Generic Lean Six Sigma project definitions in financial services

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is applied in financial service organizations to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. LSS prescribes that these improvements are designed and implemented by projects. The purpose of this article is to facilitate the process of defining LSS projects in finance, because the lack of a clear definition is an important cause of project failure. The authors' strategy is to provide seven standard project definitions (generic templates). Project leaders can use these templates as an example and as a guide in the definition phase. This will help them to formulate crystal clear project definitions that have explicitly stated goals and a solid business rationale. In this article, the authors will discuss these seven generic categories and show how this simple categorization and subsequent standardization of approaches can help LSS teams simplify the definition phase.