Why is Quality Control Important for a Business?

Six Sigma was originally a management method developed by Motorola in 1986 to ensure fewer errors. And now, it is an industry-standard and all the industries are enrolling their employees to be practitioners of Six Sigma.

Six Sigma (sigma=standard deviation) aims at improving cycle-time, bringing down defects to that of not more than 3.4 occurrences per million events. Six Sigma points out that for an error to occur, it would take a six-standard deviation event from the mean. This is due to the fact that only 3.4 out of a million events along a bell curve would occur outside of six-sigma (standard deviation). 

Also Read: Top Reasons Why Companies Outsource Quality Assurance Services

Six Sigma and software testing

Six Sigma is the process of producing high-quality output via two phases – identification and elimination of defects. Thus, the method reduces variations in the process and ensures that 99.99966% of all the products have the same features and are free from defects.

Six Sigma methodologies:

There are two methodologies for process improvement: DMAIC and DMADV.

DMAIC project methodology stands for design-measure-analyze-improve-control. It is used to enhance the quality of an existing process. DMAIC works best in situations where the software product or process is present but is not delivering the optimal performance. 

DMADV which stands for define-measure-analyze-design-verify is applied in situations where the software product or process elements have already been optimized (are not present) but still lack in performance improvement.