Ben, Black Belt in waiting, sends a "entertaining, and thought-provoking" article from the fine iSixSigma site To BB Or Not To BB?. A sample, from the "Not To BB" list,
"1. The work pace won't slow down. On the contrary, you'll probably be putting in 50+ hours a week and wishing more were available. This is not a way to escape from your hectic job, or to hide out until retirement."
I have to admit I have trepidation about moving from Green Belt to Black Belt, with the project management and statistic emphasis as well as the managing multiple projects aspect. Does BB and 2 elementary kids at home mix?
The identification of Roles and Responsibilities for a business process, a very critical step in any process improvement methodology, begins early on in the Define phase of the Six Sigma methodology when the Project Charter is being drafted and the Project Stakeholders are being identified. And it carries all the way through to the concluding Control Phase, when process documentation and other assets needed to Control (Monitor) the process are being developed and diseminated into the organization. Being able to see where you can postitively impact the end of a process improvement project with some smart work up from seems like something worth writing down.
It seems like a good technique to use when doing the early brainstorming of Project Stakeholders would be to categorize them into Process Stakeholders and Project Stakeholders. Process Stakeholders would be the list of 'Roles' that are involved in the process, while Project Stakeholder mostly would have a stake in the successful completion and tracking of the process management / improvement project. At this point, validate these Roles against the enterprise list of Roles to make sure all is copious with your architecture...if there are any descrepancies or changes that need to be made in these enterprise Roles or their definitions, see if this will be something the project itself will further define or whether you can suggest an immediate 'quick win' to update the enterprise Role list.
Back into our Define phase, the list of Process Stakeholders (Roles) would then be the 'seed' of brainstorming on the process' Suppliers and Customers, which are critical elements of the first process detail diagram in Six Sigma, the SIPOC. I would think that the SIPOC would contain all those Process Stakeholders in either or both Supplier / Customer columns. Any additional Roles in the process that were discovered during SIPOC development would be added to both the SIPOC and to an updated Project Charter's Stakeholder list.
Futher detailing of sub-process maps below the SIPOC level would then begin to associate the more detailed process activities to one of the Supplier / Customer Roles, building the list of the Responsibilities for each of the Roles. And there you have it...Roles & Responsibilities...start to finish...spend time up front!
101 Things a Six Sigma Black Belt Should Know: Why couldn't it just be a top-10 list?!
Also, I just viewed a webinar on How Six Sigma Techniques Can Improve HR Processes and it's available (after a free registration) to anyone.
http://www.peopleclick.com/knowledge/webinar/051705.asp
There is quite a bit of introductory information regarding Six Sigma, but it might give HR folks some idea how their peers are viewing Six Sigma (there are several surveys during the webinar) and I came away with a couple of points:
Q: How to measure Quality of Hire?
A: There was a suggestion that Quality of Hire could be measured 60 to 90 days after hire, with a survey to the Hiring Manager with the following questions:
* Did the hire meet / exceed / not your expectations?
* Did the hire meet / exceed / not the skill set needed for the job they were hired for?
Q:How many approvers are needed for requisitions and offers?
A: SOX compliance indicates that 2 levels are required and that these are not able to be changed (I didn't understand the last part of that answer at all).