Six Sigma and software

- [Instructor] How is Six Sigma applicable to software development? Manufacturing is a pure science where you can produce the same type of product repeatedly, and quantifying defects is manageable. Software development is partly science and partly art, and the procedure of measuring quality can be somewhat challenging. You're not producing tangible products repeatedly, and to make things more complex, customers' expectations, team skill level, organizational culture, politics, technology, et cetera, are different for different projects and products, so it becomes extremely challenging to measure the sigma level of a software development process. Six Sigma generally works at a macro level, so when you're talking about Six Sigma, you're talking about high-level processes, not how to use one software product. The good news is that Six Sigma includes a process improvement cycle called the DMAIC cycle, which may be useful for all software and non-software initiatives. Let's review this…