In part one, I discussed how to avoid a lean Six Sigma project failure, specifically if the reason behind the failure is that the project solution never gets implemented. Now let’s discuss a few other project roadblocks that prevent teams from completing projects and some suggestions for overcoming them from Minitab trainers.

Is the project scope too large?

One common reason quality improvement projects get started on the wrong foot is that their scope is too large. One of our customers provided us with a great example.

In this particular case, the customer’s project goal was to “improve the profitability of the company’s South American Division.” In theory, this sounds like a pretty good project goal, but when they actually began work on the project, the project team needed to hone in on that broad goal to work on something less vague and more specific—not to mention measurable.

To help the team drill down to a more concrete project goal, they created a critical-to-quality (CTQ) tree:

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