Six Sigma and Vision, Values, Goals.

Went to a fantastically interesting and enjoyable presentation as part of my MBA programme yesterday. A representative from Vodafone came to the University and presented on Vodafone strategy (the module we are doing right now is on strategy) and in particular the use of six sigma across their organisation.

Very interesting to hear about the challenges and impact of six sigma - and that they have actually succeeded in making things happen and delivering real tangible worth within 2 years of starting the programme. Also very interesting to hear about how things fit into their vision.

For anyone that came to Anaheim or has read my presentation on aligning test strategies with corporate goals you would have seen that I used Vodafone as an example of a company with Vision. In March last year I was lucky enough to attend a conference in London where Arun Sarun (CEO of Vodafone) spoke about the Vision, Values and Goals of the organisation. I felt quite inspired and impressed by his talk which is why they became my worked example.

In his talk he talked about the vision to be:

The world's mobile communications leader - enriching customers' lives, helping individuals, businesses and communities be more connected in a mobile world.

Under Values he talked about:

Passion for customers: "Our customers have chosen to trust us. In return, we must strive to anticipate and understand their needs and delight them with our service.“
Passion for our people: "Outstanding people working together make Vodafone exceptionally successful.“
Passion for results: "We are action-oriented and driven by a desire to be the best.“
Passion for the world around us: "We will help the people of the world to have fuller lives – both through the services we provide and through the impact we have on the world around us."

and under goals he talked about:

Provide superior shareholder returns
Delight our customers
Leverage global scale and scope
Expand market boundaries
Build the best global Vodafone team
Be a responsible business.

Now for me here's the interesting bit. The Six Sigma approach being used at Vodafone meets up with all of this. They are trying to drive out wasted costs, improve service, get things better understood so that they can then yield advantages of scope and scale, create bigger market share and a whole host of things on the back of the way Six Sigma will improve their operating efficiency and ways of working.

As a tester, I also gained great encouragement from the focus they have in their Voice of the Customer campaign. In essence this is one big TTRM /VCRI where they get the Grumps and Grumbles from the customer (e.g. I went into your store to buy the new whizzy bang handset to find it was out of stock. So now I am on TMobile instead!) and reviewing their systems and processes that lead to that result e.g. Stock control, marketing, logistics management. By reevaluating these, and putting the six sigma approach at the heart of the improvements they look to remove the issue.

Lots of work, lots of process, lots of Testing. All good stuff :)

As I say a very interesting presentation. If you are interested in knowing more about it or perhaps getting the contact details for the presenter so as to ask them some questions please drop me an email.

TCL Scholarship at the University of Exeter

I am really very excited to be able to tell you about our new scholarship scheme at the University of Exeter. As you will know from the previous entries in the Blog, TCL has an aspiration to become a World Wide, World Class Centre of Testing Excellence by 2020. Part of making this happen is a commitment we have made to involve academic institutions in the development of software testing as a professional discipline.

This year we have developed a scholarship scheme for undergraduates at the University of Exeter designed to encourage people with the aptitude and passion for software testing.

Details of the scheme can be found at: http://www.secam.ex.ac.uk/applicants/tclscholarship.html.

The University of Exeter has been a superb partner in our recent endeavours and we are all really excited about this new scholarship scheme.

By taking this approach, and getting involved in other things like R&D and Masters by Research projects we hope to see many expert testers of the future coming through the Exeter Degree programme. This is good for Exeter, Good for TCL and Good for software testing as a whole. A real win-win.

Very interested to hear any comments on our scheme, ideas for new innovations or from Universities that would also like to embrace software testing into their Computer Science departments.