Security Confidential S11 E0 Lean Six-Sigma

Dark Rhiino Team: Welcome to another episode of the Dark Rhino Security podcast. This week, I sit down with our project manager to discuss Lean Six-Sigma and some ways that can be applied within cybersecurity.

All right, Jordan Graham sits down with me today. He is our project manager here at Dark Rhino. Jordan, how goes it?

Jordan Graham: It’s going good, man. Glad to be on here with you.

Dark Rhiino Team: I know. Yeah. This is your first time on the podcast. You did the very first tester podcast with me, but that one didn’t get released.

Jordan Graham: Yeah, we did the first one together. We had some fun with that one, and I’m glad to finally be on here with you.

Dark Rhiino Team: Yeah, good times. So, okay, project manager at Dark Rhino. What is your day-to-day? What does being a project manager entail for you?

Jordan Graham: Well, for me, it’s just going through all of our clients, making sure all the deliverables are met. I meet with the technical team on a daily basis and the sales team, for that matter. We just work together in tandem to make sure that things are being delivered on time. We make sure that our quality remains high, and in doing so, we use many methods, and we’ll talk about some of that today.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha. Master delegator.

Jordan Graham: Absolutely. Yeah. Master delegation.

Dark Rhiino Team: All right. That’s what a PM does, right?

So, part of your project management process is you’re currently becoming Six-Sigma. Is it certified, or you’re getting a Six-Sigma?

Jordan Graham: The technical term would be a Certified Six-Sigma Black Belt.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha. You are becoming a Certified Six-Sigma Black Belt.

Jordan Graham: That’s correct.

Dark Rhiino Team: I don’t have the slightest clue what that means. So, I’m hoping somebody who’s listening also doesn’t, and you can shed some light on that for us.

Jordan Graham: Not many people know what it is. So, I’m excited to talk about it. I’m nearing the end of my certification here, and I should be an actual Certified Black Belt here in the near future.

Dark Rhiino Team: Wow. All right. So, just give me a quick breakdown of what that means.

Jordan Graham: Well, in Six-Sigma, the technical name is Lean Six-Sigma.

Dark Rhiino Team: Okay. Okay.

Jordan Graham: So, let’s start with Lean. The Lean portion of Six-Sigma is very straightforward and simple. It’s all about reducing waste.

Dark Rhiino Team: Okay.

Jordan Graham: All right. And another way to look at it would be getting from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible.

I’ll correlate that to what I do on a daily basis here at Dark Rhino. And as it pertains to cybersecurity specifically, I’ll give some details around that in a bit.

The second side of Lean Six-Sigma is obviously the Six-Sigma portion. Six-Sigma in itself is a little bit more in-depth. Here we’re getting into a lot of mathematical formulas and a lot of data analysis, things like that. We’re taking this information and we apply it to all these different formulas and all these different types of charting principles, things of that nature.

Dark Rhiino Team: And we’re focused around reducing variance, right? A lot of this is centered around manufacturing industries.

Jordan Graham: Okay, for example. Not all of this is extremely relevant to cybersecurity. Cybersecurity in my world focuses a lot more on the Lean aspects of the program.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha. More than the Six-Sigma portion.

Jordan Graham: Yeah, the Six-Sigma portion again is all about reducing variance. In the automobile industry, it started at Toyota. That’s who originally initiated all of this.

What Toyota did is they needed a way to ensure that their quality coming off of their production lines was a little more consistent in their day-to-day process so that they were saving money down the road. They came up with these formulas and everything to reduce all their variance in their manufacturing processes.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha. So you’re essentially striving towards consistency and efficiency.

Jordan Graham: Absolutely. Speed and accuracy. That’s it: speed and accuracy. All right.

That’s what my instructor taught. So even Lean focuses on speed and accuracy. That’s the gist of everything Six-Sigma.

Dark Rhiino Team: All right. You get some extra credit.

Jordan Graham: Yeah, extra credit. There you go. Speed and accuracy are the keys on both elements.

Dark Rhiino Team: Okay, so Black Belt is the certification. Are there belts that are lower certifications that lead up to Black Belt being the pinnacle?

Jordan Graham: Yeah, certainly. I’m currently a Green Belt. It starts at the Yellow Belt level. There are some prerequisites prior to the belt certification, but Yellow Belt is probably the most common. That’s the entry level, and that’s all Lean.

When you first go to the course, they do the typical Lego example where you take these little blocks and organize them in a certain way. The instructor has you go through it multiple times with more information each round, and you see how you improve. You’re following a process.

That’s all Yellow Belt—strictly Lean. The Green Belt level starts to introduce Six-Sigma concepts, getting into mathematical equations and how to deploy those methods.

Then once you get to Black Belt, that’s mostly centered around Six-Sigma. It’s a lot of calculus and math. There is also Master Black Belt above that.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha. So it starts as Lean, then becomes a mix, then mostly Six-Sigma.

Jordan Graham: That’s pretty accurate.

Dark Rhiino Team: And you said you did this in the military before?

Jordan Graham: Yeah, it actually began about six years ago for me. When I joined the Marine Corps, I was sent to the Yellow Belt course and thrived in that. My job required me to apply Six-Sigma principles for process improvement.

Eventually, I became a Green Belt and used that in the military for a couple of projects. One of which ended up going Marine Corps–wide.

Dark Rhiino Team: That’s pretty cool. What did that apply to?

Jordan Graham: It was a new process to manage incoming and outgoing Marines. We developed a system to process financial entitlements faster and more accurately.

Before, payments could take weeks or months, and sometimes service members were over- or underpaid. We streamlined that—speed and accuracy—so they got paid correctly and faster.

Dark Rhiino Team: That does seem important.

Jordan Graham: Yeah, definitely.

Dark Rhiino Team: So now at Dark Rhino, how are you applying Lean?

Jordan Graham: Any business thrives on speed and accuracy. Here, I look at our processes—sales cycles, integrations, delivery—and apply Lean principles.

We use two main project approaches: Waterfall and Agile.

Waterfall is step-by-step, very sequential. Agile allows for working on multiple things at once to increase speed.

For example, instead of completing one product before starting another, Agile allows us to overlap workstreams.

I look at where we need structure for accuracy and where we can apply Agile for speed.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha.

Jordan Graham: One of the most useful tools I’ve learned is SIPOC.

Dark Rhiino Team: SIPOC?

Jordan Graham: Yeah—Source, Input, Process, Output, Customer.

You start with the process, map out steps, identify inputs and outputs, determine sources, and finally define the customer.

It helps you understand every part of a process and where improvements can be made.

Then we use DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.

Define the problem, measure performance, analyze issues, improve the process, and then control it to maintain results.

Dark Rhiino Team: Kind of like continuous improvement.

Jordan Graham: Exactly. You’re identifying bottlenecks, improving them, and making sure future projects run smoother.

Even though Six-Sigma can get very mathematical, at its core it’s simple: process improvement.

Speed and accuracy.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha. So once you finish your Black Belt, what’s next?

Jordan Graham: Possibly Master Black Belt, but mostly applying it here. Focus on Lean principles and continue improving our processes.

Even if something works, we can always make it faster or more accurate.

Dark Rhiino Team: Right. Always room to improve.

What would you say slows down implementations the most?

Jordan Graham: A lot of times, it’s scope creep.

Dark Rhiino Team: Define that real quick.

Jordan Graham: Scope creep is when a project expands beyond its original boundaries. The customer asks for additional work that wasn’t planned.

That can delay timelines. Other factors include customer readiness, missing information, or the need for extra testing to ensure quality.

It’s a balance—we want speed, but we also want to deliver a complete, accurate solution.

Dark Rhiino Team: Gotcha.

Well, I think that’s about all we need from you today. Jordan, I appreciate you taking the time.

Jordan Graham: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Have me on again.

Dark Rhiino Team: Oh yeah, for sure. We’ll do another one.

Jordan Graham: Sounds good. I’m going to go run some speed and accuracy formulas and see if I can improve us further.

Dark Rhiino Team: All right, sounds good.

Well, thanks again for joining us and as always, subscribe and check us out at darkrhinosecurity.com.