Herding dogs!

I was going to say this week has seen the herding of cats but its been more like dogs - bit easier to herd than cats but if you get it wrong you get eaten!

Its all been about a senior management workshop the focus being to pull together the structure and details to go into specification of contract wording. I wasn't running the thing - lucked out there - just a participant. Everyone else (if you read this - you know who you are ;) had run for the hills as the unleashed pack can be pretty ferocious! Anyway I though this could be fun, in a voyeuristic sort of way, as running these event is not easy at the best of times. However, shock, horror it all went pretty well, I even managed to contribute!

What made the difference? Well it was the use of a technique I came across 20 years ago, part of the now old looking SSADM toolset, but now reinvented as a six-sigma activity called SIPOC. What are all these acronyms doing in here. SSADM, in case you don't know as it was a long time ago, is Structured Systems Analysis Design Methodology - probably why it never really caught the imagination come to think of it. SIPOC stands for Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer - e.g. how to define an activity in the SSADM process modelling world.

The following link has a good description of what you do to fill out a SIPOC;

http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/sipoc-copis/sipoc-diagram/

or check Wikipedia there must be something in there on it.

In fact, at the workshop, this process was followed very closely but with the addition of discussing the 'principles' of the contract area before launching into the detail of the 'process' part. Which provided a 10,000 ft introduction to what we were talking about and was a good feature to add.

So 10 out of 10 for SIPOC dog herding, and rock-on SSADM there is life there still ;)