My website’s redesign and this entire plan I have hatched came out of nearly nowhere. Honestly, it also ignored all the Six Sigma processes I studied over the course of a few months to get my black belt. I enacted the plan as a distraction out of a place of pain. I cannot go back and fix that, but it is an opportunity to discuss the DMAIC process in Six Sigma. DMAIC is a fancy acronym for “Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.” It has a cousin DMADV, but that does not really apply for this use case. Let’s dive into how to properly apply DMAIC.
The first step of DMAIC is define, which means to define the goal you want to achieve, and problem you want to solve. My biggest problem with my old site is that it was a portfolio masquerading as a blog. It worked as a makeshift solution, but long term it was unsustainable. Even if I can write code quickly, brainstorming applications is not a quick enough process. Not to mention refactoring applications can be incredibly boring. On the other hand, a portfolio itself will not attract a lot of attention or tell the whole story. I have an overview of the problem, but I should have collected more information and dove deeper.
The second step is to measure, which relates entirely to handling data. I honestly do not have a whole lot of information on my demographics aside from which country they reside. That information can be shaky depending on the software I’m using too. I noticed traffic was increasing and I felt it made sense to make a more sustainable website. I did not even check which time of day this website is at its slowest to plan the rollout. That sort of ties into analysis, which is the third step. As a result traffic has slowed down a little bit, but I do not think that will be a long term problem with the new setup. I am ignoring the final two steps of DMAIC because it’s hard to improve or control for variables if you do not track them from the beginning.
At the end of the day everything worked out fine. However, I really do not recommend handling things the way I handled them. It is important to brainstorm over solutions, communicate potential solutions and get feedback, ensure everything you’re relying on is reliable, and continue to monitor everything as you. Now in the coming days I have rework muda (waste) because I need to change my portfolio around a little to include this new project appropriately. This new design makes that a lot easier, but ideally I would have put more thought into things from the beginning. That should be up tomorrow despite everything I’m working through right now.
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