Background -
I work for a ~100 person sized genetics company that is newly owned by an ~8000+ person corporation. Over the last 2 years I've been our software development project manager and have learned how to do this job and the best practices based purely on experience I've gained here, my own mistakes, books, blogs, webinars, etc. No "formal" training; but I have a MS in Biochem so for whatever reason I was seen as a good fit for this role.
Recently we've had a couple of our staff members (laboratory staff not part of a PM dept) attend a 2-week corporate sponsored green belt training program for their own personal development. Now these folks have returned and they have a project to complete and have all these green belt tools ready to use. One of the projects is focused on our in-house lab software that is really quite a small change. If I were gathering requirements I would not plan on taking more than 1 month. However, through the use of the DMAIC model, my colleague has managed to make this small software change take 4 months and countless meetings, and we're only just starting the Analyze step. I'm sitting back, watching this happen and just baffled about the seemingly convoluted process. (Not to mention I'm somewhat...confused about why someone else is doing my job.)
So the crux of my question is - Can anyone speak to the utility of green belt techniques for small or medium sized software projects? Based on my experience and common sense this seems like a much too powerful tool for the project at hand. But without any real experience with green belt training myself, and only a couple years of software PM experience, I'm apprehensive to say 'THIS IS GARBAGE!!' to my senior management (who of course thinks green belt is great because corporate does it.)
Thoughts?