ISACA COBIT 5 – Define (BOK IV) Part 7

17. Project Managament Tools – WBS (BOK IV.C.3)

So after talking about the Gantt chart, the toll gate reviews, now let’s talk about the third tool here. The third tool here is WBS or work breakdown structure. Work breakdown structure is a very common tool when you are doing a big project. A big project, not only the Six Sigma project, the project such as a refinery or such as a power project or a building.

So there whatever work is to be done is divided into smaller work. So suppose you have a complex of number of buildings, so that you need to break down into smaller pieces, smaller workable pieces or the work packages. So how do you divide that? Work is you have your main project here. So that’s your complex, this is your building complex. Under that you can have a number of buildings. So let’s say if there are five buildings in that complex, so this will be building number one, building number one, building number two, and this will be building number five. And in each building there is a civil work, there is an electrical work, there is an air conditioning work.

So all those works are again subdivided here. So in building number one, let’s say there will be some civil work, then there will be some electrical work, and then there will be some air conditioning work. In civil work also you will have something like a foundation, then you have something like walls, then you will have a roof. So what you have done here is you have broken down a big thing into smaller work packages. So these things at the bottom are work packages, work packages which are given to different contractors. Different people are assigned to that, they can take care of that. So one person would be looking at foundation, one person would be looking at the walls, another one at the roof.

Or these might have a different contractors or whatever you want to do. But the only thing is a big multi building complex has be n broken down into number of small workable pieces which are known as work packages. This is exactly what you do in case of your Six Sigma project, also when your project is complex. So let’s say we have an example of weld repair rate.

And if in your scope you had the number of facilities, then let’s say you were supposed to do weld repair rate calculation. Now weld repair rate calculation. This would be in facility number one or a factory number one. This would be factory number two, factory number three, and in factory number one. Also you might want to have a separate calculation for carbon steel and separate calculation for steeler steel, whether they’re difference between carbon steel and stainless steel and so on.

So what you have done is you have broken down your big scope into smaller pieces and you can assign each of these small pieces or the bottom level thing, which are work packages, to different individuals in your team. So that’s how work. Breakdown. Structure works.

18. Project Managament Tools – RACI (BOK IV.C.4)

Hey, welcome back. Coming to this fourth project management tool which is Racy model. And what is racy? Racy. Stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. What is that? How is that useful for your Six Sigma project? Let’s look at that on the next slide. So when you say Racy, and we earlier talked that in Racy, R is for responsible, a is for accountable, c is for consulted and I is for informed. So what you have in Racy is you have number of activities in your project. Each activity is to be assigned to someone. Someone has to be responsible for an activity. And that’s what you do here. You basically break down each activity and assign roles and responsibilities related to that activity. So let’s understand these roles first. And when we say responsible, responsible is a person who does the work to achieve the task. You might get some sort of a question in exam or you might have something in your actual work life. Also a Racy chart where you have an activity and you don’t have an R against that or a responsible person against that. That is something which is not acceptable.

You cannot have any activity in the Racy matrix where you don’t have a person responsible for that. If there is no person responsible for that, then who is going to do that activity? So you need to have one person responsible for every activity. And then once it comes to accountable, accountable is the person who is ultimately answerable to this task. Accountable person might not be actually doing that job. So this fellow might be the general manager of the plant who is overall responsible for that activity. It’s the responsible person who is supposed to get that thing done. Accountable has overall accountability of that activity.

C is consulted where for some activity if you need to consult someone that is mentioned as a C. And informed is something where you need to inform someone. You just need to inform someone. And this is one way communication. So you can have an activity where you don’t have a C consulted or you don’t have I informed, that’s fine. But you cannot have any activity where you don’t have a responsible person or an accountable person. Accountable person will be one. Responsible could be more than one, preferably one, one person responsible for that. But there could be more person responsible. That’s fine. But accountable will be a single person.

But then there has to be at least one responsible and one accountable person for each activity. Let’s look at a Racy chart on the next slide and probably that will give you a much better understanding. So let’s move on to the next slide to have a look at how a Racy matrix looks like. So here I have a racy chart. And this Racy chart was created using Microsoft Axel built in template. So this was Ms Axel 2013 and this template is built into that so you can go open this Racy matrix and then you can put all the activities here. So you have activity one, two, three here. And then for activity one or the step number one, these are people, entity one, entity two are people here. You can put the name of person or you can put the designation of the person you can put here.

Let’s say this is QA, this is production, this is the general manager. And then you can say that general manager is accountable, who is finally answerable to that? And then you have a responsible person here and then this person is I. This person needs to be informed. But if you look at activity number three, step number three, you have C and I. But you don’t have a person who is accountable and who is responsible. You need to have one person accountable and one person responsible as a minimum for every activity you have that for activity number two. So what I’m going to do next is quickly open a Racy matrix in Microsoft Axel and to show you where you can find that in Microsoft Axel 2013. So let’s do that. So let’s see here how we can open or create a Racy matrix in Microsoft Axel.

There is already a builtin template into that. So you don’t need to do much work here. So what you can do is go to file and create a new file. In new file you have a number of templates here. I have already opened that. So I should have that racing matrix somewhere here. But if not then you can always search for Racy here. So if you search for Racy matrix so here I have Raci chart, I click on that and I want to create a Racy matrix. So here I have that Racy matrix built in and here I can put the activity, my FS activity could be defined. And who is responsible? This accountable is, let’s say the general manager who is sponsor of the project. Responsible would be black belt informed could be your production department. So you can put all the entities here on the top and all the activities here as a row. And with that you can complete a receipt matrix. This is going to help you in having a clarity on roles and responsibilities. Who is going to.

19. Analytical Tools – Affinity Diagrams (BOK IV.D.1)

In the define phase of the project, we talked about voice of the customer, we talked about the project charter and we talked about some project management tools. And there’s one topic which is left here in define phase which is analytical tools. So these tools, analytical tools are basically part of seven management tools. So initially in Japan there were seven basic quality tools and then there were seven advanced management tools. So these first five tools which are affinity diagram, tree diagram, matrix diagrams, prioritization matrix and activity network diagrams, these are part of American Society of Quality body of Knowledge for certified six sigma black belt. So we’ll be talking about all these five tools. In addition to these five tools, there were another two tools which were part of seven management tools which we are not covering here and those are interrelationship diagram and PDPC. So let’s get started with affinity diagram on the next slide.

So what is affinity diagram? Suppose you are conducting a brainstorming session on some issue and you are getting a number of suggestions, let’s say 50 suggestions or 80 suggestions which you got and you posted all those suggestions or ideas using posted yellow stickers. Now comes that how do you look at those 50 things which you got as a part of brainstorming? So, to organize that large number of ideas into some grouping, some natural grouping there you need affinity diagram. So this could be after brainstorming session or this could be after some interview or survey where you have asked participants to give some suggestion.

So you might have asked people to tell about your product, what they need, what new feature they need in your product and you might have got a number of ideas from your customers. How do you group that? So, grouping of that is done using affinity diagram. This method which is affinity diagram is also known as KJ method and KJ method is because of the inventor of this tool and who was Kavakita Zero. So who invented this tool? So let’s look at one example of affinity diagram to have some better understanding of this tool.

So, to understand affinity diagram, let’s take one example which is a hypothetical example where I called 50 students and asked them what they want in this course, in this online course. So I got number of suggestions from those participants which I kept on writing on a yellow pad or a yellow sticky notes and kept on sticking that. So one person said this course needs to have more quizzes, another person says that this needs to be interactive, someone suggested that this course should have some flashcards, this course should be to the point, et cetera, et cetera.

So I kept on recording anything, whatever came out as a result of that brainstorming without questioning, without challenging that. So here I have that group of ideas. Now how do I deal with this? So these are still, let’s say laven in number but if these were 5000, then this would have been very difficult to understand. What is the idea, what is the suggestion people are giving? So there you need to group these, group these into some natural groups. And that’s what I have done on the next slide. So these eleven suggestions I have grouped by a different category. Let’s look at that to understand. So here I have same eleven ideas, same eleven brainstorming thoughts which I have put in a different group. So my group number one is it says that my course has to be interactive, more quizzes, flashcard practice. So this is something related to involvement of people, engagement of students. So this I have kept as a one group. Second group was on the content that people wanted the content of the course to be on the point and easy to understand, simple language.

So that is another group which I made. And then the third group was that this should have smaller videos, this should have slides, notes, detailed coverage and covering of the body of knowledge. So that is another group. So now if you look at this, this makes a better sense rather than looking at random thoughts which you got as a part of brainstorming. So this is how affinity diagram becomes useful.

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