R Rajesh - Benchmark Six Sigma Forum (2025)

Cobra Effect

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Cobra Effect refers to a situation where a solution to a problem makes the problem worse due to its unintended consequences. The Origin of the term 'Cobra effect' can be seen in wikipedia. It says that as a Perverse incentive in economics parlour Cobra Effect impacting businesses Lets take a Sport example as a business: [Justification of Sport as a business: Everything we do is a business and Sport is also a business at the end of the day.. Without any commercial benefits, no sport event will be deemed as a success (with success criteria like no.of viewers watched, the no.of sponsors, type of sponsors and so on) ] Example 1: Let us take the Cobra Effect for the proposal of having a Two-Tier system in Test Cricket(Cricket is a popular sport in terms of Fan following, behind Football): Background: Recently few of the international cricket commentators, after seeing the impressive crowd gathering/TV/Online viewership for the Test Matches that were played across different venues in a country between two popular Cricket nations, suggested that there could be a two-tier division of test teams, similar to what is there in major Football leagues across the world. Reason for the new proposal: The Viewership (be it TV, Online or in-person at the stadium) of Test Cricket has diminished over a period of time due to the advent of T20 cricket (a shortened version of 20 overs) which suits well with the current generation of cricket fans, fitting into the fast modern world.. As a result, the international Cricket committee (ICC), decided various ways to improve Test Cricket and make it global and big. To make it globally attractive, they decided to have a world test championship cycle (WTC) where 2 teams will meet in a Final and the winner will be declared as the World Test Champion Currently there is a 2 year World Test Championship cycle that happens and every team plays some matches with some teams. There is a point-system where a team gets certain points for a win, no points for a loss and shared points for a draw (which is neither winning nor losing or have equal scores by both teams - draw is a kind of stalemate). What happens is that when big teams (3 countries dominate in terms of revenue, crowd pulling, sponsors, viewership, talent-wise...) play each other, there is more viewership(both Online and Stadium presence) and the game is very interesting and absorbing. There is a thrill to the game as equally(talent-wise) matched teams play to strive for a result (even draws sometimes get nerve-wracking for the players & spectators alike). However , when these 3 big teams play rest of the other teams, then more often than not those games do not entertain much viewership (be Online media/In-person) and do not generate much revenue for the sponsors. For inclusivity of all Test Playing nations, the ICC is obliged to ensure that every planned test match between the various teams/nations happen on the scheduled dates, even if they know that there may not be much viewership and sponsors would not get enough revenue from those matches. Solution : To mitigate this, some seasoned commentators suggested a proposal where there will be a two-tier system. In Tier 1 - The existing big teams would be part of Tier 1 and would play with each other more frequently so that there is more interest sustained in Test Cricket. When top teams play with each other, more crowd will be pulled to the stadiums and more online/TV viewership resulting all stakeholders getting happy as revenue gets generated with ease. Tier 2 - Teams in this group will vie for a place in the top tier (tier 1).. The team that comes on top here might replace the team that remains at the bottom in tier 1, which is akin to what we see in major football leagues across the globe. The intent of this solution is to ensure that Test cricket does not loose its sheen Now the Cobra Effect: The WTC came into effect because the advent of T20 cricket was already impacting Test Cricket and ICC wanted to spread the game of Cricket and Test Cricket in particular (its primary to survival of Cricket as a game) ensured every Test cricket playing nation plays test cricket on a routine basis . By introducing this Two-Tier format in Test Cricket, ICC will prevent the dream of less-privileged Test cricket playing countries to rub shoulders with the best Test cricket playing teams. Unless these less privileged test teams play against the better teams there will be no improvement for these teams.. Also there could be a situation where one of today's big teams could be at the bottom of the tier 1 rung and that could be means they would be demoted to tier 2. If that happens what would happen to Viewrship, Sponsors and all those things.. How would that impact the team? It can be catastrophic Therefore the unintended consequences are - 1. Depriving the rest of the teams an equal chance to improve their game (defeating ICC's original intention to spread and popularize Test cricket) 2. What if one of the current Big teams (which shape most of the ICC decisions because ICC revenues are predominatly achieved via matched involved through these teams) gets demoted to tier 2, over a period of time and which results in poor viewership (Online/TV/In-person) and generates lesser revenue - The possibility of which can happen pretty much.. This will also lead to Cricket fans disinterested and move towards other Sports. This has happened in the past in the early 1990s for one great Test playing nation and fans moved towards athletics and basketball.. Eg 1 Conclusion: This Cobra effect in this case, therefore defeats the purpose of ICC which is to spread and popularize the game of Test Cricket. Let us see the Cobra Effect in Industries: In an IT industry, a customer organisation wanted its service provider to provide (or show) some metrics related to agile way of delivery for its ```Note Velocity is the total amount of work completed by the team, in a timeboxed period called iteration in agile parlour and usually measured in Story Points unit, which is just an arbitrary number] . Based on velocity, team members of an IT project running through agile can forecast their subsequent iterations (also called as Sprint in scrum). But in this case what happened was different.. Let us see that The unintended consequences or Cobra Effect The Servicing providing organization used the Velocity metric for capturing the team's completed work, in terms of Story points (a popular measuring unit) But the Customer treated the Velocity metric as a production metric and decided to go about in measuring how much work was completed by each team member within the team. Eg: Conclusion As you can see here, the servicing providing organisation wanted Velocity to be used as a metric whereas the customer used that metric, as production metric and started measuring individual performances which can make the employees feel that they are micromanaged Lets take Banking industry with an hypothetical example There is a modernization of applications going on a bank. The IT team is overhauling the entire ecosystem. The technologies are changing and everywhere there is a technology change. The bank decides to have Gen AI :as part of their modernization program to help seamlessly do millions of transactions in an effective and simple means . The unintended consequences: Gen AI is there as part of the modernization program. Due to poor security (here it means having easy access to necessary & critical documents) contract provided for the applications, these are creating security breaches and which makes end-user(customer) escalation, reputation loss, loss of sensitive data.. Banking Conclusion: Therefore while bringing Gen AI to the Bank application, was supposed to help the applications., getting the Gen AI for work however threw compliance issue and other open challenges In Genera, how to avoid the Cobra Effect in improve phase of the project 1. Understand why it is having Cobra Effect (actually root cause analysis in Analysis phase) but substantiate those findings in this phase 2. Brainstorms with various key stakeholders to discuss on various solutions with meaningful insights. Also discuss on Pros and Cons of each solution. Evaluate multiple solutions (set-based design) 3. Conduct risk analysis for each of the solution to ensure that the best possible solution can be given and do this post implementation as well to see how it works 4. Start with a small implementation of the solution and then as results turn positive , go big. Keep relevant metrics and monitor as how things shape and if all goes well, keep that going Conclusion: Every now and then, 'Cobra effect' will spear its head in all forms of businesses and industries. When such a thing happens, IMHO, the first and foremost thing is draw a map between the stated and unstated needs of the customer vs what was done and how it was done.. From there, go for the root causes. This will help us to quickly identify what was the issue and accelerate towards customer needs.. A similar thing to Cobra Effect that i could think of , is Kano model's Reverse state - the service provider may feel that something(feature/service) is good for the end-user(actual customer) but the actual customer may not like it

Ensemble Methods

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Ensemble Definition: Per Cambridge Dictionary, Ensemble means a group of people or things that are acting or taken together as a whole In the context of Data analytics, ensemble methods are techniques that create multiple models and then combine them to provide a more accurate and robust final prediction How do ensemble methods improve the prediction accuracy and robustness of data analysis 1. By bringing multiple models into play, which reduces mistakes created by a single model 2. By clubbing multiple models, different patterns are obtained resulting in a balanced prediction Advantages of using Ensemble methods 1. More Accurate 2. Robust Prediction 3. Can be applied in diverse areas Limitations of Using Ensemble methods 1. It can be complex - computational wise and cost wise 2. Resource intensive exercise as it requires multiple models to be trained and deployed 3. Fewer/Lesser gains - Doing this need not necessarily guarantee expected results Conclusion: Ensemble methods are good to have provided if you feel it provides a good ROI as it can be cost and computational intensive References 1. (Ensemble Definition) : https://datasciencedojo.com/blog/ensemble-methods-in-machine-learning/ 2. GPT for conceptual awareness

Data Preprocessing

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Data preprocessing is a key step for preparing raw data for analysis. It can be also be a key factor for machine learning as well Why Data Preprocessing is it important? It can help in cleansing data, improve quality, data consistency,provides accurate statistical analysis,provides better data visualization,reduces bias and errors Without the correct/accurate data , we may not have better insights, and hence decision-making will be a challenge and therefore we may not achieve the right results Typical Things that can be checked in 1. Data Quality 2.Missing data 3.Data Standardization 4.Computational Complexity Reduction 5. Enablement of Insights Accuracy Tools that can help us in speeding up the preprocessing: There are a plethora of tools that can be used for various aspects of data preprocessing but puttting out some popular tools (used across industries) such as Talend, Informatica,Hadoop,Spark, Google Sheets, Ms Excel sheets, Tableau, Power BI - These are some of the tools that can expedite in data preprocessing References: ChatGPT for better a nuanced understanding of the importance

Summary of Continuous Data

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Reason for ignoring Measure of dispersion 1. The first and foremost reason I could think of is because of our natural awareness of mean and median (taught as part of your elementary mathematics in school days) and coupled with the fact that it is easy to calculate both mean and median 2. Awareness on Standard deviation and Range is relatively low for people in general (even though they might have learnt in their high school education) and these terms are usually known for people who are associated with any statistical related work or who show passion in statistical concepts or so. An additional pointer for a statistically aware person is that Standard Deviation can be lesser sensitive to outliers when compared with mean, Range is highly sensitive to outliers. 3. People are just focused on the representative value around which the data clusters and does not bother about the variability involved in that (lack of awareness is the key as they are not aware of how important that variability factor is). Impact in decision making: Ignoring the measure of dispersion can result in not understanding 1). the variability or the actual spread of the data 2). the outliers that exist in the given dataset Example 1: Let us try to see these impact with an example. We are considering here about how the data looks for a cricket bowler for just a small sample of 20 test matches (pls refer to the attached excel sheet). We want to see how the bowler's performance is over this period of 20 test matches.. As you can see the bowler's performance is good in the beginning of his/her career and then in the middle period, it is not looking good .. But in the latest matches that the bowler has played, it shows the bowler has taken good no. of wickets.. So barring the first and last few matches, the bowler has not performed well as shown by the mean which says for every match, the bowler is taking 4 wickets. So with mean , it is sensitive to outliers. If you look to the median, it shows the value as 2 which means it is not taking those few first and last matches where the bowler has taken more wickets... Now if we look at the holistic view of the bowler's performance in all the matches played, there is a lot of inconsistency (variability) in the middle phase for the bowler that is not captured by mean but Standard deviation shows the value as 3.77. Even as this does not seem to be a significant difference when compared with the value of 4 (for mean) in this case, this gets drastically changed when the bowler performs well in some of the middle phase matches [changing values, say in few rows (from any of the rows - 9 to 20) in column D&E in the excel sheet can see a drastic change in the difference between mean and Standard Deviation values]. As we see here, mean is much sensitive to outliers and does not portray the true picture. Standrd deviation is relatively lesser sensitive to outliers and shows the variability. Example 2: If we are to find the month in which the peak & least sales of cars were sold for a car dealer (for a particular brand of car), using the Range can help us get the data easily. By ignoring this measure of dispersion(which is highly sensitive to outliers), we will loose the ability to get this data in an easy manner

Using LLM for Statistical Analysis

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

I have put the below data like this in an excel sheet and compared the respective datasets using ChatGPT. It threw 2 comparisons. Comparison 1 said there is inconsistency in units for measuring these factors. Comparison 2 said that each of the factors can be having specific unit. Some pitfalls that I see here: 1. The comparison 2 (option 2) suggested that the unit for the value ‘80’ could be ‘cm’(centimetres) and 174 as ‘Kg’. Actually it(80) was a misplaced value that was supposed to be under ‘Weight’ but the comparison was on the unit measured. ChatGPT tried to identify unit discrepancies but did not think of whether it could be a misplaced value of two columns!! So I feel reasoning ability might be one challenge 2. Over-reliance on patterns – I guess based on pattern matching only the comparison amongst the 2 datasets should have happened earlier. I guess sometimes this may not yield the right outcome. Conclusion: ChatGPT requires lot of existing data, pre-trained knowledge, pattern matching to be successful in its usage.. In this case, either pattern matching or pre-trained data was probably incorrect as a result of which it suggested to unit (both height and weight were mentioned as arbitrary numbers) specificality or discrepancy whereas it was actually the values of height and weight that were interchanged in the original file.. Considering the values on both the columns, ChatGPT could have analysed the values and think of if there can be of such non-normal height and weight. Therefore, these are the findings with my limited LLM knowledge

Force-Field Analysis

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

The answer depends on the context in which this is being looked at. Ex1: Let us see with some examples: Imagine you are a leader in an IT organization and your organization is moving from traditional waterfall model to Agile Way of Working. You are entrusted with the job of making the transformation. You have experienced personally how waterfall worked and know its shortcomings. You also have a good idea about how agile can work.. Knowing the Driving forces: Imagine you have identified the Driving Forces for doing this transformation and put them as Mindset change, collaborative culture, human-centric approach, collective intelligence, incremental and iterative Delivery, Engineering Practices, customer satisfaction and so on.. Now imagine there are some disgruntled staffs in your organization who want the traditional waterfall model to be continued at any cost. Knowing the restraining Forces: Let us consider that you found the restraining Forces for this transformation. They are : Perceived threat of loosing hierarchy/seniority/respect, used to command and control mindset, does not like to get with others and so on... Ex1 Conclusion: In a changing world, where business requirements need to be addressed at the earliest possible time (so that you can get benefitted), as a leader you would want the Driving Forces to be implemented Ex:2 Let us take another example with the sport of Cricket.. Many international Cricket commentators condemn IPL Cricket while Cricket fans adore IPL. If you are chairman of the BCCI what decision will you take Driving Forces (as a hypothetical view): 1. IPL (scouting) provides a view of the raw Cricketing Talent that is available in the world and in India particularly 2. IPL has become a career for many Indian players(speciality T20 player) 3. Playing IPL makes a cricketer richer which ensures better livelihood 4. IPL ensures that Indian players are rubbing shoulders with international players and hence uplifting their playing standards 5. IPL gives a platform for a team's players to know each other's culture and provided a collaborative team culture Restraining Forces(as a hypothetical view): 1. IPL is being played on flat tracks. This is not helping Indian players to play on different kind of wickets especially in TEST cricket 2. IPL is cash riched and hence players tend to loose their contract with their national team and prioritize IPL over National team selection for TEST cricket 3. IPL is having so much workload as there is lot of movement of the teams from venues to venues and so many matches that players get injured resulting in them missing key international matches and tournament. 4. IPL commitments clashes with international tournament matches or bilateral series. The priority of the players may tend to get misplaced 5. Influence of IPL is impacting the overall schedule of ICC sponsored cricketing events and also it is influencing the TEST match Cricket is played Ex2 Conclusion: For ensuring that the welfare of the players, maintaining the ICC commitments and schedule and for ensuring the TEST cricket is not loosing it's relevance, as the chairman(leader) you may want to discontinue this IPL. Remember the fact that with IPL, the system has unearthed many a talent globally and has improved the lifestyle of many a players and also improved the confidence of Indian players facing adversity (chasing tall scores at lights with so much crowd pressure) which has helped them to succeed at international level.. So as a leader you may want to think of the Driving forces as well and see if you can take the best of these Forces and see if you can tweak the IPL by making some amendments like ensuring it is done in a calendar where international cricketing assignments are less, Priority for TEST cricket to be given, getting NOC, not to skip any first class matches.... Conclusion: Whether we choose Driving Forces or Restraining Forces depend on the context in which we are in. As we saw on examples Ex1 and Ex2, it can be based on Driving Forces(Ex1) and it can be based out of Restrainig Forces (Ex2) or it can be a variation of these 2 Forces as well(Ex2) by doing some tweaking.

The Paradox of Excellence

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Definition of 'Excellence' : As per Oxford dictionary the meaning is "Quality of being very good" Definition of Paradox: A Cambridge dictionary meaning of that is "Seeming impossible or difficult to understand because of containing two opposite facts or characteristics. What is about this "Paradox of Excellence": “The Paradox of Excellence”, is a book written by David Mosby and Michael Weissman. The general norm is that when an organization provides a superior performance/service to its customers, there is supposed to be a high customer loyalty and an increased brand value. But the reality often is different: The superior performance/service of the organization is taken for granted and undervalued by the marketplace. This makes the organization cold-faced many a times and can make their reputation damaged and can bring down their business to a loss as well Adverse Effects (due to the 'Paradox of Excellence' phenomenon) on the excellence journey of an Organization: 1. Customer (over)Expectation not met: Human beings go by beliefs. If an organization is providing consistently a good performance/service, people will go with that belief and expect that to be the same always, irrespective of the situation. Does it sound odd ? No. Think of Kano Model where "Delighters" category goes to Basic(Must have) expectation, over a period of time. For instance, you are being served a juice every 2 hrs on a flight from Chennai to San-Francisco journey, say on two occasions. Next time when you board the same flight operator, and go from Chennai to Dubai (which is probably say approx. 1/4th of the travel time to Chennai-San-Francisco distance) you would still expect multiple juices to be given to you!! That is because of the high expectation you had, as prior experience with the flight operator. There could be such experiences other passengers might have with that same flight operator. Not every time organizations can necessarily meet the customer expectations 2. Reputation Loss/Brand Image impacted: Understanding customer expectation is the key. If that is not understand then organization will have its brand/reputation impacted. An organization may not be even aware of the expectation that its customers have on it. That can be much more damaging. 3. Loss of Customer Confidence/Customer Dissatisfaction: Delaying to meet the customer expectation or not understanding that, can result in customer dissatisfaction and customer getting frustrated and loosing confidence and shying away from the organization's services/products 4. Potential Employee Disengagement: When employees are not engaged properly, there can be a slow but steady decline of performance/service degradation. Remedial Measures: 1. Retrospect: Do a retrospection as where the gap is and see if there is any trend if there are multiple feedbacks. Try to understand the nature of the problem and include right stakeholders to discuss on the issues observed. Come out with relevant action item(s) and implement them as per priority with a SMART approach 2. Employee Engagement: A key stakeholder in any organization is people (the workforce) who can shape or make a product!! If employees can be satisfied, then every change is possible!! Happiness index of the employees is therefore a key metric for the success of an organization. Therefore getting the employee feedback/ideas/challenges.. can help in overcoming challenges. 3. Continuous Improvement: Finding ways to improve the existing product/processes that have helped in achieving the customer satisfaction(during the past). Experiment with some ideas, inspect if that works and adapt your system/process accordingly. Example: While telecasting Cricket, the technology got improved day-by-day and year-by-year. As more and more cameras got placed at various vantage points on the ground, the expectation amongst the fans(the 'customers' for the game) grew up for the technology to show right-decisions to help the standing umpires. There was a challenge when close run-outs and faint edges came into picture, which those cameras could not pick, in several cases. So the Cricket governing body (ICC) latched on to a new technology - Decision Referral System(DRS),that helped the third umpire to provide a more closer look and improved the right decisions on close runouts and faint edges. The expectation only increased from the customers(fans). Still few other challenges remained. Getting prompt LBW and how about hair-line decision of runouts. So, the ball tracking technology came to decide whether a batter is out or not. Then for hair-line runouts, as soon as a bail lifts from the stumps, the LED light would display. So these technologies ensured that right decisions always given to the maximum hilt. This is what the fans wanted!! With continuous improvement, the ICC has been able to address their customers' expectations and therefore sustain its performance/service. 4. Customer Feedback: 1. Getting feedback from customer after a service is done is always a good option to understand customer pain points, emotions, mindset 2. For Key customers, focused interviews, face-to-face meet.. can be better Having the customer feedback can provide great insights for the betterment of the service/performance provided by the organization, to its customers 5. Knowing USP: An organization has to see how it can further leverage its Unique Selling Proposition(USP). Accordingly it has to harness its strength. It also should try to see how to expand its business on that area to see if that can put a positive spin on addressing customer expectation. Conclusion: As a Six Sigma BB consultant, this can be a perfect situation to help an organization facing this sort of challenges. Understand the issues. Decide upon if the problem is perennial (if the organization is suffering for quite some time). If this current process/setup cannot be improved upon, then go for DMADV/DMADOV, Else DMAIC. As we seen, it is essential to understand the implicit and explicit expectations of the customers and address them at the earliest possible time to avoid the ignominy of not meeting customer expectation Reference: https://scottpublicrelations.com/the-paradox-of-excellence-high-performance-low-respect/

SIDDHESHWAR JANGID started following R Rajesh July 22, 2024

80/20 Rule

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto stated that 80% of the wealth of Italy was owned by 20% of the population of Italy. IMHO, this became such a hit that the thought leaders cutting across many industries, started applying this in a business context, as a rule and proclaimed that 80% of the issues/problems in their ecosystem, are created by 20% of the causes. The idea was not to proclaim the exact numbers or percentage. But to portray the fact that the majority of the issues/problems are created by few of the major causes. That's how the 80/20 rule is applied in the business context. Conclusion: In reality, this is how the pattern looks in a typical data distribution Reference Link: Wikipedia.org (for ascertaining the actual fact)

Specification Limits

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

I strongly believe there are exceptions to the belief that "Process Improvements do not result in a change in Specification limit". Let me explain this, with a couple of examples: Imagine a software team developing a product. The team is doing unit testing manually. Soon, the team decides to have automation testing and proceeds with that. This is certainly a Process Improvement that is happening because this will have - a reduced manual effort from the developer, quick identification of issues, easy repetitiveness of testing(all scenarios and with different set of data), improved development cycle time,etc.... As soon as there is an automation testing(Process Improvement) involved, the customer may talk about 'Code Coverage'. The customer might say that 'Code Coverage' should be 80-85% which is your customer specification limits for your 'Code Coverage'. As your automation process gets more mature, the customer might be forced to change it a more rigorous Specification limit say to >=95% (lower limit). Therefore it is possible that doing the Process Improvement can result in changing the Specification limits. Another Example with a different flavour that i want to highlight: Consider 'Definition of Done'(abbreviated as DOD) in a Scrum environment. DOD is akin to being a quality checklist. When a product backlog item (a simple explanation - that can capture a product requirement) is to be considered as 'Complete', it has to meet the DOD [For eg, in a software product development, the DOD may have steps that can be like say coding, peer-reviewing, unit testing, system and integration testing, pre-prod testing and deployment...] While the DOD is owned either by the Scrum team or by the organization that develops the product(service providers), the customer who also may be part of the Scrum Team(say a Product Owner) can have a say in the DOD. Now the steps in the DOD are like the Specification limits. Imagine(a hypothetical scenario) Now that you have a Continuous Integration process, which is usually capable of automating your process till your Code is put in the Quality Assurance(QA) environment(if there is one such environment or any environment where all kinds of testing can happen) where functional testers would be able to test your code and afterwards the code will be manually deployed to say a pre-production environment and tested and then it is manually deployed to Production. Assume the customer says that the Specification limit for deploying all product backlog items(chosen In a Sprint) is 3-5 days (1 week Sprint). Now after some time, the team gets matured process-wise and technolgy-wise and implements DevOps pipeline and exhibits CI-CD Process Improvement. They first do the Continuos Delivery part in the CD Section. Now the automation gets extended from QA environment till the pre-production environment. This is a Process Improvement from manual to automatic. Now the customer revises the Specification limit and set the limits to <=3 days. Now again the team works on the second part of CD section - Continuous Deployment. This will ensure the deployment from pre-production to Production automatic. The customer now again changes the Specification limits to <=1 day. Thus it becomes possible to change the Specification limits due to process Improvement Conclusion: We have seen with couple of examples that how it's also possible that making Process Improvements can result in a change of Specification limits.

Risk Priority Number

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

A RPN score of 1000 means that all the three parameters of Severity, Occurrence and Detection need to be at the maximum. That means a catastrophic failure of or on something has to happen, that cannot be detected or very difficult to detect and it will happen routinely. Imagine if this can happen in the current world with all the technology development and Infrastructure!! Let us try how things could have been in the past for some of the below scenarios, that probably could have their RPN as 1000 1. Volcano Eruption 2. Wars due to differing ideologies... 3. Viral diseases Let's take the example of Volcanic eruption. For Volcanic eruptions, people never knew when a Volcano would erupt. It was always a matter of running for dear life and staying out of sight till the Volcano subsided. Therefore major volcanoes that had a history of frequent eruption and that had the capability of inflicting heavy sorts of damage in any means, were a source for RPN, having a score of 1000. Now with the advent of modern technologies and infrastructure, we would be able to predict the volcanic eruption to a great extent. Because the eruptions can be predicted and tracked,the detection and occurrence are known and hence you may not get a score of 1000 Conclusion: As we saw here, with the advent of modern technologies and sophisticated Infrastructures, every problem/issue or challenge if put under a FMEA may not get a RPN score of 1000. The Severity of the issue may still be there. But the detection of the issue might be easy. or The Severity of the issue might get lowered than what it was. Thus I would conclude by saying IMHO, a RPN score of 1000 may not be possible

Importance of Lean concepts and principles in a transformation program

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's topic in General Discussions

Lean is a key and versatile approach in any transformation IMHO. Have seen in my experience as how Lean has helped organisations in saving effort, time and cost. Just to point out few examples, Lean principles and concepts play an important role in the agile world today. Scrum has rewritten it's framework (it says Scrum is based on Empiricism and Lean Thinking from being 'Empiricism based' in its previous version). Scrum is one of the most popular agile frameworks used by teams. The fundamental aspect of SAFe (one of the most popular scaled agile models at this point of time, used by many large enterprises) is Value Stream Mapping which focuses on waste reduction. SAFe 6.0 has more focus on Lean approach Therefore, every organization (irrespective of the industry that it belongs to) is making effective usage of Lean principles and ways of working.

darryl collins started following R Rajesh August 31, 2021

PEST Analysis

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

A PEST analysis brings together four environmental scanning perspectives which serve as useful input into an organization’s strategic planning process: Political: This looks at the political stability, war threats, tax related issues, regulatory issues,labour problems etc.,. Economic: This perspective looks at exchange rates, market conditions, inflation factors… Social: This focuses on health indices(factors), demographics, cultural aspects etc.,. Technological: This provides a view at newer technology developments, rate of technological change, technology cost impact etc.,. Eg1 : An Insurance company in USA makes a PEST analysis for implementing its changes in its product. Eg2: Let us see a hypothetical example. In lieu of the upcoming Olympics, a country’s Olympic committee wants to build an Olympic village which will have accommodations for athletes and several new stadiums for playing various sports / games. Let us see with a PEST analysis as how the committee would strategically plan. Conclusion: PEST analysis can be useful for an organisation, in any industry. It helps in providing a holistic approach to the strategy being devised by the organisation. Source: The CERTIFIED Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook (second edition) by T.M.Kubiak and Donald W.Benbow

Change Effectiveness Equation

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

What is Change Acceleration Process (CAP)? A change management framework with a set of tools to assess the political/strategic/cultural environment in an organisation and plan for action which can eventually decide how much success a change initiative can bring in within the existing operating boundaries. Backdrop (CAP Origin): Jack Welch understood the fact that his company GE was entering an era of constant change and realized the fact that those who adapt to the changes only will be able to survive. Therefore he wanted his team to acquire best practices on change management and come back with a tool kit that can be easy to implement in the organisation. The end result of the exercise was Change Acceleration Process (CAP) Change Effectiveness Equation Jack's team had studied innumerable projects and business initiatives and got quite a handful findings. One such finding was that having a high-quality technical strategy alone is not suffice for getting success. Lack of attention to things like cultural factors can deeply affect a project outcome. The team found this in a hard way. Many a project faced this. This was the time, when the team decided to bring in a formula(read equation) deemed as Change Effectiveness Equation. The equation is determined as follows Quality of the technical strategy * Acceptance of that strategy = Effectiveness of an initiative i.e. Q * A = E, where 'Q' represents Quality, 'A' represents Acceptance and 'E' represents Effectiveness This tells the fact that however superior be the quality of a technical strategy (solution), still it has to be accepted by the people who use or work on it. Else it(strategy/solution) is deemed as a failure which means that the benefit planned for that initiative through that technical strategy cannot be achieved. Let us now see how we can make the mindset change to ensure the 'Acceptance' factor (in the above equation) is obtained, with the help of the CAP model The CAP model This is a 7-step process 1. Leading Change 2. Creating a Shared Need 3. Shaping a vision 4. Mobilizing Commitment 5. Making change last 6. Monitoring process 7. Changing Systems and Structures Let us deeply dwelve on these steps involved in this model. 1. Leading Change - As the name says the leadership team in an organisation should be committed to any initiative being taken. Only with the explicit support and commitment from the leadership team(or management team if you want to call as per your organisation culture :-)) then an initiative can move flow through the hierarchy in the organisation. Otherwise it would be a failure 2. Creating a Shared Need People whom we (as a leader of the initiative) want them to be involved as part of the initiative and whom we think would be using the initiative should be agreeing to the need for this initiative. There has to be a justification as why we are going for a change. The reason for change has to be propagated across these stakeholders at a convenient pace. 3. Shaping a Vision There has to be a clear-cut agenda (vision) and that needs to be shared across and be properly understood by everyone.The resultant state should be observable and measurable in terms of individual behaviour. 4. Mobilizing Commitment After doing the aforementioned steps which includes the commitment from leadership team, your reason for putting this initiative with a proper vision, we try to leverage with an influential strategy to build momentum by roping in with some supporters(those who want to adopt our initiatives/thoughts) to pilot our initiative and then learn from the lessons that the pilot implementation teaches. Because we are dealing the initiatives with the 'supporters' or early adopters, the shortcomings from that pilot work is noted down with a tinge of acceptance (which can be later useful for improving the initiative or the implementation of that-wherever it is failing) 5. Making change last While steps 2,3 and 4 are for making us to adopt to new changes and accelerate towards that, starting from this step till the end step , its all about making the change persistent. Here we tend to take advantage of the gains that we got from our piloted implementations and take the learning and best practices into our wider rollout of our initiative. We get to know what is helping and impeding the initiative and how that can be overcome and also look out for how to integrate our initiative with other existing ones, wherever required 6. Monitoring Process How do we know the initiative that is being brought in newly is working or effective ? Well, there has to be a measurable mechanism for that. Set it up (Own it). Measure and celebrate when it becomes a success. In case it is not measuring upto the expectations, then we need to have the accountability for the lack of progress. 7.Changing Systems and Structures An initiative will make some kind of impact in a business process. When there is a change being made in the business because of this initiative it impacts also the supporting systems and structures, in which the business operates. Therefore, in order to make the initiative a successful one, we need to understand how the systems and the structures get influenced by the initiative. Otherwise, our initiative can become a failure. Let us see some examples of how implementing initiatives through CAP model resulted in unprecedented success 1. Streamlining of 'Continuous Integration' process in Software Development In one of the projects that i was aware of, there was a constant challenge. The developers were not regularly updating the changes that they made on the local workstation(machine). As a result of that, the developed codes grew in size and whenever the developers tried to push their code into the Source Code (version control system for maintaining the various versions of the developed code), there were so many code conflicts and this created software build failures.Moreover, the Continuous integration Server used on the project, Jenkins, provided several reports and it threw lot of coding standards errors Primarily and few critical performance(Memory) errors and all the errors varying from 'low' to 'high' category. The leadership team of the project was worried pretty much and did not have too much control on how to arrest this deteriorating situation at the earliest. Every day the issue was galloping as team kept on developing the code amidst the problems and the woes kept on increasing. Because this was running in managed services mode, the extent of the damage was not fully realized by the customers yet and as such there were no impact to the expected behaviour of the features, but it was a probable question of time that such a thing would happen . I Suggested this CAP approach to the person in charge of the project and it was done as follows and the rest was history :-) ... a. Leading Change: The Group Leader (GL) of the team unanimously agreed to this approach and was wholly committed to this. With the help of a Plasma Screen TV(big size-visible to the whole floor), he made sure that the Jenkins tool's code analysis report is displayed on it, thereby showing the coding standard errors & performance errors for all the files that are developed on a daily basis. This was a big shot in the arm for the initiative owner b. Creating a Shared Need: As the initiative owner (who is a process-savvy person) explained the nitty-gritty of this initiative to the GL, by explaining the proposed steps and how to achieve each one, the GL included the other stakeholders who will help the developers in shaping up this technical journey and all stakeholders such as Technical Architects, senior/key developers,Product Owners and Scrum Masters. The Senior/key developers took this to their respective teams. For implementing the initiative a team was formed with one Technical Architect, 2 developers and a Scrum Master... All of them volunteered themselves to do this activity, apart from their regular work. c. Shaping a vision: It had a straight-forward agenda 1. Improve the Continuous Integration process and ensure developers check in their codes into the version control system (GIT) on a daily basis 2. Minimize the coding standards(Primary) and few critical performance(memory) errors through proper usage of Static Code Analysis tool (which existed in the project but was not utilized effectively). For these 2 things to happen, it depended completely on the mindset of the developers. #1 required changing of the habits of the developers' day-to-day habits (as they have to do check-out or Pulling out of the latest code from GIT and then applying their changes on top of that pulled code and at the end of the day or at a logical point, they need to push or check-in their code into the GIT). #2 required that each developer integrate the static code analysis tool (which will help in proactively identifying coding standard errors and hence will prevent those errors from occurring while the code is compiled) on his/her own. So both these things required a mindset change in developers. These two things were measurable in terms of the number of code conflicts that each developer gets while trying to push or pull the code , in case of #1 and the number of coding standard errors/performance errors that is being thrown when the Jenkins report for code analysis runs for a developer's code (published through the giant plasma screen) in the case of #2. Note, in the case of #1, the more conflicts that a developer gets, the more likely is his/her delay in doing check-out / check-in and adhering to the continuous integration process. d. Mobilizing Commitment: The implementation team had tried to implement these things first in its own sphere of work and implemented it with a fair degree of success. It also identified that displaying the count of coding standards error/performance error for each of the files, along with the name of the developer who had worked on it , was not a great thing to do. Reason was that the report was producing the name based on whoever had worked last in a file. But that developer need not have produced the defect (because the file was there before this process got started and it was throwing all open errors.) So in some instances, the name displayed was not the actual developer who created the defect. This was a lesson learnt for the team. Nevertheless the team became optimistic of taking this initiative to the next level e. Making change last: The implementation team started to showcase the achievements made in the last one month since the initiative was started. It showcased to the senior/key developers first (with a separate session) on how the coding standards errors / performance errors got reduced because of the initiative. Then this was taken to the whole team and then explained in detail as how this can be done effectively. The performance expectation of this initiative was also explained succinctly. By having a proper Continuous Integration process, the team had reduced its build failures and because the software build was integrated with other automation tools like Selenium, all of those tools got regularly triggered. The test case results were also displayed on the big plasma screen f. Monitoring process: As every team in the project started to implement this and each developer started to inculcate this change in his/her DNA, the result was there to be seen in the dashboard created by the team and was very much visible in the giant plasma screen.The coding standards error was very much less and no performance errors and code conflicts were happening very rarely only. g. Changing Systems and Structures: The new codes being developed were not having any errors. But the old codes developed earlier (prior to this initiative start) had lots of errors and had there were too many file dependencies with other systems. So those files had a considerable chunk of code which had to be compliant with standards. Those files in this system and other systems had to be changed as well. The outcome was spectacular. All were changed in 3 months time and the quality of the system was really good in every aspect. The developers were happy to be part of this initiative. The icing on the cake was the CI process that the team had put in place (the team did create a pictorial view of what they had done) became the talk of the town in the entire vertical within the organisation. 2. Let me show another example of how CAP process was done in another project. Agile Transformation for a customer relationship: The projects were running in waterfall model and that had to be transformed to Agile model (Scrum framework). An agile Coach's service was sought to do this transformation. The GL, leading the change, was committed to this cause. The agile coached formed a program transformation vision and developed Key progress indicators (KPIS) which were measurable and also laid out short term and long term agendas as part of this transformation. This was communicated to all relevant stakeholders. The idea was to have transform one line of business (LOB) into the Agile way of working , taking one at a time and then replicate for the rest of the LOBs. Few teams were formed after enlightening them, on the Agile transformation journey. All skepticism and fears were promptly addressed and the teams started to feel the positive impact as development life cycles became short and the interaction within the team and the stakeholders were quick and spontaneous, which was a new thing for many as their earlier model did not have this luxury. This increased the confidence of the teams to reach out to customers and business stakeholders for any business query. As the development cycles were shorter in period, the number of releases to production increased and slowly that line of business started to run using the agile way. This success was achieved relatively quickly and now the management was confident of replicating this in other LOBs. This was replicated in other LOBs as well and in 6 months time, the transformation had been done completely. Because the team had moved to Agile way of working, the team had to change some of the supporting tools that it was using earlier. The requirements were earlier being tracked through word documents and stored in version control systems. But with the introduction of Agile. the team relinquished that and started to use JIRA tool. Suddenly all the huge documentation work that was lying in the existing model was gone and the team now had to do documentation only at a minimal level and the team started to use slack channels for communicating amongst its team members working across the globe rather than doing email communication. Overall this initiative changed the way how the teams thought about software development approach and this transformation was a massive success Benefits of CAP: 1. It shows a systematic approach to make a cultural change in an organisation 2. Because an initiative done through this approach mandates the explicit approval/ commitment of leadership/management team , it gives confidence to the employees that their effort on such an initiative will get the due recognition from the leadership/management and that can help in their career growth 3. A personal feel good factor can occur across the employees when the expected benefit is achieved and when their work gets recognised Conclusion: In real life, every problem that we need to address , we need to take the human factor into account. Every change (read initiative) that we do or plan to do should pass through that 'human' aspect successfully . Else it would be deemed as a failure. CAP model provides a systematic way of doing that. How strong is the leadership/management commitment to the initiative and how clear is our vision and shared need shapes the success of the initiative, to a greater extent. Better they are, better will be the outcome(success). For the sake of understanding more about change management frameworks, similar to CAP, there are other change management frameworks such as John Kotter's 8-step change model which is also akin to this in terms of the implementation steps and that is also pretty useful. References : https://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/change-acceleration-process-cap/, https://bvonderlinn.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/overview-of-ges-change-acceleration-process-cap/

9 Windows

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

A 9 Windows tool or technique is defined as a method for exploring issues and their potential impacts by examining the past, present, and future of a System and its Sub and Super systems. It is portrayed in the form of a 3*3 matrix and act as an idea creation tool. How does it work: As we saw in the definition, this explores the issues in the system and its associated Super or sub systems. So what each one means: a. System - The problem or the system in consideration b. Super System - The entity to which the system might be logically or physically connected to or can be correlated to c. Sub System - The constituents(components) of the system or things that could be part of (or associated with) the problem Purpose of the tool: This is akin to what we do in real life. Often we would be doing a self-retrospection after someone gave , say, a very good seminar on a particular topic. We might think "how i wish had done that well last week.This week it was ok and am confident of doing good in the future"... Same way what if something could have been done differently for an issue to get it addressed in the past and in the present and how to address that in the future.. This is what this tool will help you in achieving that Examples: Let us some examples attached here Example1: Nine Windows Matrix: Problem: Over the years, increased Cricket Bat dimensions (size) has given an undue advantage to batsmen Space/Time Past Present Future Super System Group(s) that decided the Cricket rules -Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Group(s) that influences the Cricket rules- Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the group that implements it - International Cricket Council(ICC) Group(s) that influences the Cricket rules - Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and International Cricket Council (ICC) – ICC Chief Executives committee , ICC Cricket Committee and Associates (Nations) representative committee System Cricket Bat’s impact in pre-80’s era . Batsmen by and large played with wood bats except for few Cricket Bat’s impact in Current Era since 1980s. Lot of batsmen used heavy bats than the stipulated guidelines Batsmen have to follow stringent guidelines as laid out by the Cricket rules Sub System Equipment –Wood usually (Willow wood, Kashmiri wood,…) but there was no specific restrictions (on the type of equipment to be used) till 1979 Bat Length - <=38 inches Bat Width <=4.25 inches Equipment – Willow wood usually and it should be made only in wood Bat Length - Can be bit higher than the usually designated length Bat Width - Can be bit higher than the usually designated length Bat Thickness - Can be bit higher than the usual thickness Equipment – Should be made only in wood Bat Length - <=38 inches Bat Width <=4.25 inches Bat Thickness <= 2.68 inches Bat Edge <= 1.6 inch Example2: Nine Windows Matrix: Problem: For office goers in big cities, precious time is lost due to Traffic snarls, on a daily basis Nine Windows Matrix: Space/Time Past Present Future Super System Limited Transportation Congested Transportation Robust Transportation System Less Vehicle population resulted in less traffic snarls Every day going to office takes time through own or company provided transport, due to heavy Traffic Seamless drive to office with minimal or no hassles. Sub System Less Vehicles Public Transport No special economic zones More Private Vehicles Rapid Urbanisation without adequate supporting infrastructure Clustered Special economic zones Encourage more public transport with good connectivity across places Provide good and sound infrastructure. Have Special Economic Zones in different parts of the city to de-congest traffic’ Encourage hi-fi innovative designs like Flying Car (make the infrastructure available for that) Benefits: 1. Transparency of the problem As we dissect the problem/issue across the systems and at various times using this exercise, we get a distinct representation of how a problem looks/looked like at any given point and what makes/made it to happen. 2. Inspection of the problem (RCA) As we get to know the issue on hand at the past, present and future, we try to see as why it happened, happens and think of how that (issue) can be prevented in the future. By getting to know the RCA or why the issue happened in the past or still happening in the present, we try to explore as what should be done to prevent it in the future. This exercise provides a systematic approach to resolve an issue which can be quite complex in nature and which is adaptive in nature(that which can vary over time) 3.Addressing (Attacking) the problem At each phase of time, we are putting the facts as what we had done, what we are doing and what will / should be we doing.. Based on the kind of solution that we are having at each phase of time(past, present,future), the solution for the subsequent phase gets shaped. The details of each phase might serve as a good input to the subsequent phase and can help (often it can act as a launching pad though not always necessarily) the solution providers to attack the problem with more vigour in the subsequent time phase 4. Continuous Improvement The result of #3 often means that you are improving your systems (with the implementation of those solutions) which is continuous. Thus, doing this exercise will more often than not, be, resulting in a continuous improvement of sorts. Conclusion: This is a wonderful tool/technique for idea generation and is often used in TRIZ, which itself is a powerful technique for problem solving. The technique uses a 3*3 matrix with the kind of systems involved in one axis and the time factor (past, present and future) in another axis and the objective is to see how an issue was/is/will be addressed. How these systems behave over a period of time is portrayed in this exercise, giving a good representation of that evolution References: https://asq.org/quality-resources/nine-windows . Nine Windows Matrix.doc

Merline NDEFO MATCHEME started following R Rajesh June 1, 2021

4-Eyes Principle

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

4-Eyes Principle : A generic definition says that it can be a rule/requirement/activity by which decisions/business transactions need approval from two individuals. Advantage of 4-Eyes Principle: 1. It gives the confidence that more than one person (atleast two persons) have gone through the activity(can be artifacts/processes or anything) 2. It gives all the stakeholders the comfort on the fact that it was addressed properly since different persons have vetted something 3. It improves the quality of the activity, which is being scrutinized/examined Let us see examples across various sectors Software: In Agile world, there is a technique called 'Pair Programming' which is , i would say a version of 4 eyes. Here, while one developer writes the code, the other does an inline review of the code (and provide valuable inputs) and both will take turns to do these two activities (Coding and reviewing). It has been proven that it improves quality by 150%. Sports: While doing the talent scouting (when looking for the right players to play for their team), often a sports team will take its coach/few key personnel might look for the right players and once they finalize, then the team mgmt (selection board) will take a second look and confirm (even if this happens to be a customary one) Appraisal System: In Many IT companies, this is a prevalent process. The performance of a person(appraisee) is appraised by two persons, the appraiser(immediate supervisor of the appraisee) and the reviewer(appraiser's supervisor). This is to ensure that the performance of the appraisee is rightly evaluated and ensure that no human bias/inadvertent mistake is introduced in the process. Other Examples: 1. How many times, we would have seen in banking or financial sectors with two persons holding key positions, who would verify the transactional details or artifacts and then provide their signatures!! 2. Take DevOps / Business Process Management(BPM) tools - You can see human intervention with machines just to ensure that if machine is treated as one pair of eyes, then human intervention as another. This happens especially in BPM tools thereby stressing on this 4-eye principle. Is this principle, a Value Add or Non Value Add : It depends on the context in which this is being used. As stated in above examples, there are many instances where this principle is a real value add. But there can be some cases where it can be a non-value add or value enablers. Let us see such scenarios. Imagine in an IT company, a product is being developed.The customer is unhappy with the quality of the code being written and that is impacting the performance of the product . The IT service providing company is trying to improve its code review process (which it sees as the root cause for the poor code quality). Earlier it had only a self-review by the developer. Now it is introducing 2 pair of reviews(or 4-eye) which means a self-review and followed by a peer-to-peer or a SME(Subject Matter Expert) review, which will be done by someone within the team. This way the IT company feels, can strengthen the code review process and thereby the product's code quality!! But with respect to the customer, this process improvement does not mean anything as it is internal to the IT company. All the customer needs is a qualitative product. Therefore from that point of view, this is a non value added activity for the customer, whereas this activity(4-eye principle for code review) becomes a value-enabling one for the IT company. So it is the context that decides which activity can be value add, non-value add and value enabler and from whose perspective (Whether the service provider or from customer point of view) also matters. Let us see the same case , with a twist.These are the early days for the project team. The team does not know how to fix this quality issue. The management ropes in a developer(from another team) for 2 weeks, who knows few static code analyser tools which can automatically check the coding standards and suggest best practices and the developer also has knowledge on some design patterns. He parts this knowledge to the team before he leaves. Now every developer does a self-review before he/she builds the code. As soon as the code is built, the static analysis tools get triggered and the developed code undergoes a code review (4-eye principle now enabled). The results are now produced. If there are errors, then the build process is stopped, else it proceeds and build is successfully done. Now the customer is willing to pay for this process because it automates the code review process and quality is built into the system. Where 4-eyes principle may not be more useful? Its practically difficult to use this principle in every situation/scenario. This is what i feel!! To point out a few, 1.It may not be as useful as it may be, where time is a constraint (Eg: When you want to do a hot fix for a production environment issue) 2.When the cost of doing this exercise is more than the expected benefit 3.If the outcome is not sensitive to anyone, why bother verifying with 2 persons Conclusion: 4-eyes principle is an excellent principle which will act as a deterrence for making mistakes, especially human errors.It can be used anywhere where the right outcome (precision, accuracy) is required to the maximum hilt. There can be cases where the use of 4-eyes principle can be a costly affair.But the benefits outweigh the costs in most of the cases. Though it may seem that with the advent of technology, the 4-eyes principle might have lost its sheen, a bit, its not the case. Still human presence is required to oversee the process improvements as we have not completely moved to AI technologies.Earlier , it used be 2 human beings as 2 pair of eyes(4-eyes), now it is a machine and human being (though technically it may not be called as 4-eye) and in the future it could be machine and machine !!