Part II : Define Phase

When former president Jimmy Carter participated in the successful dialogues with Haiti, Egypt, and beyone, to what did he attribute much of the success?

"I Listen" - ASQ Quality Progress, May 1998

A business performance measure that provides an approach to measuring multiple aspects of a business, including the financial aspect, is

A balanced scorecard

Which of the following graphically shows interdependence between tasks while highlighting key tasks, time to accomplish, and flow paths?

Activity network diagram

This important planning tool is founded on the premise that solid planning helps prevent undesirable surprises and saves valuable resources:

Advance quality planning

This diagram tool is used to produce many possible answers to an open-ended question:

Affinity diagram

Successful risk analysis depends, in part, on ensuring that

All appropriate organizations are represented during risk analysis meetings with all aspects of potential risk considered

Benchmarking is the process of looking at one system(s) and applying the concepts observed to

Another system

Flow utilized when a line operator or front-desk personnel want to provide feedback to the management, or a team member wants to communicate to the executive sponsor of the project is

Bottom-up or upward flow

Methods used to identify internal and external customers include which of the following?

Brainstorming, SIPOC, marketing analysis data, tracking a product to delivery

Which of the following measures the project's performance in dollar terms (for example, the ratio of earned value [budgeted cost of work performed] versus the actual cost of work performed)? A ratio of 1 or higher is desirable.

Cost performance index

QFD is applied to improve

Customer satisfaction at acceptable cost

What index is used to identify the total number of defects/deficiencies that have occurred and standardized to a common total number of possibilities?

DPMO

What index is calculated as the total number of defects/deficiencies divided by the total number of products produced?

DPU

Process performance is a measure of how the process is executing against an established goal. Process performance measures usually include

Defects per unit, defects per million, rolled throughput yield, sigma levels, process capability indices

The define phase of the DMAIC model services which of the following two primary purposes?

Defines the project management process and defines the problem or issue to to be worked on

Focus groups are an attempt to improve the _____ and ____ of customer responses

Depth, Accuracy

An exercise of going to your local McDonald's to understand how processes work would be an example of which type of benchmarking?

Functional

QFD is also known as

House of quality

Once focus group planning is completed, the focus groups can be

Identified, session conducted, their data collected and analyzed to determine how the process or product should be adjusted

What is a frequently occurring important barrier to good listening?

Impatience and jumping ahead of the speaker -This barrier falls across all genders, ages, and cultures

Effective project planning requires skills in which of the following areas?

Information processing, communication, resource negotiations, securing commitments, incremental planning, ensuring measurable milestones, facilitating top management involvement

Which of the following are types of benchmarking?

Internal, competitive, functional, collaborative

A flowchart is a picture of the separate steps of a process in sequential order, including

Materials, services, people, decisions, time, and process measurements

In this technique, the team members consolidate all previously generated ideas, number or letter them, and then quickly prioritize them.

Multivoting

This idea generation tool does not include verbal interactions and instead utilizes writing first and then posting for all to read

Nominal group technique

A project charter can take many formats but is usually limited to

One or two pages serving as a quick top-level overview of the project

Cause-and-effect diagrams can be used to analyze

Positive effects as well as undesirable ones

A charter is a document stating the purposes of the project. Every charter should contain which of the following points?

Problem statement, purpose, benefits, scope, results

The final step performed to prove that the project met established goals and objectives and that all documentation was completed and stored is called

Project Closure

What index is used to identify the first-pass rate through a series of processes?

RTY

Statistically, what is the most valid procedure for collecting customer data?

Randomly selected large groups for interviews

Which of the following is a measure of the project's efficiency to schedule as expressed in the ratio of earned value to planned value?

Schedule performance index

An individual trained in Six Sigma methodologies, statistical tools, basic financial tools, change management, risk management, and project management and experienced in managing projects is a

Six Sigma Black Belt

A force field analysis produces the driving and restraining forces of

The desired future state / objective

Flow utilized when top management, or the executive sponsor of the project, is providing instruction, communicating policies, or providing feedback on project performance is

Top-down or downward flow

Which of the following are tools for gathering customer data

Voice of the customer, surveys, QFD , interviews, and focus groups

The first thing to know when planning to audit something is

What the standard or criteria are that we will be auditing against

In a project setting with a matrix organizational structure, the importance of communication cannot be stressed enough

Yes - Incomplete, sporadic, or inaccurate communication would never be acceptable

Project planning tools are many. For a beginning project planning tool, start with

a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet listing the projected dates of the project or brainstorm a flowchart

A key aspect of measuring a project (project metrics) is to start

as early as possible in tracking the data to benchmark the current state

When planning to study a process or system, it is very important to first identify the

boundaries

When an individual or team develops as many ideas as possible concerning a topic in a short period of time, using various creative techniques, it is called

brainstorming

you can make a ______________________ choice with regard to the listening level that you choose within a given scenario

conscious

The project selection group (Six Sigma Master Black Belts, Six Sigma Black Belts, Six Sigma Key Executives, and Six Sigma Champions) should

establish a set of criteria for project selection

Teams typically go through the following sequence or stages of evolution:

forming, storming, norming, performing

Stakeholders (e.g., customers, suppliers, employees, investors) generally

have a vested interest in the process and/or its products and outputs

Process inputs are traditionally recognized as

man, materials, methods, Mother Nature, management, measurement

Negative team dynamics are often reflective of

negative issues within the organizational culture

Those who have responsibility for the execution and implementation of specific tasks or activities undertaken are

process owners

The composition and number of people on a team

should be based on size and scope of the project

Those who have a vested interest in the process and/or its products and outputs are

stakeholders

When we strive to understand the process and know that if one factor is changed or influenced in some particular way, then something different might happen downstream in the process is commonly referred to as

systems thinking

A function of team performing includes

team members realizing interdependence

A function of team storming includes

team members voicing their ideas

One of the key differences between deploying Six Sigma in a large organization and deploying Six Sigma in a small organization is

the number of champions involved in the effort -In a large organization you would expect to have many champions, and in a small organization you might have one

One factor that has helped Six Sigma be successful is

the structure it demands of the organization