Using Metamodeling to Represent Lean Six Sigma for IT Service Improvement

Abstract

In today's competitive market, the need to continuously improve quality and lead time of IT services becomes more important. Over the last decades, too much complexity has been added to IT organizations after they had introduced IT frameworks like COBIT for IT Governance or ITIL for IT service management. As a result, many organizations face process inefficiencies and an increase in IT operational costs. Even though COBIT and ITIL, that we use as a reference in our research, contain continuous improvement (CI) processes and guidelines, their approach and effectiveness has been criticized. In this paper, we propose to apply Lean and Six Sigma, CI-approaches that gained popularity in other areas in industry, to CI of IT services. We use metamodeling to integrate Lean and Six Sigma to develop an integrated approach of Lean Six Sigma for CI of IT Services. Our Metamodels provide a visual representation to capture and integrate the main elements of Lean, Six Sigma, and Lean Six Sigma and model their interface with the IT Services framework. We apply metamodeling as part of a Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) and use the Framework for Evaluation in Design Research (FEDS) to evaluate our results using practitioners in the evaluation. The objective of our research is to present a standard method for IT-Services CI. The resulting framework should support the design and implementation, in a standard way, of CI organizations to improve IT Service delivery.

A study into the pros and cons of ISO 18404: viewpoints from leading academics and practitioners

“…The non-standardisation of Six Sigma and Lean curricula have been an issue for both manufacturing and service companies (Antony, 2004;Johannes and Kurt, 2008). Herrera and Van Hillegersberg (2019) discussed the requirement for standardisation of continuous improvement in information technology (IT) services. Different companies set different training and certification standards manifesting an inconsistency issue across companies and countries, although this problem has been addressed partially through the development of ISO 18404:2015 (Antony and Sony, 2019).…”

“…ISO 18404 describes the different Lean roles and training requirements needed by organisations rolling out Lean, to help them implement a standardised programme (Herrera and Van Hillegersberg, 2019). In terms of individuals becoming certified, the ISO 18404 standard is a positive one as (1) having a training programme that is compliant with the standard adds legitimacy and value to the training; (2) you can show evidence that your training has followed the standard, and once you are trained you can take the relevant belt competency assessment; and (3) assists both Lean and Six Sigma organisations in recruiting practitioners with the required competencies (Morgan, 2017;Rich and Malik, 2019) The standard assists with listing 23 competencies that are considered relevant in the area of Six Sigma and 18 competencies considered essential when becoming certified in the field of Lean management.…”

“…There is a severe dearth of published peer-reviewed journal articles and/or practical case studies on ISO 18404 and its role in Lean and Six Sigma standardization and continuous improvement. While some authors have discussed the advantage of having a LSS standard in theory and discussed the ISO 18404 standard referencing its place in a framework for LSS deployment, very few case studies of practical deployment of the standard are found in the existing literature (Ward and Caklais, 2019;Herrera and Van Hillegersberg, 2019). Also, commentary by Lean, Six Sigma, and LSS experts and practitioners on the standard's advantages and disadvantages and whether there was a requirement or need for a standard in the first place has been very limited in the public domain.…”

“…There is a severe dearth of published peer-reviewed journal articles and/or practical case studies on ISO 18404 and its role in LSS standardisation and continuous improvement. While some authors have discussed the advantage of having an LSS standard in theory and discussed the ISO 18404 standard referencing its place in a framework for LSS deployment, very few case studies of practical deployment of the standard are found in the existing literature (Ward and Caklais, 2019;Herrera and Van Hillegersberg, 2019).…”

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“…As pointed out by several authors such as [Aguiar et al, 2018;Schlarman, 2007] IT frameworks can easily overlap one another. Moreover, IT frameworks are complex to understand and implement [de Haes et al, 2013;Evelina et al, 2010;Herrera, Hillegersberg, 2019;Serenko et al, 2016]. By way of response, the maturity model (MM) concept was introduced to assess the level of a process [Becker et al, 2009].…”