The Six Sigma Business Intelligence Product
Six Sigma is a statistical term that, in effect, translates as “near perfection.” A Six Sigma goal means the product is 99.9997% defect free (68% = 2 Sigma; 93% = 3 Sigma, 99.4%= 4 Sigma; 99.5%= 5 Sigma). Sigma means “standard deviation.” Standard deviation is a statistical term that describes how much variation exists in a set of data. Thus, we may set a goal of 3-second response time for a certain category of query. Striving for Six Sigma quality would mean that if we measure response time for 10,000 queries, we want to find that 9,997 of those queries would meet the goal of a response time of 3 seconds or less. (There are other aspects to the measurement process – i.e., short-term versus long-term variations in the data, etc. However, the basic principle is to strive for a near perfect product.)
There are a number of reasons to set a goal of near perfection for the business Intelligence product:
- Setting the goal high means striving to achieve excellence.
- The business intelligence end product is created from and comprised of a spiderweb of parts. The business intelligence product is only the end result that is seen by the customer. There are infrastructures, processes, and a myriad of “under the hood” systems that allow for the creation, management and presentation of that business intelligence product. Each of these underlying components may have defects that impact the final product. The quality of each of these parts and the resulting combination impact the quality of the business intelligence end product. Setting a Six Sigma goal of near perfection for each means that there can be a reasonable expectation for the highest quality of the end product.
- Business intelligence is of critical importance to the organization. The inherent quality of the business intelligence product can dramatically impact the success of the organization.
Tags: Balanced Scorecards, Business Intelligence, frameworks, Six Sigma
