How to use Six Sigma to improve the Helpdesk

If I were a good Help Desk Manager (See also the bad approach):

and Moses (the CIO) would tell me: "You have to lower the costs for the next budget year with 10% or you'll be fired", I could do the followings:

• I would consider all expenses, I will not make any assumptions for savings and I would define the project in terms of CTQ, opportunity, defects;
• I would Define the correct measurements (how to calculate the cost per call), validate them, and gather data for 3 months;
• The Measure phase shows me that statistically the process fluctuates because some calls are significantly more expensive than others;
• The Analysis reviews point out that the phone bill is very high, so I check the phone records of each employee;
• After some brainstorming sessions we discover the root cause: when there is no experienced employee to resolve difficult calls, the call is logged and the company calls back the client and pays the bills! Damn!
• I start calculating the savings in a scenario with 2 more experienced consultants: the savings in the phone bill overcome the costs attached to the new employees. Joy!
• In order not to give a heart attack to Moses by hiring 2 extra people when I should reduce costs, I prepare a business case (the improve phase): the investments, benefits, risks and timeline. I check with the financial cell and after I try to sell it to Moses: he approves ;)
• I inform the operations about the change and I pass the project to a PM for the implementation;
• I will not stop, but after the new process is implemented I would establish control procedures so that the process does not revert back. Usually it takes around 1 year for the process to generate a lasting improvement. In the end it will pay back!!!

I'm a happy Help Desk Manager now, and Moses a happy CIO ;)

Adaptation from "Six Sigma for IT Management", Sven den Boer, ITSM Library, 2006