Organization-Wide Planning and Deployment
What to know
Deployment is the discipline of connecting strategy to projects. Expect questions on strategic planning tools - SWOT, balanced scorecard, hoshin kanri (with catchball and the X-matrix), benchmarking, and performance-excellence frameworks - and on why deployments fail: projects not tied to a strategic gap, absent sponsors, or the effort being run as a quality-department program instead of a management system.
Know the roles cold. The champion/sponsor provides resources and removes barriers; the Master Black Belt owns technical coaching and curriculum; the Black Belt leads projects full time; the Green Belt works part time; the process owner takes ownership of the improved process after handoff, including the control plan. Items frequently test the handoff to the process owner and the distinction between sponsor and champion.
Selection and financials
Projects should be chosen as a portfolio against strategic objectives, feasibility, risk, and financial return. Understand hard savings (scrap, labor, COPQ reduction) versus soft savings (avoided cost, released capacity), plus payback, NPV, and IRR. Cost of poor quality spans prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure.
Traps
Questions blur deployment-level planning with project-level Define work; “the Black Belt selects projects independently of management” is almost always the wrong answer. Another trap is treating a tool rollout (training everyone in DMAIC) as deployment.
Rule of thumb: a champion should be able to state the project's link to a business objective in one sentence, and a full-time Black Belt is commonly expected to close two to four projects a year with a savings target set by deployment leadership.