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Process improvement methods like 6 Sigma https://www.isixsigma.com/new-to-six-sigma/getting-started/what-six-sigma/ are not intended to drive individual people to perform in the top x%, they are intended to identify and eliminate defects in processes. That said, methods like that can be misunderstood and/or misused by management, especially when said management thinks the method is a tool that you just bring in and swing around in order to reap the benefits of "improved processes," more productivity, etc.

I saw this quote: "the researchers studied brain images of 94 people in their 70s who had participated in an earlier study looking at cardiovascular health and cognition."

At that point, I said, "Stop. What a useless study." Look at the sample size again... 94?!?!? That has a roughly 10% margin of error built in to the sample size (at a 95% confidence interval). At least they included the sample size! ...and then there's the operative word "study...." That, word (in the singular, no less), gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies.

So, is that 8% (+/- 10%) less brain mass for obese elderly people or a range from 7.2% to 8.8% for obese elderly people, based on this sample and a 95% confidence interval? I'm thinking the former.

In statistics class, this was called by the name "statistical deception." Just because a single study of 94 people says so, don't believe it. It has a roughly 50% chance of being right -- or wrong (at a 100% confidence interval) but so do psychics, horoscopes, and fortune cookies.

Junk science prevails in the popular press. Anything sensational gets front-page headlines -- it gets grant money and sells news. It doesn't matter that the next study contradicts it, the next supports it, the next contradicts that one, and on and on the tennis match goes....

Once this has been peer reviewed numerous times with tens of thousands of people per study, call me. I'll be getting a snack, in the mean time.

Here's a couple of links to refresh people with the term "margin of error:"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error
    http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c040607a.asp

You need to overcome differing viewpoints and resistance to change which is obvious, but a non-obvious way to help you evaluate why the resistance to change exists and how to overcome it can be done through a "stakeholder analysis". See Table 1 from this link: http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c030708a. asp and the section just below that table called "putting improvements in place".

Many organizations (including my own) are guilty of making changes to process and procedures without fully involving the stakeholders involved in performing steps in those processes. If you want to be successful in making useful changes, always make sure to keep your stakeholders involved in helping understand the reason that the change is needed, and how the proposed change will benefit the organization (as it may not always appear to benefit all of the stakeholders of the process). A feedback loop on measured improvements to a process or procedure is always a beneficial thing to keep those involved in making the change happen encouraged that the new way of doing things is the right way to continue doing things too.

people name products and methodologies for a reason.

And what is this reason? Did the "black belt" become the "black belt" by whipping the ass of everyone else there? No, the position is just there. Of course, once you're the "black belt" long enough and demonstrated skill at training people you can become a "master black belt" which breaks whatever tenuous martial arts analogy that they had going.

A refutation of them is not unimportant, nor is it meaningless.

Your refutation contained no information and was therefore unimportant and meaningless. Try harder.

Incidentially, I find that GE says more about Six Sigma here than this executive level magazine says here, though I guess if your job is selling subscriptions then you better learn to say as little as possible in every issue, which probably explains where all the management-speak comes from in the first place.

That's still looking pretty sad for Microsoft.

I think the first step should be to look at better IT organisation and management strategies. The way many IT departments are run is still rather primitive; extremely self-centered and often based on reactive maintenance. While a good organisation should be driven by the business or project goals it is supporting, and have the efficiency of its contribution to these as its target.

While concepts such as 6-sigma and TPM are not entirely applicable to IT organisations, there are important lessons to be learnt from them. Crucially, they help to define more clearly the goals for an organisation and offer more realistic metrics for a department to operate on than we closed so-and-so many trouble tickets last year.

I think it is also realistic to not expect too much from one organisation. There is a tendency to lump all that is IT together in one organisation, on the pretense that any work involving computers must be similar and have identical organisational needs. That makes little sense; the actual IT tasks can be very diverse and require different people, different attitudes, and different strategies. It makes considerably more sense to give an IT person a reporting line to the manager of the process that he or she is trying to support, than to some manager whose only connection with the activities of that person is that they both have "IT" printed on their business card. In my opinion, IT centralisation is a sin that one should not commit without a very good excuse.

I'm no programmer, and I'm no pure sales guy, but my background in computer engineering and my ability to pick up quickly on math concepts has certainly helped me in my job and in attaining one step down from that black belt six sigma cert.

There's your problem -- you're mixing SQL code in with your app code. Bad developer! Bad! You're introducing SQL injection holes

Python (and other sane languages) use something like query("select * from foo where name = %s", (name,)) (SQLObject gives this a different syntax, but same idea). With this, if you forget the substitution or do it incorrectly it will be Completely Broken -- because you'll be sending a query like select * from foo where name = Tom. This is a good poka yoke.

As far as putting SQL in the code, sometimes a query is best expressed at the time you will use it. If you want all customers in an area code, is it really best to make a customersInAreaCode(areaCode) method, or just use Customer.selectBy(areaCode=X)? They look pretty much equivalent to me -- except the latter comes for free, and is completely localized to the place you use it. That localization is a negative if it means you are duplicating code; however, creating an abstraction before any duplicate code would be created is also a negative.

As far as the other issues: SQLObject uses the Active Record model (which Rails' ActiveRecord happens to be named after) and is best suited to Application Databases. There are pluses and minuses to this. You can often use a mixture of both styles, if you find a need. But if you are an organization of web developers without dedicated database personel and with a tight schedule, you will be best served by the Application Database style of development, because (from a developer's point of view) it gives you the most control.

Is this a derivative of the methodologies behind Lean Six Sigma?

There's big money in that, my graduate software engineering course last semester had a speaker in from a NASA contractor that pushed LSS as a way to manage all kinds of different engineering and production variances e.g. misfiring rocket engines.

...give breathing space for competitors to come up with similar products BEFORE we do.

That's a good point which had me thinking about other similar models which have been done like this.

Other Sample Models/Studies
SWOT analysis can be used for internal projects and whole companies. It doesn't provide a final number like this study but it would at least require someone to think about the project from and may help align the sales and development teams. It's a rather simple model and has been developed further by many others but it was sort of like the grandfather to this type of qualitative thought.
Porter's Five Forces model again although primarily considered for whole companies or departments could be applied to projects and was created in 1980. Threat of New Entrants could be threats of external companies instead doing the job before you do, or other internal departments/teams doing the project, etc. Power of Suppliers may be other departments or other projects which may change requirements or require extensive red tape slowing the project down. Etc., Etc., Etc.
Six Sigma used for project time estimation (which looks like it could be useful for determining if a project is on track and if not if it will then create other problems?
A study on Identifying Best Practices in Information Technology Project Management.

How the parent post got +5 I have no idea....

Actually, much of the rest of the world DOES believe that "Zero defects does not mean that the product does not have bugs". Emphasis in quotations mine.

Definition of Zero-Defect. "an aspect of total quality management that stresses the objective of error-free performance in providing goods or services"

Six sigma's take on Zero Defect that states: "A practice that aims to reduce defects as a way to directly increase profits. The concept of zero defects lead to the development of Six Sigma in the 1980s."

Here's an explanation of why people are confused about the subject. Yes, it's an M$ site.

10 rules for ZDSD: "Not to be taken as meaning 'bug-free,' Zero-Defect Software Development (ZDSD) is a practice of developing software that is maintained in the highest quality state throughout the entire development process."

isixsigma.com - May or may not help you in your quest for statistics knowledge, but it's a business resource for those of us budding stats dude's working on getting managers to accept statistical variability in their processes. What my coworkers and I have been lacking is a good "sample size calculator" that works in reverse - i.e. you plug in what percent error you want and the sample size, tell the calculator what you want the confidence interval to be, and out pops the needed population size to achieve such results.

FYI To the lucky ones to have never had to deal with stats or TQM:

3 "Sigma" is ~70,000 screwups in 1,000,000 opportunities to screwup

6 "Sigma" is ~3.5 screwups per 1,000,000 opportunities to screwup.

I've found some references to it's use in software testing, nothing yet about how one might use it to design internals but it certainly looks like it can help you focus in on user interface design and which parts to bulletproof the most. I have some research to do.

It's interesting to note that one article indicates it uses signal to noise as it's measure of robustness.... I'd think slashdot was doomed.

(For the humor impaired: yes, I know that noise is defined to be uncontrolled variance, I'm trying to make a funny.)

For those of you interested on learning Taguchi method. Here's a good intro.

link