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-22-2021

Are you ready to adopt the proven methods of Lean Six Sigma to improve business performance and make your teams more productive? Remind yourself of the key principles of this powerful strategy so that your business runs smoothly and efficiently.

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