How to Successfully Defend Your Project to Experts

Stick to the story and avoid these five pitfalls

With apologies to Tolstoy: All successful project certification reviews are alike; every unsuccessful project certification review is unsuccessful in its own way.

During the certification of a Six Sigma Green or Black Belt, one critical step is to demonstrate that you used the methodology and tools of lean Six Sigma to deliver sustained results. The usual way to do this is to present and defend your project (i.e., describe your actions and answer questions) to a panel of experts. A successful review begins by presenting the project in the classic format of any good story—setup, conflict, and resolution. Questions from the panel experts follow the presentation—or more often, come during the middle of the story when the experts interrupt the candidate to ask them. Either way, successful certification candidates answer questions in the same way. They first recognize the question as something they and their team considered, relate how they dealt with it, and then 99 percent of the time reflect on why that was a great way to deal with it, or how they would have done it given new knowledge or greater experience.

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Comments

drop the "six sigma belts" references like a hot potatoe!

Too bad the article was laden with six sigma and belts.... a real turnoff. I was hoping for a nice general article which helped anyone sucessfully defend a project to a panel of experts. I couldn't get thru the MBB and six sigma rot. Maybe next article....

SixSigmatism

Yeah, I fully share Ken Kaniecki's view on SixSigma-mania: learned italian Statisticians share this view, too. And, in addition,"successful defense of one's own projects", in times not so far away, was called "charlatanism". We - quaility professionals - should be very careful on that. Thank you.

Criticisms and charlatans

I, for one, think that the references to Six Sigma are fine. Like or hate the "Belt" designations, they are well-known, here to stay and often explicitly requested by employers (click here for examples http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=six+sigma&l=). The Six Sigma body of knowledge is well defined and the skill set highly valued. And completing a project is part of the process of proving oneself as capable.

As far as defending one's own project making one a "charlatan," I don't buy it. Webster defines a charlatan as one making usually showy pretenses to knowledge or ability. Having participated in hundreds of Six Sigma certification project presentations I can state categorically that showy pretenses of knowledge won't get very far with a panel of Master Black Belts. The same applies to academic defenses of theses and dissertations. The commenter is confusing phonies with actual experts. Or, perhaps the comment reflects anti-intellectualism, a real hatred of experts qua experts. Some people actively resent anyone for having the audacity to claim that they know more than them about something. And if they actually prove that they know more by a real-world demonstration, so much the worse!