Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is the practice of finding and fixing process problems on a repeating cycle, with results measured and reported rather than assumed. In Lean Six Sigma programs it covers everything from a single Green Belt project to a portfolio of projects across plants, business units, or student cohorts.

This hub holds the guides for running that practice as a program: how to structure it, how to select projects, how to staff them, how to track financial results so finance accepts them, and how to report the whole portfolio to leadership. Method-specific guides, such as the phase-by-phase walkthrough and the charter guide, live in the DMAIC hub.

What a program needs beyond a method

A method tells one team how to run one project. A program has to answer questions the method does not. Which problems get a project and which do not. Who owns the result after the team disbands. How a saving is classified so a controller signs it. What leadership sees each month without asking anyone for a status update. The articles here take those questions one at a time.

Where to start

If you are setting up a program, read the guide on structuring it first, then the financial tracking guide. If projects already run and the problem is credibility with finance, start with hard savings vs soft savings. If you are running one project inside someone else's program, the DMAIC hub is the better entry point.

How SixGrid fits

SixGrid is project management software built for this work. Groups isolate business units or cohorts. Program View and Reports roll every project up by status, type, level, and group. Each benefit carries a Hard or Soft classification and a Benefit Type, and every project tracks its COPQ opportunity separately from what it has saved. The guides reference these screens where they apply.