Summary Report

ASQ Emerging Quality Leaders

Microsoft Corporation Site Visit | August 2015

EMERGING QUALITY LEADERS MICROSOFT SITE VISIT SUMMARY REPORT2

OverviewThe ASQ Emerging Quality Leaders Program took up a multifaceted agenda in August for the second site visit of the program year, this time at Microsoft Corp. headquarters, Redmond, WA. The two-day session focused on the theme “Disruptive Technology Driving Transformation to the Quality Discipline.” Site visit objectives included:

• Conversations and collaboration among the cohort and Microsoft leaders to evolve the quality discipline to maximize business value

• Awareness of Microsoft’s leadership and challenges with quality and business excellence and the quality discipline

• A showcase of current and future Microsoft tools and technologies that enable quality techniques in action

Leader Panel Topic: Transformation Enabling Customer and Business Value and QualityThe site visit began with a Microsoft Quality Leader Panel, which posed questions to the cohort. These included:

• What are the biggest risks to the business, quality, and continuous improvement disciplines from disruptive, emerging technologies such as social media, mobile, analytics, business activity monitoring, cloud computing, and workflow automation?

• What are the biggest business value opportunities from quality and continuous improvement disciplines in response to these technologies?

The panelists challenged attendees to take information back to their companies, apply the principles, and use technology to their advantage.

Envision Center and Technology DemosAlso on the site visit agenda, the group traveled to the Microsoft Envision Center to learn of new technologies. Attendees experienced Microsoft’s intent of the center, which highlighted technology changes on the horizon. Microsoft’s immersive showcases feature the “Microsoft Home,” in-home technology advancements, and the “Envisioning Lab,” which explores the future workplace. The experience allowed for feedback on technologies, trends, and product investments Microsoft sees as having great potential over the next five to 10 years.

Microsoft Quality Leader PanelistsMichael Givot, principal quality engineer/quality director, quality and business excellence (QBE)

Carolyn Petro, corporate functions qual-ity leader, QBE

Geza Nemesszeghy, director of quality, QBE

Terence Lee, IT director, business pro-cess transformation, QBE

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Following these experiences, the cohort regrouped with Stavros Stratoudis, senior quality engineer for QBE, and Erik Anderson, principal quality engineer for strategic enterprise services IT, QBE, to discuss “Building a Process Fabric to Enable Business.” The discussion revolved around best practices and lessons learned, including:

• Technology can enable building a process fabric that connects disparate processes, systems, and data to drive business innovation.

• A focus on the people—customers, stakeholders, and project team members—is critical.

• Progress can be accelerated by failing fast.

Chris Slemp is an IT solution manager who works in social computing, driving the social strategy, experience, and adoption for Microsoft employees—including Yammer, the company’s social media platform. In the discussion, “Driving Culture Through Data,” Slemp described an internal culture shift, which includes less competition and suspicion, and more collaboration and trust. Data show communications via Yammer private messages and groups help engagement and responsiveness; statistics show that teams with high response rates are award winners. Slemp challenged the cohort to drive culture through data at their own companies.

Microsoft Intelligent Business Processes Session: QBE Transformation Malu Milan, Microsoft head of quality and business excellence, joined the sessions to shift attention to a case study and process performance modeling demonstration. Milan asked the cohort to envision using immersive products and services to create a more holistic approach within their organizations. Milan noted that Microsoft business runs in the cloud. Internally, Microsoft has more than 180,000 users, 513 sites within 113 countries, and 1 million devices on the network. Milan’s QBE team tracks, develops, and drives business improvement via cloud computing, social media, mobility, business intelligence, and big data. Microsoft delivers quantified business value, she said, through consulting and Lean Six Sigma, as well as:

• Quality operational strategy development and portfolio alignment

• Business optimization and process design

• BPM business intelligent process models

• Microsoft Quality Academy training initiatives

In addition, Lonnie Clark, QBE quality engineer, led a discussion related to vision and approach with clients. Clark said, “By working with clients to embrace data-driven decision making, you can reinforce and make readily apparent the need for quality processes.” He contends this is accomplished through rapid recognition of improvement opportunities and data-driven decisions. A culture of continuous improvement, and a focus on “metrics that matter” should deliver measurable business value, Clark noted.

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Yammer: Using Social Media to Build Quality Culture and CommunitiesThe cohort has begun to use Yammer for program communications, and they learned more about it from Louis Mullee, senior quality engineer, Microsoft strategic enterprise services IT. He advocated that by using a platform like Yammer, people and companies can do things faster, and discover, share, and grow through networks. Even as companies are not built for change, Mullee said, “There is a culture shift to connect, collaborate, and grow by harnessing the knowledge and power of our collective groups.” Yammer unifies and changes the way employees work, and it supports teamwork.

“Shark Tank”-Style Business Case Development Program participants used critical thinking skills and business experiences to make recommendations for a strategic quality opportunity at Microsoft in a “Shark Tank”-style exercise. Participants divided into groups and were presented with a business case framework, concept, and opportunity. The five teams delivered their cases to the “sharks,” who offered questions. The most innovative team gained fake investments for their venture. The approach included:

Problem Statement: To keep the quality discipline relevant and of high value to customers and the business, what must the strategy and business case be to address the following opportunities:

1. Leveraging Social and Mobile Technology to Strengthen Quality Culture and Collaboration via:

• Leadership emphasis

• Message credibility

• Employee ownership

• Peer involvement

2. Delivering Lean CI in the Digital World via:

• Digital gemba walks to discover E2E process performance

• Kaizen events for geographically dispersed and mobile teams

• Business performance dashboards for visualization, discovery, control, and sustainment

• Standardization via workflow automation

• Process simulation and machine learning for performance optimization

• Increasing productivity by leveraging reusable assets

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3. Increasing Business Performance With Big Data and Quality Data via:

• Defining and selling the business case for data quality management

• Defining an effective data quality approach aligned to relevant business

• Value that solves: bad data = bad process = bad business outcomes

• How to govern data quality improvement across the enterprise

4. Making Quality Easy for the Business via:

• Reducing required business effort for quality initiatives and practices

• Lean quality (doing more with less)

• Reduce the friction in learning and skill development (bite-sized increments)

5. Building a Quality Customer Experience in the Mobile-First, Cloud-First World via:

• Getting to know who your customer is

• Understanding the customer, end to end. What do they want and need?

• Connecting the dots to internal people, process, technology, and content

Microsoft Tour The site visit rounded out with a Microsoft campus tour and Commons visit. The Commons is a signature area in what the company calls the world’s largest corporate campus. The campus daytime population is more than 50,000 people; the Commons provides a gathering space and workspaces, including more than 14 restaurants, shops, medical facilities, a soccer field, pubs, and many other facilities allowing employees to fully utilize their surroundings.

Overall Experience“Hosting the ASQ Emerging Quality Leaders site visit was an outstanding experience for Microsoft, allowing us to partner with quality thought leaders across multiple industries to envision a more productive and higher value-delivering future for the quality and business excellence discipline,” said Michael Givot, principal quality engineer for QBE at Microsoft. “The excellent collaboration during this event resulted in all participants jointly innovating on how the quality and business excellence discipline can leverage emerging technologies, embrace mega trends such as social media, mobile analytics, and the cloud, and transform the way we all work in the new digital world. The end goal is for us to operate leaner, with digitized intelligent processes that increase the value delivered to all customers and business stakeholders, making the entire world more productive. The event was a fabulous experience to be part of.”

ABOUT THE ASQ EMERGING QUALITY LEADERS PROGRAM The Emerging Quality Leaders Program is a one-year leadership development experience for high-potential quality leaders in world-class corporations focused on establishing a culture of quality and performance excellence. The program prepares this elite group of rising professionals for impactful leadership and helps them emerge with a broader perspective on how to achieve performance excellence for their own organizations; stimulate creativity, risk taking, and innovation; and build the knowledge and capabilities necessary to lead in the 21st century.