Originally used in manufacturing industries (initially by Motorola in the 1980s), Six Sigma is a corporate quality program now being used in service industries, with customer satisfaction as the measure of quality. IT leaders can also apply the principles and techniques of Six Sigma either to their own operations or to business processes to improve quality and process efficiency.

What Is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology that aims to achieve near perfection by identifying and eliminating causes of errors in business processes. Technically speaking, Six Sigma demands no more than 3.4 total defects per one million opportunities, or 99.99966%; otherwise known as five nines accuracy. Unlike other Total Quality Management (TQM) methodologies, Six Sigma focuses on measuring and quantifying items to reduce defects to minimal levels.