What is your project closure process? Are you capturing lessons learned? How are you transferring knowledge learned in a project?

Control is not a passing part of the DMAIC process. It is a critical step for Six Sigma practitioners, to be revisited on an ongoing basis. Control ensures an organization that quality metrics and improvements are lasting, embraced by everyone in the organization.

One of the main purposes of the Control Phase is to assure that the gains achieved from your project are sustained.

A key part of that is to show that the original problem has been solved for the last time. To do that successfully means to not only solve the problem associated with your project, but also any similar problems elsewhere in the organization. 

Two elements are required to achieve that: lessons learned and project replication or leveraging.

These are part of a proper project closeout, the subject of our discussion.

As mentioned before, Project closure occurs in the final stages of the C (Control) phase in DMAIC, however the lessons learned should be captured throughout the project.

Jennifer Bridges (formerly Jennifer Whitt) director of ProjectManager.com covers how to do that in the following video.

 

The following short article also gives some important guidelines for closing a Six Sigma project.