About a year back, I published an entry trying to explain 6 Sigma, and my role executing projects at Solar Turbines, Inc. using its methodology. Then, as most of you know (if you don’t, you might want to see a doctor about a little slowness problem), I got a new job and we moved to P-town. So, now I get asked “What are you doing now?”, and my general response is something along the lines of “Pretty much the same stuff.” Both true and false. Yes, I’m still a Black Belt. Yes, I still manage projects. But, the nature of the projects and, ultimately, the work is much different. Short explanation is that since I work for an Alliance between Ford and CAT, and work very closely with SAP and Deloitte, the project work is quite strategic, and very different from projects that I worked on for a manufacturing company.
Easiest way for me to explain? I’ll quickly go through four of the six projects that I’m leading right now…..
- Refinement for the Custom Development Project – in this project, we are scoping the work that SAP will deliver to us in 2005 and 2006, providing business requirements for this work, and reviewing solution approaches given to us by SAP developers. I am leading this with a counterpart from Ford, and leveraging the different business teams. Overall, it is a project of about 15 – 30 people at any given time.
- Business Resource Planning – I am leading a group of managers through defining external resource needs for 2005 and 2006 to support development and implementation of the the Next Gen solution (systems+processes) for 2005 and 2006. This will allow up to effectively communicate our resource needs to the external business, and (hopefully) minimize the number of consultants needed for the project.
- Systems testing strategy – (this project is called something else, but I’m trying to be as vague as I can because I’m not sure what vendor names have been shared with the public) Here, I am managing a contract with an external vendor to model the Next Gen environment and examine the performance of the model (and system) through stress testing, etc. This one is new (got it this week), so I’m not positive what all it will entail. I am inheriting it from another BB (it was his full time project). Hopefully, it won’t be as encompassing as when he led it.
- Patents – I am leading a cross-functional team from CAT, Ford North America and Ford Europe to support SAP in filing for patents based on our intellectual property. It’s a little bit of process tweaking, one part legal cya, and one part firefighter.
- The other two are on hold, and really not that interesting anyway (not that the previous four were).
I’m enjoying the work, and it seems like we are able to get a lot done. This is mostly due to some really good team members, and a very supportive management layer directly above me.
I know this post was kind of dumb, but I have a hard time explaining some of this stuff in person.
