2. Strategic Deployment and Organizational Roles

Introduction: From Improvement Method to Business System

Six Sigma is often introduced through statistical tools and the DMAIC cycle, but its organizational value depends less on isolated analytical skill than on the quality of its strategic deployment. A technically successful project may reduce defects and still fail to create meaningful value if it addresses a low-priority problem, conflicts with business strategy, transfers cost to another department, or produces gains that are not sustained. Strategic deployment therefore connects improvement activity with the organization’s purpose, competitive position, customer requirements, financial objectives, and operational capabilities.

Strategic deployment asks three linked questions. First, what outcomes matter most to customers and other stakeholders? Second, which organizational processes most strongly influence those outcomes? Third, how should leadership, governance, resources, and project work be arranged to produce and sustain improvement? These questions move Six Sigma from a collection of projects to an integrated management system.

This chapter examines the alignment of Six Sigma with business strategy and customer value, the evaluation and prioritization of project portfolios, and the roles of leaders, Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, Green Belts, process owners, and improvement teams. It also considers governance, digital enablement, ethical risks, and an illustrative deployment case.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, the learner should be able to:

1. Explain why strategic alignment is essential to Six Sigma deployment.

2. Relate customer value, critical-to-quality requirements, process performance, and business outcomes.

3. Distinguish project selection from project prioritization and portfolio management.

4. Apply criteria for evaluating Six Sigma project proposals.

5. Define the responsibilities and interfaces of major Six Sigma roles.

6. Evaluate organizational structures, governance mechanisms, and deployment risks.

7. Recommend an appropriate deployment approach for a complex organizational problem.

Strategic Logic of Six Sigma Deployment

A Six Sigma deployment is strategically coherent when improvement projects form a visible chain from organizational intent to operational action. The chain may be expressed as:

Strategic objectives → stakeholder and customer needs → value streams and processes → performance gaps → improvement projects → measurable business results.

For example, a bank may adopt a strategic objective of improving customer retention. Research may show that customers value rapid, accurate resolution of service requests. Process analysis may identify long response times and repeated handoffs in the complaints process. A suitable Six Sigma project would then address the causes of delay and rework rather than merely reducing the average handling time of a randomly selected service unit.

This logic prevents a common deployment error: beginning with available tools or enthusiastic employees instead of with an important business problem. Six Sigma should not be treated as an independent agenda competing with operations, marketing, finance, or information technology. It is a means of improving strategically important processes.

Strategy Deployment and Organizational Choice

Senior leaders determine the outcomes that the organization must achieve, but they should not normally prescribe every technical solution. Their responsibility is to establish direction, clarify priorities, allocate resources, and create conditions in which evidence-based improvement is possible. Deployment may be driven by different strategic concerns, including:

• growth in a target market;
• reduction of cost, defects, delays, or risk;
• improvement of customer experience;
• compliance with regulatory or safety requirements;
• greater process capacity and flexibility; and
• development of organizational problem-solving capability.

The emphasis will vary by sector. In healthcare, patient safety and continuity of care may dominate. In manufacturing, yield, delivery reliability, and total cost may be central. In financial services, accuracy, cycle time, risk control, and customer trust may be interconnected. A mature deployment recognizes these differences rather than applying identical project targets to every department.

Customer Value and Critical Requirements

Customer value is not equivalent to internal efficiency. A shorter process that produces more errors may reduce internal labor while damaging customer trust. Strategic Six Sigma therefore begins with a clear understanding of what customers value and what they regard as unacceptable.

The voice of the customer may be obtained through interviews, surveys, complaint analysis, observation, service data, market research, and regulatory requirements. These inputs are translated into measurable critical-to-quality (CTQ) requirements. A broad statement such as “customers want dependable delivery” must be converted into operational definitions, such as delivery by the promised date, complete shipment, and acceptable condition at receipt.

A useful deployment chain is:

Voice of the customer → customer requirement → CTQ measure → process characteristic → project objective.

This chain also helps prevent the misuse of internal metrics. For instance, call duration may be easy to measure, but it is not automatically a CTQ. If customers value first-contact resolution, reducing call duration could be counterproductive. Measures must represent value, not merely convenience of measurement.

Translating Strategy into a Project Portfolio

A project portfolio is the collection of improvement projects selected and managed as a related set. Portfolio thinking is important because projects compete for the same people, data, specialist support, and managerial attention. Selecting projects one at a time can produce duplication, resource conflict, or an excessive concentration on easily measurable local problems.

From Strategic Objectives to Project Charters

Strategic objectives are too broad to serve directly as project statements. A project charter converts a strategic concern into a bounded improvement assignment. A sound charter generally identifies:

• the business and customer problem;
• the process and boundaries under study;
• the problem’s magnitude and evidence;
• the objective and expected benefits;
• the project sponsor and process owner;
• the project team and provisional timetable; and
• constraints, assumptions, and governance requirements.

A weak problem statement says, “The department must improve service.” A stronger statement says, “During the last two quarters, 28 percent of eligible claims exceeded the stated resolution time, generating repeat contacts and customer complaints.” The second statement is measurable without prematurely assuming the cause or solution.

Project Selection Criteria

No single scoring formula is universally correct, but most organizations should examine several dimensions before authorizing a project.

Strategic relevance concerns the project’s contribution to stated organizational priorities. Customer impact considers effects on quality, reliability, accessibility, safety, or experience. Financial and operational value includes cost reduction, revenue protection, capacity release, avoidance of failure cost, and risk reduction. Feasibility covers data availability, process ownership, technical complexity, organizational readiness, and the ability to complete the work within a reasonable period. Urgency reflects regulatory deadlines, safety exposure, competitive pressure, or rapidly increasing losses. Sustainability asks whether process controls, ownership, and capability exist to maintain the gains.

A project should not be selected solely because its estimated financial benefit is large. Estimates may be speculative, benefits may overlap with other projects, and implementation may be impractical. Conversely, a compliance or patient-safety project may deserve priority even when direct financial benefit is difficult to calculate.

Portfolio Balance

Portfolio management introduces a further question: even if each project appears attractive individually, is the total portfolio balanced? A portfolio may be assessed across several dimensions:

• short-term versus long-term benefits;
• customer-facing versus internally focused improvement;
• incremental improvement versus redesign;
• cost, quality, speed, risk, and capability objectives;
• projects in different business units or value streams; and
• varying levels of uncertainty and resource demand.

Too many projects create “project overload,” in which employees attend meetings and prepare reports without sufficient time for analysis or implementation. Too few projects may fail to build momentum or address systemic problems. Senior governance should therefore limit work in progress and periodically stop, combine, defer, or redesign projects whose assumptions no longer hold.

A Practical Prioritization Matrix

An organization can rank proposals using a weighted model. For example, strategic alignment might receive a weight of 0.25, customer impact 0.20, financial or risk value 0.20, feasibility 0.15, urgency 0.10, and sustainability 0.10. Each proposal can be rated on a defined scale, such as 1 to 5, and the weighted score calculated. The numerical result should support, not replace, managerial judgment.

The scoring criteria must be defined carefully. “High financial benefit” should have a common interpretation, and the source and confidence of each estimate should be recorded. A governance group should also examine dependencies. Two projects may appear valuable separately but may rely on the same data analyst or address the same root cause. Portfolio decisions should include capacity review, benefit validation, and risk discussion.

Organizational Roles and the Division of Responsibility

Six Sigma requires differentiated roles because strategic sponsorship, technical coaching, project leadership, process ownership, and subject expertise are not identical responsibilities. Titles vary across organizations, but the underlying accountabilities should be explicit.

Executive Leadership

Executives establish the strategic case for deployment. They communicate why improvement matters, connect projects with business planning, appoint credible sponsors, remove barriers, allocate resources, and review outcomes. They are accountable for the organizational environment in which Six Sigma operates.

Executive support is more than approving training budgets. Leaders must make decisions when project work conflicts with operational priorities, ensure that benefits are recognized in financial and performance systems, and hold managers accountable for sustaining results. If leaders praise improvement but reward only short-term output, employees will reasonably conclude that Six Sigma is secondary.

Champions

A Champion is a senior manager responsible for translating strategic priorities into a manageable group of improvement projects and for ensuring that projects receive organizational support. Champions typically:

• identify and screen project opportunities;
• confirm alignment with strategic and customer priorities;
• appoint or approve process owners and project leaders;
• secure cross-functional participation and resources;
• remove escalation barriers;
• review tollgate progress and benefit assumptions; and
• ensure that completed projects are transferred into normal management.

The Champion is not the technical owner of every statistical analysis. A Champion who dictates causes or solutions before evidence is collected weakens the project. The appropriate role is to challenge the importance, scope, evidence, risks, and decisions while enabling the technical team to perform its work.

Master Black Belts

Master Black Belts are senior improvement professionals who provide methodological leadership, coaching, training, quality assurance, and deployment support. They help standardize project selection, chartering, measurement, analytical practice, tollgate review, and control planning. They may coach Black Belts and Champions, develop internal capability, and identify patterns across projects.

Their role is both technical and organizational. A Master Black Belt should recognize when a project requires DMAIC, a design-oriented approach, rapid improvement, process management, or escalation to a broader transformation. They also protect methodological integrity without turning Six Sigma into a ritual. Their independence is valuable when they challenge inflated benefit claims or weak evidence.

Black Belts

A Black Belt normally leads complex, cross-functional projects, often as a substantial or full-time assignment. Responsibilities include defining the problem with stakeholders, planning data collection, leading analysis, facilitating team decisions, testing improvements, quantifying results, and establishing controls. Black Belts must combine statistical competence with communication, facilitation, project management, and change leadership.

Black Belts do not own the process permanently. Their effectiveness is demonstrated partly by transferring knowledge and control to the process owner. A project that depends indefinitely on the Black Belt has not achieved institutionalized improvement.

Green Belts

Green Belts are employees trained to participate in improvement projects and frequently lead projects of limited scope or complexity while maintaining their regular roles. They contribute process knowledge, data collection, analysis, experimentation, documentation, and control activities.

Because Green Belts divide their time between project and operational duties, managers must protect an explicit amount of capacity. Assigning a project without releasing any operational workload creates predictable delay and superficial analysis.

Process Owners

The process owner has continuing accountability for process performance, resources, standards, risks, and results. The process owner may not control every activity in a cross-functional value stream, but must have sufficient authority to coordinate the relevant participants.

Process owners define operational requirements, provide access to subject experts and data, approve practical changes, participate in control-plan design, and monitor performance after project closure. Their involvement is essential for sustainability. A project team can improve a process temporarily, but only the operating organization can maintain it over time.

Improvement Team Members

Team members provide operational, technical, customer, data, compliance, and support perspectives. Effective teams are deliberately composed rather than assembled solely from the initiating department. Members should understand the problem, contribute evidence, challenge assumptions respectfully, test solutions, and help implement changes.

Team membership also has a social dimension. Employees closest to the work often possess knowledge that formal data do not capture. Excluding them can produce technically elegant but impractical recommendations. At the same time, teams should avoid excessive size and clarify decision rights.

Governance: Connecting Project Work with Management Control

Governance provides the decision architecture for deployment. It answers who may authorize a project, who may change its scope, how benefits are validated, when a project should be escalated, and who accepts the process after closure.

Tollgate reviews are one governance mechanism. At defined points, a sponsor or review board examines whether the project has a credible problem, adequate measurement, evidence-based analysis, tested improvement, and a viable control plan. Tollgates should be decision points, not ceremonial presentations. A project may be continued, redirected, paused, combined with another project, or stopped.

A robust governance system also distinguishes project benefit from accounting benefit. A reduction in processing time may create capacity, but it becomes a realized financial benefit only if the capacity is used or cost is actually avoided. Finance, operations, and the project team should agree on benefit definitions at the beginning and verify results after implementation.

Deployment Approaches and Their Trade-offs

Organizations can deploy Six Sigma through different patterns. A top-down strategic deployment begins with enterprise priorities and cascades objectives into value streams and projects. It provides strong alignment but may overlook local problems or impose centrally selected initiatives.

A bottom-up improvement approach begins with operational teams identifying problems. It encourages ownership and can reveal practical opportunities, but may produce fragmented projects and weak strategic coherence.

A value-stream deployment focuses on end-to-end customer journeys or product flows rather than departmental boundaries. It is often effective for reducing handoffs and optimizing total lead time, although it requires stronger cross-functional governance.

A hybrid approach combines strategic direction from executives with local problem identification and evidence-based challenge. In many mature organizations, this is the most adaptable model. The essential issue is not choosing a fashionable label but ensuring alignment, authority, analytical discipline, and process ownership.

Illustrative Case: Deploying Six Sigma in a Regional Hospital

Background

The following is a fictional illustrative case. A regional hospital had introduced Six Sigma training after receiving increasing complaints about delays in elective surgery. Senior leaders initially proposed a project to reduce average patient waiting time in the surgical admission area.

Situation and Problem

The proposed project appeared attractive, but preliminary mapping showed that the admission area was only one part of a wider process involving pre-admission testing, bed assignment, operating-room readiness, pharmacy release, and discharge planning. Patients experienced delay at several points, and staff often worked around missing information. The hospital also faced a patient-safety objective concerning medication reconciliation.

Analysis

The Champion and Master Black Belt asked the team to connect the project with strategic priorities: patient safety, dependable access, and effective use of operating-room capacity. Voice-of-the-patient data, complaint records, timestamp analysis, and staff interviews were combined. The team found that the most serious problems were incomplete pre-admission information and late changes to bed and theatre schedules. Focusing only on the admission desk would have optimized a local activity without resolving the principal causes.

The proposed portfolio was therefore reassessed. One project addressed pre-admission information completeness; another addressed scheduling visibility across departments. A separate safety project focused on medication reconciliation and was prioritized despite limited direct financial benefit. The projects shared data and governance but retained distinct charters and process owners.

Approach and Strategy

A senior clinical Champion secured participation from surgery, nursing, pharmacy, admissions, information technology, and finance. A Black Belt led the scheduling project, while Green Belts from nursing and admissions led focused process improvements. The process owners agreed on operational definitions for “ready for surgery,” “on-time admission,” and “complete medication reconciliation.” The Master Black Belt reviewed measurement plans and challenged claims that did not distinguish capacity release from actual cost savings.

The teams introduced a standardized readiness checklist, a daily cross-functional schedule review, and visible escalation rules for missing information. Changes were piloted in one surgical specialty before wider implementation. Control plans assigned monitoring responsibilities to process owners rather than to the project team.

Outcome

The illustrative hospital observed fewer avoidable handoffs, more predictable admission preparation, and improved visibility of schedule risks. The most important result was not a single average-time improvement but a clearer end-to-end process with defined ownership and measures linked to patient value. The safety project also demonstrated that strategic prioritization must include risk and clinical significance, not merely financial return.

Learning Points

The case illustrates five principles. First, a local symptom may conceal a value-stream problem. Second, portfolio design is superior to isolated project selection when projects share causes or resources. Third, CTQs must be operationally defined. Fourth, process owners must accept responsibility for sustaining changes. Finally, governance should protect both customer outcomes and professional obligations.

Challenges, Risks, and Common Mistakes

Strategic deployments frequently encounter predictable difficulties. Senior sponsorship may be verbal but not demonstrated through resource decisions. Projects may be selected because a manager has a preferred solution, because data are convenient, or because a team is available. Benefits may be double-counted across projects. A project may also be assigned to a Black Belt without a committed process owner, making implementation unlikely.

Other risks include excessive bureaucracy, overemphasis on certification, weak customer representation, poor data quality, and treating every problem as a DMAIC project. Some problems require standard work, maintenance action, technology replacement, product redesign, or a management decision rather than an extended improvement project.

Cultural risks deserve particular attention. If project results are used to punish individuals, employees may hide defects or manipulate data. If targets are unrealistic, teams may report favorable but unreliable results. Leaders should distinguish variation caused by systems from individual negligence and should encourage truthful escalation.

Ethics, Governance, and Professional Responsibility

Six Sigma projects can affect employment, access to services, safety, privacy, and resource allocation. Ethical deployment requires accurate reporting, respect for confidentiality, informed use of personal data, and consideration of unintended consequences. A cost-reduction project should not transfer burden to vulnerable customers or frontline employees without evaluation.

Where projects involve patient, employee, financial, or customer data, access must follow applicable privacy, security, and professional requirements. Analytical convenience does not justify unnecessary collection or disclosure. Regulatory and safety requirements take precedence over a project’s schedule or financial target. Teams should document assumptions, exclusions, conflicts of interest, and limitations in the evidence.

Digital Enablement and Emerging Developments

Digital systems can strengthen deployment by connecting strategy maps, project portfolios, workflow data, dashboards, and financial validation. Process mining can reveal actual paths, rework, and waiting points in event-log data. Collaboration platforms can support charter approval, tollgate records, action tracking, and control monitoring. Advanced analytics and machine learning may assist prediction or anomaly detection, but they do not replace problem definition, process knowledge, or accountable decision-making.

Organizations are increasingly combining Six Sigma with Lean, process management, agile delivery, design thinking, and digital transformation. This integration can be productive when methods are selected according to the problem. It becomes harmful when terminology replaces clear accountability. Artificial intelligence may identify patterns or generate hypotheses, but teams must validate data quality, monitor bias, explain important decisions, and retain human oversight.

Best Practices for Strategic Deployment

Effective deployment commonly rests on the following practices:

1. Begin with strategy, customer value, risk, and process performance rather than with tools.

2. Use clear operational definitions and baseline evidence before setting targets.

3. Require a committed Champion and process owner for every significant project.

4. Evaluate projects as a portfolio, including resource capacity and interdependencies.

5. Use tollgates for real decisions and stop projects that no longer justify effort.

6. Validate benefits jointly with operations and finance, distinguishing estimated from realized value.

7. Protect analytical integrity and encourage truthful reporting of unfavorable results.

8. Design sustainability into the project through ownership, standard work, measures, and response plans.

9. Develop Green Belts and other employees as capability, not merely as certification numbers.

10. Review the deployment system itself and adapt it as strategy, technology, and customer expectations change.

Chapter Summary

Strategic Six Sigma deployment aligns improvement activity with organizational objectives, customer value, process performance, and measurable outcomes. The central logic moves from strategy to stakeholder requirements, CTQs, process gaps, projects, and sustained results. Project portfolios should be evaluated through strategic relevance, customer impact, value, feasibility, urgency, sustainability, resource capacity, and interdependence rather than through financial estimates alone.

Effective deployment depends on complementary roles. Executives provide direction and resources; Champions connect strategy with projects; Master Black Belts provide methodological and deployment leadership; Black Belts lead complex projects; Green Belts contribute and lead focused improvements; process owners sustain performance; and team members provide cross-functional knowledge. Governance, benefit validation, ethical conduct, and digital enablement strengthen the system. The ultimate test of Six Sigma is not the number of trained people or completed projects, but the organization’s ability to produce customer and business value reliably over time.

Key Terms

Strategic deployment: The systematic translation of organizational strategy into aligned improvement priorities and projects.

Customer value: The benefits a customer receives relative to the sacrifices, costs, risks, or effort involved.

Voice of the customer: Collected and interpreted information about customer needs, expectations, experiences, and dissatisfaction.

Critical-to-quality (CTQ): A measurable requirement that is essential to customer or stakeholder satisfaction.

Value stream: The end-to-end sequence of activities that creates and delivers a product or service.

Project charter: A formal statement defining a project’s problem, objective, scope, ownership, resources, and governance.

Project portfolio: The coordinated collection of projects competing for organizational resources and supporting strategic objectives.

Portfolio balance: The extent to which a project collection appropriately distributes effort across objectives, time horizons, risks, and functions.

Champion: A senior manager who sponsors projects, aligns them with strategy, and removes organizational barriers.

Master Black Belt: An expert who provides advanced methodological guidance, coaching, training, and deployment governance.

Black Belt: A practitioner who leads complex, usually cross-functional improvement projects.

Green Belt: A trained employee who contributes to or leads improvement projects while retaining operational responsibilities.

Process owner: The person accountable for continuing process performance, resources, standards, and sustainability.

Tollgate review: A formal governance checkpoint at which project progress, evidence, risks, and next actions are evaluated.

Benefit validation: The process of confirming that claimed project results are real, attributable, and recognized by relevant business functions.

Sustainability: The ability of an improved process to maintain its performance after project closure.

Project overload: A condition in which excessive simultaneous initiatives exceed available organizational capacity.

CTQ flowdown: Translation of customer requirements into measurable process and project requirements.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is strategic alignment necessary for a technically successful Six Sigma project?

2. Distinguish a customer requirement from a critical-to-quality measure.

3. State four criteria that may be used to evaluate a Six Sigma project proposal.

4. What is the principal difference between the Champion and the process owner?

5. Why should tollgate reviews be treated as decision points rather than presentations?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how an organization can translate strategic objectives into a Six Sigma project portfolio.

2. Discuss the responsibilities and interrelationships of executives, Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, Green Belts, and process owners.

3. Examine the advantages and risks of top-down, bottom-up, value-stream, and hybrid deployment approaches.

4. Explain how customer value and CTQs should influence project selection and measurement.

5. Discuss the governance, ethical, and sustainability requirements of an enterprise Six Sigma deployment.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A manufacturing firm has proposed ten projects, but only four Black Belts and limited data-analytics capacity are available. Develop a prioritization approach and explain how you would balance strategic value, feasibility, risk, and portfolio capacity.

2. A service project has reduced average handling time by 20 percent, but customer complaints and repeat contacts have increased. Analyze what may have gone wrong in the CTQ and project-selection logic, and recommend corrective action.

3. Design the roles, governance arrangements, and initial project portfolio for a hospital or university seeking to improve an end-to-end service that crosses at least four departments.

22. Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which sequence best represents the strategic logic of Six Sigma deployment?

A. Tools → training → certification → projects → strategy

B. Strategy → customer requirements → process gaps → projects → sustained results

C. Projects → financial savings → customer research → strategy → controls

D. Technology → automation → staffing → customer requirements → strategy

Correct Answer: B. Strategy → customer requirements → process gaps → projects → sustained results

Question 2

A call centre reduces average call duration, but first-contact resolution declines. What does this most strongly indicate?

A. The project used a measure that may not represent customer value

B. The process has achieved higher sigma performance

C. The Champion should remove the process owner

D. Portfolio scoring is unnecessary

Correct Answer: A. The project used a measure that may not represent customer value

Question 3

Which responsibility most appropriately belongs to a Six Sigma Champion?

A. Perform every statistical test personally

B. Maintain the process control chart after project closure

C. Align projects with strategy and remove organizational barriers

D. Replace all subject-matter experts on the project team

Correct Answer: C. Align projects with strategy and remove organizational barriers

Question 4

Why is portfolio management important in Six Sigma deployment?

A. It ensures that every department receives the same number of projects

B. It eliminates the need for project charters

C. It allows projects to avoid financial and customer measures

D. It addresses resource conflicts, dependencies, and balance across objectives

Correct Answer: D. It addresses resource conflicts, dependencies, and balance across objectives

Question 5

Which statement best describes the process owner’s role?

A. The process owner is accountable for continuing process performance and sustainability

B. The process owner leads only the statistical analysis phase

C. The process owner approves training certificates but not process changes

D. The process owner is replaced by the Black Belt after project completion

Correct Answer: A. The process owner is accountable for continuing process performance and sustainability

Question 6

A project has a large estimated cost saving but no committed process owner and poor data availability. What is the most appropriate portfolio conclusion?

A. Select it automatically because financial value is the only criterion

B. Reject all projects with uncertain data

C. Assess feasibility and ownership before authorizing or redesigning it

D. Assign it to a Green Belt without changing the charter

Correct Answer: C. Assess feasibility and ownership before authorizing or redesigning it

Question 7

What is the main purpose of a tollgate review?

A. To certify that every project must continue to completion

B. To make evidence-based decisions about project progress, risks, and next steps

C. To replace customer research with executive opinion

D. To calculate employee performance ratings

Correct Answer: B. To make evidence-based decisions about project progress, risks, and next steps

Question 8

In the illustrative hospital case, why was focusing only on the admission desk considered inadequate?

A. The admission desk had no measurable performance data

B. The hospital did not have a Champion

C. The problem extended across a value stream with several related causes and handoffs

D. DMAIC cannot be used in healthcare

Correct Answer: C. The problem extended across a value stream with several related causes and handoffs

Question 9

Which practice best supports ethical Six Sigma deployment?

A. Suppressing unfavorable results until the project is complete

B. Using personal data whenever it improves analytical convenience

C. Treating financial targets as more important than safety requirements

D. Protecting confidentiality and reporting evidence and limitations accurately

Correct Answer: D. Protecting confidentiality and reporting evidence and limitations accurately

Question 10

What is a significant risk of assigning a Green Belt a project without reducing operational workload?

A. The project may be delayed or receive only superficial analysis

B. The project will necessarily produce excessive financial benefits

C. The process owner will automatically become a Master Black Belt

D. The project will no longer require customer requirements

Correct Answer: A. The project may be delayed or receive only superficial analysis