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Six Sigma for Sysadmins
Baden Hughes
Abstract
Originating at Motorola, Six Sigma is a business process improvement methodology which is broadly applicable across industry segments ranging from banking and finance, health services, logistics and transportation, to manufacturing and telecommunications. The motivation for the Six Sigma methodology is the drive to reduce errors, defects, losses and reworks, improve productivity and generate substantial and measurable results. At the core of SixSigma is the DMAIC Model: a systematic method for analysing and improving business processes, consisting of five phases: Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control.
Increasingly managers are using methodologies like Six Sigma to measure and improve (repetitive) process across business segments, including technical work. This talk will introduce the SixSigma methodology and its components as a precursor to considering a number of sys-admin-centric applications of the methodology.
Biography
Baden Hughes is a Program Manager in Information Management, Information Services at The University of Melbourne. His
responsibilities cover a variety of domains including enterprise information architecture, web services and applications, library systems, business intelligence, enterprise search, information management strategy and project management. Immediately prior he was a research fellow in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at The University of Melbourne, with a focus on researching language technologies, information retrieval and digital libraries. Prior to moving to the university sector he spent over 10 years in roles in Australia, Asia Pacific, Europe and the USA as a project manager, web application architect, internet systems engineer, software developer, network manager and editor. He has published over 40 internationally peer reviewed papers in addition to several book chapters, edited conference proceedings and edited volumes. He serves regularly on the program committees of international conferences in a variety of computer science domains, and on the editorial board of several journals. He also serves in a senior technical advisory capacity to a number of government agencies, and continues to be involved in extensive industry-based consulting.