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4.2 Team Roles, Responsibilities, and Member Selection

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ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt CSSBB

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1 Chapter 1: Introduction & CSSBB Exam Strategy

1.1 CSSBB Exam Format, Scoring, and Testing Windows 1.2 Eligibility, Project Affidavits, Application, and Recertification 1.3 Open-Book Strategy, Reference Materials, and a 16-Week Study Plan

2 Chapter 2: Organization-Wide Planning and Deployment

2.1 Fundamentals of Six Sigma and Lean Methodologies 2.2 Selecting the Right Methodology: DMAIC, DFSS, and Lean 2.3 Business Systems, Processes, and Stakeholder Relationships 2.4 Strategic Planning and Deployment of Six Sigma Initiatives 2.5 Six Sigma Roles and Responsibilities 2.6 Organizational Barriers and Common Causes of Six Sigma Failure 2.7 Change Management: Stakeholder Analysis, Readiness, and Communication

3 Chapter 3: Organizational Process Management and Measures

3.1 Impact of Six Sigma Projects on Customers, Suppliers, and Stakeholders 3.2 Benchmarking Types and Performance Goal Setting 3.3 Performance Measures: Balanced Scorecard, KPIs, KBIs, OKRs, and Line of Sight 3.4 Leading and Lagging Indicators and Performance Dashboards 3.5 Financial Measures: Revenue Growth, Margin, NPV, ROI, and Cost-Benefit Analysis 3.6 Cost of Poor Quality and Hard versus Soft Savings

4 Chapter 4: Team Management

4.1 Team Types and Constraints 4.2 Team Roles, Responsibilities, and Member Selection 4.3 Team Success Factors and Ground Rules 4.4 Motivational Techniques and Overcoming Demotivators 4.5 Stages of Team Development and Conflict Resolution 4.6 Team Communication Plans 4.7 Team Leadership Models: Direct, Coach, Support, and Delegate 4.8 Group Behaviors, Conflict Resolution, and Meeting Management 4.9 Facilitation Techniques and Team Decision-Making Methods 4.10 Team Training: Needs Assessment, Delivery, and Evaluation

5 Chapter 5: Define Phase

5.1 Customer Identification and Segmentation 5.2 Customer Data Collection: Methods, Validity, and Reliability 5.3 Customer Requirements: CTX, CTQ Trees, and Operational Definitions 5.4 The Kano Model and Quality Function Deployment 5.5 SIPOC and Process Mapping 5.6 Business Case Justification 5.7 The Project Charter and the Problem Statement 5.8 Project Scope and Boundaries 5.9 SMART Goals and Project Performance Measurements 5.10 Project Charter Reviews and Toll-Gate Governance 5.11 Project Management Tools: Gantt Charts, Toll-Gate Reviews, WBS, and RACI 5.12 Analytical Tools Used Throughout the DMAIC Cycle

6 Chapter 6: Measure Phase

6.1 Process Flow Metrics and the Hidden Factory 6.2 Process Analysis Tools and Value Stream Mapping 6.3 Types of Data and Measurement Scales 6.4 Sampling Concepts, Methods, and Sample Size for Estimation 6.5 Data Collection Plans and Common Pitfalls 6.6 Gage R&R for Variable Measurement Systems 6.7 Attribute Agreement Analysis and Audit MSA 6.8 Measurement Systems Across the Organization, and Metrology 6.9 Population Parameters, Sample Statistics, and Valid Statistical Conclusions 6.10 Descriptive Statistics: Central Tendency, Dispersion, and Shape 6.11 Graphical Methods for Exploratory Data Analysis 6.12 Probability Concepts, Common Distributions, and the Central Limit Theorem 6.13 Additional Distributions: Hypergeometric, Exponential, Lognormal, Weibull, and Bivariate 6.14 Process Capability and Performance Indices 6.15 Capability Studies, Attributes Capability, Yield Metrics, and Long-Term Capability

7 Chapter 7: Analyze Phase

7.1 The Correlation Coefficient, Its Confidence Interval, and Causation 7.2 Linear Regression and Residual Analysis 7.3 Multivariate Tools: Factor Analysis, Discriminant Analysis, and MANOVA 7.4 Hypothesis Testing Terminology, Errors, and Single-Sample Tests 7.5 Statistical Versus Practical Significance 7.6 Sample Size for Hypothesis Tests 7.7 Point Estimates, Confidence, Prediction, and Tolerance Intervals 7.8 Tests for Means, Variances, and Proportions 7.9 Analysis of Variance 7.10 Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit and Tests of Independence 7.11 Types of Risk and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis 7.12 Gap Analysis and Root Cause Analysis 7.13 Waste Analysis: The Seven Classic Wastes and Resource Under-Utilization

8 Chapter 8: Improve Phase

8.1 Design of Experiments: Objectives, Terminology, and Effects 8.2 DOE Design Principles: Randomization, Blocking, Replication, and Resolution 8.3 Planning and Evaluating Designed Experiments 8.4 One-Factor Experiments: Completely Randomized, Randomized Block, and Latin Square Designs 8.5 Full Factorial Experiments and Design Selection 8.6 Two-Level Fractional Factorial Experiments and Confounding 8.7 Response Surface Methodology and Optimization 8.8 Waste Elimination: Pull Systems, Kanban, 5S, and Poka-Yoke 8.9 Cycle-Time Reduction: Continuous Flow, SMED, and Heijunka 8.10 Kaizen, Kaizen Blitz, Theory of Constraints, and OEE 8.11 Implementation Planning, Piloting, and Solution Selection

9 Chapter 9: Control Phase

9.1 SPC Objectives, Variable Selection, and Rational Subgrouping 9.2 Control Charts for Variables Data 9.3 Control Charts for Attributes Data 9.4 Short-Run SPC and Moving Average Charts 9.5 Control Chart Analysis: Common Cause, Special Cause, and Run Rules 9.6 Total Productive Maintenance and Visual Controls 9.7 Measurement System Reanalysis 9.8 Control Plan Development and Process Owner Handoff 9.9 Lessons Learned, Documentation, and Training for Sustainment 9.10 Ongoing Evaluation of the Improved Process

10 Chapter 10: Design for Six Sigma (DFSS)

10.1 DFSS Frameworks: DMADV, DMADOV, and Design Transfer 10.2 Design for X (DFX) 10.3 Robust Design, Parameter Design, and Verification 10.4 Tolerance Design and Statistical Tolerancing

4.2 Team Roles, Responsibilities, and Member Selection

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

The four team roles named in the Body of Knowledge are leader, facilitator, coach, and individual team member.

A facilitator owns the process of the meeting and stays neutral on content; a leader owns the content and the outcome.

Combining leader and facilitator in one person suppresses dissent, because the person judging ideas also controls who speaks.

Member selection criteria are ability to influence, openness to change, required skill sets, subject-matter expertise, and availability.

Availability is the criterion most often assumed rather than confirmed, and the one that most often causes schedule failure.

Last updated: August 2026

  • Four working roles
  • These are roles inside the team, distinct from the enterprise belt hierarchy of champion, Master
  • Black Belt, Black Belt, and Green Belt. One person can hold more than one, but the responsibilities

must still be discharged.

Role Owns Typical behaviour Failure mode if vacant

Leader Content, outcome, deliverables, external interfaces Sets the agenda's purpose, makes and defends decisions, reports to the sponsor Drift; the team analyses without converging

Facilitator Process of the discussion; neutral on content Manages participation, timeboxes, surfaces disagreement, records decisions Loudest voice wins; quiet expertise never surfaces

Coach Capability of the individuals Teaches tools just in time, reviews analysis, develops belts Tool misuse goes undetected until toll gate

Individual member A domain, a data source, a work stream Brings process reality, collects data, tests solutions in their area Assumptions substitute for process knowledge

  • Leader versus facilitator: keep them separate when you can
  • The distinction is a favourite exam target. The facilitator is neutral on content . Their job is
  • that the discussion is fair, timeboxed, and converges: drawing out reluctant participants, containing

dominant ones, testing for genuine consensus rather than fatigue, and capturing decisions and actions.

The leader is not neutral . They have a view, they must decide, and they answer to the sponsor for

the outcome.

  • When one person does both, the person judging the ideas also controls who gets to speak. Dissent
  • becomes costly and quietly disappears. On a high-stakes workshop -- a charter session, an FMEA, a

solution selection -- borrow a facilitator from another team or from the Master Black Belt pool.

  • Coach
  • Coaching is developmental, not directive: asking the question that leads the Green Belt to see that a
  • two-sample t-test assumes independence, rather than running the analysis for them. Master Black Belts
  • coach Black Belts, Black Belts coach Green Belts, and process owners coach their staff on the control
  • plan. The Body of Knowledge stresses coaching multiple levels of leadership as an enterprise

responsibility, not merely a team one.

  • Individual member
  • The individual member is the most under-specified role and the most important. Their responsibility
  • is to bring process reality : what actually happens on night shift, which work instruction is
  • ignored, where the undocumented workaround lives. A team of analysts without operators produces

elegant models of imaginary processes.

  • Selection criteria
  • The Body of Knowledge names five factors. Score candidates against all five rather than defaulting to

whoever is free.

Criterion What to look for Warning sign

Ability to influence Respected by peers; can get a change accepted on the floor Formal title with no informal standing

Openness to change Curious, tolerates being wrong, tests rather than defends "We tried that in 2019" as a first response

Required skill sets Data extraction, statistical software, process mapping, facilitation Team where all five members bring the same skill

Subject-matter expertise Deep knowledge of the specific process, equipment, or customer segment Generic functional knowledge with no hands-on exposure

  • Availability Confirmed hours released by their manager, in writing "They can fit it in"
  • On availability
  • Availability is the criterion teams assume and then discover. A member who is nominally 20% allocated
  • but is also the sole person who can clear a line jam is 0% allocated during exactly the periods when
  • the process is most interesting. Confirm availability with the member's manager as a named number

of hours per week with backfill identified , and put it in the charter.

  • On influence versus authority
  • Influence is not seniority. The most valuable member on a shop-floor project is frequently the
  • long-service operator whom other operators believe. Recruiting a skeptical, respected operator early

converts the most credible potential opponent into the most credible advocate.

  • Sizing the team
  • Five to eight core members is the practical range for a DMAIC team. Below five, key perspectives are
  • missing and the workload concentrates on the belt. Above eight, meeting time per person collapses,
  • scheduling becomes the dominant constraint, and participation becomes optional. Larger projects are
  • handled with a small core team plus an extended network of subject-matter experts who join for
  • specific sessions -- the FMEA, the solution selection, the control plan review -- rather than by

inflating the core.

RACI and role clarity

Ambiguity about who decides is the most common source of team friction. A RACI assignment removes it:

for each major deliverable, exactly one person is Accountable , one or more are Responsible ,

others are Consulted before the decision, and the rest are Informed afterwards. Two rules:

there is exactly one A per deliverable, and Consulted is a two-way obligation -- being consulted means

you must respond within the agreed window or forfeit the input.